An odyssey in war and peace

Lt Gen. J.F.R. Jacob
Roli Books
Edition: Hard Cover
ISBN: 978-81-7436-840-9
Pages: 189
Price: 350


Few people get a chance to see from very close quarters, and participate in,  some of the world’s important military campaigns. Lieutenant General JFR Jacob is one of them. His campaigns began with  World War II and culminated into helping East Pakistan become an independent Bangladesh.
The victory of the 1971 war, fought against Pakistan for the freedom of Bangladesh, is till date the biggest victory of the Indian Armed Forces. It was a war in which as many as 93,000 Pakistani soldiers were made to surrender – the biggest surrender in the world history. The protagonist has been one of the most important people who made it happen.

The book is a journey through events as they happened in the writer’s life. It is good for the people who are interested in reading about how the Indian Army grew up from a force of very few officers who had the experience of command and control, to a formidable force. 
It recapitulates some of the most important events between the 1960s and the 1990s. As General Jacob belonged to Artillery, he has written about the division of artillery assets between the Indian Army and the Pakistan Army once the decision to make Pakistan an independent nation was taken. He has written about various gunnery courses and classes which he did and attended and later on, how as an instructor, he changed the content and the instruction material.

The chapter, Strategy: What Eventually Worked, is detailed with the formations and the units which moved on different flanks to achieve the blitzkrieg effect during the 1971 Bangladesh liberation campaign. It has a lot of information on Mukti Bahini where Gen jacob organised camps in border areas where he visualised some 8000 trainees who were to be strenghtened to 20,000 and they were supposed to be imparted training for some three months. He organised them like a proper army with leaders and rank and file.

It was the planning and its execution that overwhelmed the Pakistani forces, which as the officers tell, were much higher in numbers. It also mentions the amount of ‘personality clashes had an adverse effect on the passage of orders and their implementation’.  There are glimpses of ‘pompous and ambitious bullies’ and political interference and pressures in various matters. One can also make out from the account in the book that there was a lack of mutual trust amongst the top brass during this time.

The book gives glimpses of various well- known military figures of the World War II and it has talked about the way Japanese forces handled the loss and retained their military grace. General Jacob writes, “The Japanese in defeat were disciplined and behaved with dignity.” Some chapters are a run-down of the military brass that has played a crucial role in shaping the Indian Army. 

The book, once again, has reinforced that how sycophancy and incompetence lulled us into the 1962 setback as the signs of their intentions were quite clear even before the Chinese began their military campaign. He has written a lot about the way senior officers used to rate their juniors – their judgments being often laced with biases and prejudices. He has written in the last chapter: “Unfortunately, personal vendettas are on the increase.”

Writing about his time, he has mentioned that “not only was Bewoor wanting to fix officers, so also was Gen. ‘Tappy’ Raina had phoned me to fix Lt Gen. Stan Menzes...”. The book is full of such examples where not only the personality clashes but also individual preferences emerge as the guiding force behind many important decisions taken during his time. It gives glimpses of how the careers of many officers were either fixed or not allowed to progress and how at the same time, officers who were less competent but good at few other things were promoted.

This book will add to the repertoire of the information which already exists about the Indian armed forces. The book will, undoubtedly, capture the attention of the readers for the fact that the writer has projected himself as the only person who has been singlehandedly able to turn everything wrong into right. It mentions the events in a way that as if had he not been brought to the juncture, the people who were already there, would have worsened it for the Army. The book mentions all the other officers, except for a few, as either incompetent or working with a myopic and selfish thinking.