It was in the first week of June 1999, exactly three years after Gunjan Saxena had been commissioned into the Indian Air Force (IAF), that she landed in Kargil as a Flight Officer. Her unit, based in Udhampur, Jammu, had been pressed into service to strengthen the army's ground operations to flush out the Pakistani occupiers from the snow-capped peaks around Kargil.
"We had two main tasks — to evacuate casualties and do aerial recces of the area," says Saxena, who left the Force in July 2004 after the birth of her daughter, and now lives in Jamnagar with her husband, also an IAF pilot. Given the rugged terrain of the area and the fact that the enemy forces were well entrenched, it was a fairly dangerous job. In fact, the IAF had already lost a helicopter and its four-member crew to missiles fired from the ground some time earlier. "We were sitting ducks," says Saxena. "They were in an advantageous position and there was nothing that would shield my aircraft."
In fact, says Saxena, she narrowly escaped being hit once during a sortie. "The helicopter I was flying was fired upon, but it was not visible to me. It was only reported to me later on." On another occasion, Saxena was at the Kargil airstrip being briefed by the army on the latest position when she heard a sound and saw everyone start to run. Not realising what the matter was, she started walking only to have her elder brother, who was with the army and also posted in Kargil at the time, pull her by the arm. "It was a shoulder-fired missile. Those in the army heard it all the time and knew what it was. Thankfully, the missile landed some distance behind my helicopter," says Saxena, who recalls having taken part in more than 50 sorties in the three weeks she was on combat duty.
Strangely, while Saxena is the only woman pilot to have been part of combat operations, it wasn't simply patriotism or the thrill of danger that made her join the IAF. "Ever since childhood, I was very clear that I wanted to fly. At that time, nobody believed me, but my family was very supportive. It was also familiar ground — my father and brother were both in the army. I was in college in Delhi when the IAF decided to accept women pilots — I applied."
