384 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খন্ড away." The old man couldn't comprehend how his brother could have escaped on a broken leg. Neither could I. So Major Bashir, with a broad wink, enlightened me. The record would show Dhor gaya; "shot while escaping." I Never did find out whether Captain Azmat got his kill. The rebel Bengali forces who had dug in at Feni, seventy miles north of Chittagong on the highway to Camilla, had tied down the 9th Division by destroying all the bridges and culverts in the area. General Raza was getting hell from Eastern Command at Dacca which was anxious to have the south-eastern border sealed against escaping rebels. It was also desperately urgent to open this only land route to the north to much-needed supplies that had been piling up in the port at Chittagong. So General Raza was understandably waspish. He flew over the area almost daily. He also spent hours haranguing the bridge that was bogged down at Feni. Captain Azmat, as usual, was the General's shadow. I did not see him again. But if experience is any pointer, Azmat, probably had to sweat out his "kill"-and the ragging-for another three weeks. It was only on May 8 that the 9th Division was able to clear Feni and the surrounding area. By then the Bengali rebels, forced out by relentless bombing and artillery barrages, had escaped with their weapons across the neighboring border into India. The escape of such large numbers of armed, hard-core regulars among the Bengali rebels was a matter of grave concern to Lt.-Gen. Aslam Baig, G-lat 9th Division headquarters. "The Indians," he explained will obviously not allow them to settle there. It would be too dangerous. So they will be allowed in on sufferance as long as they keep making sorties across the border. Unless we can kill them off, we are going to have serious trouble for a long time." Lt.-Col. Baig was a popular artillery officer who had done a stint in China after the India-Pakistan war when units of the Pakistan army were converting to Chinese equipment. He was said to be a proud family man. He also loved flowers. He told me with unconcealed pride that during a previous posting at Comilla he had brought from China the giant scarlet water lilies that adorn the pond opposite headquarters. Major Bashir adored him. Extolling one officer's decisiveness, Bashir told me that once they had caught a rebel officer; there was a big fuss about what should be done with him. "While the others were telephoning all over for instructions," he said, "he solved the problem. Diorgaya. Only the man's foot was left sticking out of the ditch." It is hard to imagine so much brutality in the midst of so much beauty. Comilla was blooming when I went there towards the end of April. The rich green carpet of rice paddies spreading to the horizon on both sides of the road was broken here and there by bright splashes of red. That was the Go/Mohor, aptly dubbed the "Flame of the Forest," coming to full bloom. Mango and coconut trees in the villages dotting the countryside were heavy with fruit. Even the terrier-sized goat’s skip ping across the road gave evidence of the abundance of nature in Bengal. "The only way you can tell the male from the female", they told me, "is that all the she-goats are pregnant."
