Desmond Hayde, MVC

Biography

Brigadier Desmond Hayde was born on 28 November 1926 in England, of Anglo-Indian descent; his father worked in the Indian Railways. He was educated up to Senior Cambridge level at Asansol and Bangalore. He joined the Indian Military Academy, Dehradun, on 20 January 1947 and was commissioned into The Jat Regiment on 12 September 1948. During the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, Lieutenant Colonel Hayde commanded 3 Jat in the Western Sector as part of Operation Riddle. On 6 September 1965, his battalion was tasked to breach the heavily defended Ichhogil Canal inside Pakistan, whose western bank was lined with concrete pillboxes offering overlapping arcs of fire. Under his leadership 3 Jat captured Dograi township and then the Batapore and Attokeawan localities on the west bank against stiff opposition. When the enemy counter-attacked with Patton and Sherman tanks on 9 September, his battalion accounted for five tanks. The unit was later ordered to withdraw when supporting units could not reach it in time. Two weeks later, 3 Jat was ordered to retake the now heavily fortified town of Dograi near Lahore. On the night of 21 September 1965, Hayde exhorted his men with the immortal words, "Zinda ya murda, Dograi mein milna hai" (Dead or alive, we have to meet in Dograi). Marching eight kilometres to the objective, the battalion fought the Pakistani defenders — two infantry battalions and a tank squadron — in fierce close-quarter combat with guns, grenades, bayonets and bare hands, clearing every street, house and pillbox until Dograi was captured. The battle, in which 3 Jat lost 86 men, passed into folklore. For his personal courage and exceptional leadership, Lieutenant Colonel Desmond Hayde was awarded the Maha Vir Chakra, the nation's second-highest gallantry honour.