Salman Rashid, CCW and Bar

Yes, this is me

Responding to my story about driving the truck on the Shorkot Air Base runway, Faisal Sherjan who tweets at @fsherjan had this to say about Cecil Chaudhry: ‘That probably meant, “I enjoyed it too but you pongo be smart next time, remove the governor so you hit 80 on the first run.”’

This makes me think I should have asked Cecil years later if he thought that was the right kind of caper for a young lieutenant to pull. But I never did. Faisal now makes me suspect that the make-believe wrath on his face and everything else was just something to put me in place and that perhaps even when my misdemeanour was reported to him, Cecil probably had a laugh – at least to himself.

So that brings me to another story from the first few months of my misadventure in the army. I was selected for 49 PMA Long Course, but with the 1971 war right on us, I received a letter in August 1971 telling me that the course had been abridged and that we would pass out in six months. I had a choice: I could take short service commission or wait until the regular courses resumed after the war.

I conferred with my friend at college where they used to study and where I just went to kill time that refused to die while I day dreamed during the Numbers Theory, Logic, Calculus and one other horrid subject in Math A&B which I just don’t recall. My friends, some of them long acquainted with me from school, said this business of graduating with Physics and Math A&B was just not my cup of tea (buss ka rog, is what they said) and that I should join the army forthwith. They also said that if I did not join, I would be conscripted in National Service and war being inevitable, I would have to go to the front to fight like a soldier. Being the coward I have always been I chose to flee to the safety of PMA [Pakistan Military Acedemy].

Now a short course at the academy is just six months. You only study military subjects and because they don’t teach academics you don’t get a degree when you graduate from the academy. If I had thought getting away from academics was going to be good, I was such a fool! Even those pointless military subjects were beyond me. Tactics is one I remember and no matter how hard I try, I just do not recall what other crap we were taught.

Of course, Map Reading was just another thing. With my natural fetish for maps, this was the only subject I enjoyed and did not have to study to pass. In fact, my platoon commander Major (later brigadier) Riaz Ahmed Chaudhry was surprised how I could get ninety percent marks in Map Reading when I grandly flunked in every other subject.

In the first exam after about two months at the academy, I flunked in all five (or was it seven?) military subjects. All except Map Reading. With a couple more of my platoon mates, I was dragged to the Company Commander’s office. Major Abdur Rauf (later brigadier), a great soul with a sharp sense of humour, gave us three a good dressing down and placed us on warning. Now, in the army they abbreviate everything. Everything – even abbreviations are abbreviated. So the Company Commander’s Warning was CCW. And it was not a good thing to be on CCW.

Back in my room, I made out a ‘nameplate’ on white paper with my name in bold lettering, added my khurpa image on one side – the one they took on the first day – and appended below my name the letters ‘CCW’. This was just as any saner body would write MA or BA or SJ (Sitara e Jurat) under their name.

The next round of exams everyone passed, even the other two who had been on CCW with me, but I kept my record of failure unbroken. After an initial ragging by the platoon commander, I was again hauled in in front of Major Rauf. He gave me hell in English and in Urdu – the latter never being done in PMA, but then Major Rauf was unique. He placed me on yet another warning and told me if I ‘did not pull up [your] socks’, there would be no third warning. I’d just be kicked out of PMA.

Back in my room, I added ‘& Bar’ to the ‘CCW’. For those of you who don’t know the bar, it signifies winning the same medal a second time. We have some good men from the services who are SJ & Bar. But I have to admit that it was fear of Calculus that made me just barely pass the final exam.

One evening Major Riaz Chaudhry came around to check if we loafers were studying or not. When I opened the door for him, he rapped his swagger stick smartly against my ‘nameplate’ and very angrily asked the obvious question: ‘What is the meaning of this?’

‘CCW and Bar, sir!’ I stood at stiff attention and bawled PMA style. And, I tell you, Major Riaz, who we called ‘Terror’ and ‘Banh’ because of the Punjabi banh he daily gave us, could not suppress a chortle. He said he was going to sort me out well and proper and then he turned around and left very fast. I think he had a hard time suppressing his laughter.

Major Riaz Ahmed Chaudhry could enjoy a good joke, that much I know because I was never sorted out for having my ‘decorations’ exhibited. He might even have shared the joke with his colleagues during tea break and if he did, I am certain Major Rauf would have thrown his head back in laughter.