The Falcon Memento .

The photos of this blog were lost in cyberspace.

Photos inserted and Blog edited on 18 September 2021.

( It is still shining AFTER 54 years !!!)

The Falcon Memento.

I was posted to 101 Squadron Air Force, then based in Tezpur, in December 1966.  This was my first operational squadron as such I still remember it fondly.

The squadron was equipped with Vampire trainer aircraft. The sqn operational role was Fighter Reconnaissance (FR). Vinten F-95 cameras fitted on the aircraft were of excellent quality.  In case of hostilities in case the army wanted intelligence about enemy deployment 101 squadron was tasked to go on a recce mission. Take photos of the enemy deployments and later drop the developed photos at the army unit. Necessary information about enemy deployments was then determined by the trained photo interpreters of the army. Just before the commencement of 1965 hostilities Fli Lt Chhetri of 101 Squadron was awarded a VRC for bringing back tank tracks and tanks hiding in sand dunes of Ran Of Katchabout which the army was unaware of.

  Photographs taken during training sorties those days included boats on the river Brahmaputra, village belles at various locations like river banks, by the water wells etc in various situations & poses, also buses, trains, bridges, wildlife if spotted outside the Kaziranga sanctuary were all photographed. In fact, for practice, we used to click any and everything which caught our fancy and looked good and interesting! Today I regret the fact that I never kept any of those photos /negatives, they would have made a tremendous collection of some very very interesting and hair raising photos!

In due course, I was declared "Fully Ops in F/R role" on the type. 

 The crowd ( Boman Irani, Chhetri, Gaurishankar, "Badda" Kochhar, Shivdas, Naliyan, P Singh, Bamzai, Dhillon, Bhasin, Malkani, Ramesh Gosain, Bo Phatak, Popo Sahay, my course mates Suraj Kumar, Ghalot, Vinod Kumar, Don Jonas (& then there were some youngsters whose names, alas, have now been erased from the memory) was great. We had a wonderful time. But as the title suggests I am writing this blog about 101 Squadron memento. 

There may be another blog about the good times we had but for now, I will stick to 101 Squadron memento! 

 I was posted out of the Sqn in May 1968 to 7 Squadron which was located in Hindon in those days. In fact, all the squadron pilots were posted out as the squadron was converting to SU -7 aircraft. There was a spate of farewell parties as one by one the fellows were bidding goodbye to the unit. Gosain, if I remember rightly, was in charge of the flight fund. The unit had a limited number of mementoes to be presented, of course, no one had anticipated that we will need such a large number of mementoes in such a short time. So by the time my turn came for the farewell party and to receive the memento, it was not available as all were already presented and were out of stock. 

The memento was a piece of very well crafted "Falcon on a closed fist" mounted on a wooden pedestal. It was of excellent workmanship, quality and a memento worth having not only because it was a memento of the unit where you had the best of times, where you were declared fully ops on an aircraft for the first time in your life but also because it was simply so beautifully made that one had to have it. The artist had caught the wild spirit, the deadliness of the beak, bone-crunching power of those lethal talons and the powerful body and the mighty chest whose impact would render its pray senseless. All done very beautifully and in vivid detail. Even the eyes looked ferocious !! It was a work of art and as I said one had to have it. So I kept pestering Gosain to do something so that I get one and made his life miserable. 

As I was posted to Hindon and had to go to Delhi I was given an authority letter addressed to Whora Brothers, Jewellers & Watchmakers, Cannaught Circus, New Delhi authorising me to collect one Falcon memento on cash payment of Rs 100/- that being the cost of the memento. 

I was also given Rs 100/, a princely sum in those days, from the flight fund so that I could make the payment otherwise who had that kind of money. (Remember Rum bottle in the valley was only Rs 2, so the memento was worth 50 bottles of rum. (Over the years I have realised and you better believe me when I say that it was worth every rupee and every peg of each of those 50 bottles !!!). By the time I reached Delhi and Hindon after spending 15 days holidays at home in Kannod, M P, I realised that all the money I had was spent, including the 100 bucks received from the 101 sqn flight fund. I had no money to give to Whora Brothers for the Falcon, which I had wanted so badly. To cut a long story short it was almost six months before I could collect the coveted trophy! 

Over the years we have collected a lot more mementoes from almost all the units we were posted to. Exceptions being 220 the very first squadron we were posted to as it was a training squadron, at CDM, at DSSC and at ASTE, as at all these places we were told that under trainee pilots/ officers were not given any memento of the unit. Whatever the logic behind this argument I have failed to understand it even today. 

With all these mementoes, we have been spending a lot of time in silvo"ing" and Brasso"ing". Over the years quite a lot of mementoes have lost their silver polish and look yellow and so over the years instead of "silvoing" them we had to switch over "brossing" of those items. Some just refuse to respond to your loving care and simply refuse to shine no matter how much trouble you take. But not so "The Falcon ". It was bright and shining in all its silver glory the day I had collected it sometime in 1969 and it is still bright shining in all its silver glory even today after each silvo polish. 

To this day it remains our most loved trophy. Of course, the paint from the wooden pedestal has been chipped and it looks a bit battered and for the fear that local carpenters may not be able to do a good job, I have left the pedestal without any effort of restoration. Those who have been unfortunate enough never to have owned the falcon or even looked at it, here is a photo taken of our beloved Falcon on 09 September 2009. Looking at it it is hard to believe that it still retains its beauty and grand looks even after 40 long years .

From the Bharat Rakshak website, I learn that the Squadron is now located at Naliya. However, I do not know if the unit has still retained the same "Falcon" as farewell memento for its officers or not. 

If it is changed and if so what is the new memento and if the new one would still be loved even after 40 years as we love our FALCON !!!!! 

 VELU. PS : click on the photo and feel the impact of the Falcon.