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There is nothing in the sprawling, sun-dappled courtyard of Tara Singh, the sarpanch of Assal Uttar, that seems redolent of war. But Raj Sin...

There is nothing in the sprawling, sun-dappled courtyard of Tara Singh, the sarpanch of Assal Uttar, that seems redolent of war. But Raj Singh, his nephew with the flowing white beard, tells you it was here, right next to the gangly tree that a Pakistani shell had fallen in the autumn of 1965, and killed their prized ox.

The war of 1965 may be history now, but in the Khemkaran sector, where the Pakistani forces had occupied several villages, the past seamlessly melds into the present.

You can sense it in the half-a-dozen tiny war memorials dotting the roadside on the Amritsar-Khemkaran road that saw the rise and fall of the Patton tank. You can see it in the profusion of baked brown houses in the countryside where villagers are still chary of building concrete structures. You can hear it resonate in the stories that come your way the moment you mention 1965.

In dusty Khemkaran, Raj Pal, a thick-set commission agent with a permanent frown, still remembers the morning of September 5, when the Indian Army began pouring into the tight lanes of the mofussil town. 8216;8216;We could smell the war,8217;8217; says Raj Pal, then in class X. Eighteen hours later, it was a ghost town, waiting for the Pakistani attack that came on the night of September 6.

8216;8216;I remember we took the last train to Amritsar at 8.30 pm on September 6. The shells had begun to land even as we were heading for the station,8217;8217; says Raj Pal. Six months later, they returned to a town that had been ravaged beyond recognition. 8217;8217;We were greeted by a flat landscape. The Pakistanis didn8217;t leave a single tree or brick behind, they8217;d even taken away the rail tracks.8217;8217;

Strangely, today in the sweltering sun, it8217;s the plunder of the trees, rukh as they call them here, that seems to hurt the most. 8216;8216;See, we hardly have any shade here,8217;8217; grouses Tirath Singh, who was the sarpanch of Machchike village when it was captured by Pakistani forces.

Sitting by a defence drain dug up after 1965, Macchike is a study in brown with just a few tentative strokes of green here and there. Captain retd Reet M.P. Singh, who won a Vir Chakra for his bravery here, remembers it through a haze of red. A second lieutenant with the 8th Cavalry, Reet was assigned the task of retaking Machchike from the Pakistani forces.

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Accompanied by a company of 8 Dogras, Reet and his tanks approached Machchike on the night of September 22. As they neared the village without encountering any resistance, their confidence surged. 8216;8216;When we didn8217;t attract any fire even within 400 metres of the village, I surmised that they had left,8217;8217; recalls Reet. Minutes later, all hell broke loose.

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In dusty Khemkaran town, Raj Pal, a commission agent, still remembers the morning of September 5, 1965, when the Indian Army poured in. The Pakistani attack came on September 6. As Raj Pal took the 8216;last train to Amritsar at 8.30 pm8217;, the shells began to land

The Pakistanis opened fire the moment Indians set foot on a minefield. Reet recalls using wireless sets to dig up four anti-tank mines even as the bullets continued to fly. Then, he walked back to one of his tank commanders, Naib Risaldar Nazir Singh, to tell him about the safe space he8217;d created.

8216;8216;He8217;d just had a baby son and he used to tell me, 8216;Saab take care of me8217;.8217;8217; Reet was just two feet away when something hit Nazir8217;s tank, and then everything turned red. 8217;8217;I tried to press my eyes and found the right eye had come out.8217;8217; Later, Reet ordered his tanks to retreat without him. He was awarded the Vir Chakra for ensuring the safety of his troops with scant regard for his life. Today, his only son serves in his regiment.

At Assal Uttar, they still remember the charge of the Pakistani Patton tanks on September 9. 8216;8216;They looked quite formidable but our soldiers decimated them,8217;8217; recounts Chanan Singh, then a teenager, who8217;d chosen to stay back in the village with his father. Brigadier retd N.S. Sandhu, MVC, who was commanding C squadron of 3rd Cavalry during the epic Battle of Assal Uttar, remembers how the Indian forces destroyed or captured more than 100 Patton tanks. So intense was the battle that Brigadier Thomas K. Theograj could say only one word 8212; 8216;8216;Maro Shoot.8217;8217;

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Sandhu, who was wounded after he had shot down five tanks, stole behind the enemy lines and positioned himself on the rooftop of a house in Lakhna village. From there he relayed vital information about Pakistani movements to his commanding officer, Lt Colonel Salim Caleb.

KHEMKARAN and it surrounding villages didn8217;t take long to get back on their feet once the ceasefire was brokered. But it8217;s only in the past two years that they have finally begun to exhale. The spectre of war has finally begun to fade.

Scores of turbaned heads nod enthusiastically when Chanan Singh of Noorwala village, who lost all his cattle in a Pakistani bombardment, tells you how it8217;s futile to fear an enemy onslaught. 8216;8216;Now they have missiles that can target Delhi, war will not be the same again.8217;8217;

There are others who8217;ve been permanently scarred by the 1965 war. Surjeet Singh of Bhure Karimpura village lost half of his left leg on the first day of his return to the village. 8216;8216;I was only 10 at that time,8217;8217; he sighs. 8216;8216;The mines laid by the Pakistanis claimed six lives in our village.8217;8217;

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A few kilometres away in Sursingh village, the family of Havaldar Mohinder Singh, who lost his life at Khemkaran border in 1965, tells you how his death changed their life forever. 8216;8216;His three sons disappeared during the militancy, were he alive things would have been different,8217;8217; laments his daughter-in-law Kashmir Kaur. Even today, his grandson Jagjit Singh hopes the yellowed condolence message from Lal Bahadur Shastri will get him a job in the army.