Sting Operation

This episode occurred during my Army tenure at Jalandhar sometime between 1984 and1986. I was supervising the training of our troops in the training area of our unit. It was a vast grassy field spread over a few acres with lots of trees providing adequate shade. There were a number of squad posts where the troops got their daily training in various skills as per the operational role of their sub units. 

There is a famous saying that the busiest troops are the happiest ones. Therefore, when they are not fighting, they are training, which not only keeps them busy, but also sharpens their skills in their respective fields. And one has to sweat more in peace, to bleed less in war.

After visiting a number of training squad posts, I decided to sit near one of them under the shade of a big 'sheesham' tree, around which a platform made of bricks had been built by jawans of the unit. As I was watching the actions of the Havildar Instructor who was taking a class of jawans on how to dismantle and re-assemble a particular weapon, a bright yellow colored wasp came and started hovering over one of the toes of my DMS boot. There are some insects that one will always like to keep away from and as the wasp falls in that category so, I jerked it away and as it fell on the soft muddy ground, I stumped it with my boots and forgot about it. Just then two more officers from our unit joined me and we all got busy in observing the training session.

After a while, suddenly, I felt as if some one had hit me at inner side of my thigh with a sharp knife. I jumped up with pain. The other officers were taken aback and rushed to my help. As I held my thigh at that spot, I could feel the presence of some small little object inside my pants sticking to the flesh on my inner thigh. I pressed it hard with between my fingers and thumb and there was a sound of something getting crushed. I jerked my leg hard so that the crushed object could fall out. Yes, it fell out from the bottom of my trousers and lo and behold, there it was, the same wasp that I had stumped some time back under my boots.

The Army DMS (directly molded sole) boots have deep grooves in the rubber sole which help to maintain grip while running or walking on difficult terrains, even in adverse weather conditions. It so happened that when I stumped the wasp it got stuck in one of the grooves which saved its life. It came out from under the sole and silently crept up in side my trousers and climbed as high as it could. It might have been heading for the 'ultimate target', where it would have hurt me the most but luckily due to the tightness of the pants at the thigh level it could not advance further and decided to strike with full force at that spot. Though the insect ultimately sacrificed its life, but not before carrying out a silent sting operation on me. That day in the unit training area, I learnt a great lesson that "if you leave your enemy injured, keep an eye on him, it may strike deeper than the previous target". So better kill your enemy than merely leaving him injured.

This post also forms part of the series of posts on my life's journey. To read all the psots in that series please click here.