The Jat Regiment

Dograi, twice

On 6 September 1965 the 3rd Battalion, The Jat Regiment, under Lieutenant Colonel Desmond Hayde, crossed the Ichhogil Canal and took Batapore and Dograi, on the road to Lahore. It did not stay. Pakistani air attacks cut its supply lines, a counter-attack followed, and misleading reports led to the withdrawal. Indian commanders, according to later accounts, did not know that 3 Jat had taken Batapore at all. On 9 September the battalion destroyed five tanks when it was attacked by Pattons and Shermans.

Dograi had to be taken a second time, against a stronger defence. Pakistan held it with 16 Punjab and 3 Pashtun, over 900 men against about 550. The attack went in on the night of 20 to 21 September, and the fighting lasted 27 hours. Dates for the end of the battle vary between 21 and 23 September in published accounts.

Major Asaram Tyagi led from the front of A Company. He was hit twice in the right shoulder and kept going, destroyed tank crews with grenades and captured two tanks intact, and was hit three more times before he lost consciousness. His men took the objective. He died in a military hospital on 25 September, aged 26. Captain Kapil Singh Thapa, given the north-western edge of the village, was killed in the same battle.

The Indian official history gives 3 Jat's losses at Dograi as 58 killed and 157 wounded, and Pakistani losses as 308 killed and 108 captured, among them the commanding officer of 16 Punjab. The battalion's three Maha Vir Chakras of the war went to Hayde, Tyagi and Thapa, with four Vir Chakras and seven Sena Medals. Hayde's, notified on 17 September, predates the second battle and is dated to the canal crossing of 6 September. Dograi is its battle honour.

The Calcutta Native Militia, 1795

The Jat Regimental Centre traces its origins to the Calcutta Native Militia, raised on 10 July 1795 as a garrison unit for guard duties, which later became a Bengal Army infantry battalion. It came into the regiment as the 18th Infantry, the oldest of the units grouped in 1922, when four active battalions and a training battalion became the 9th Jat Regiment. The oldest battalion in the regiment's table is the 1st, raised at Fatehgarh on 9 November 1803.

Under Indian Army Order 134/S/45 the prefix was dropped on 28 November 1945. The centre, at Bareilly, took its present name the same year. The war cry was adopted in 1955.

The class composition has changed. After the First World War the regiment was recruited half from Hindu Jats, a quarter from Punjabi Muslims and a quarter from Rajput Muslims. Its soldiers now come predominantly from Hindu Jats of northern India, with the remainder Sikh Jats.

Abdul Hafiz at Imphal

The regiment's Second World War record in Burma includes one Victoria Cross. On 6 April 1944, in the hills about ten miles north of Imphal, Jemadar Abdul Hafiz of the 3rd Battalion, 9th Jat Regiment, was ordered to retake a prominent feature with two sections of his platoon. The way up was a bare slope, very steep near the crest.

Near the top the Japanese opened with machine guns and grenades. He was hit in the leg. At a machine gun firing on his men, he took hold of the barrel and pushed it upward while a comrade killed the gunner. He then took a Bren gun from a wounded man and went on, and his men cleared the feature. He kept firing at the retreating Japanese until a machine gun on a flanking hill hit him in the chest. His last order was "Reorganize, I will give you covering fire." The award was gazetted on 27 July 1944.

Two other soldiers of the regiment received the George Cross in the 1940s: Lance Naik Islam-ud-Din in Burma in 1945, and Havildar Abdul Rahman of the 3rd Battalion in Java in 1946.

Pimple II, July 1999

The 17th Battalion won the battle honour Mushkoh in the Kargil War. On 6 July 1999, C Company attacked part of the Pimple Complex on the western slopes of Point 4875. The company commander was wounded early on, and Captain Anuj Nayyar, the second-in-command, took over. He destroyed the first bunker with a rocket launcher and grenades, then took two more. He was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade while clearing the last of them, on 7 July, aged 23. Pimple II was captured on 8 July. His posthumous Maha Vir Chakra was notified under 17 Pres/2000.

At a glance

• Raised: Regimental centre traces its origin to the Calcutta Native Militia, 10 July 1795; 9th Jat Regiment formed 1922
• Regimental centre: Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh
• Motto: Sangathan Va Veerta (Unity and valour)
• War cry: Jat Balwan, Jai Bhagwan