“After …months of war, pains and grieves; after … years of ‘tiranny’ and inhumanity, after have the innocent victims of the most ‘perverce’ gang….; today……., we can cry at full voice our joys our enthusiasm for your coming".
An anti fascist leaflet of the Italian resistance in September 1943 welcoming the Allies after Italy joined the Allies in WW2- reproduced in its original English
The Fuhrer betrayed again
The real traitor in the whole hostile clique in the East is Karuna
(With apologies to Dr Goebells)
The above may well may be the sentiments of the 2 sides and their apologists to the conflict in the East after the fall of Thoppigala to the SL forces on 11 June 2007
The fall of Thoppigala presages the end of the LTTE hold in the East.
The imminent fall of Thoppigala after a carefully, well planned and superbly executed military operation saw a rush of political adventurers feverishly dishing out propaganda to the public hoping to diminish or neutralise the effect of the victory and apply field dressings to the LTTE's psychological wounds. Having no concern for the fortunes of the forces, their only thought was what effect the fall out would be to them. Their side was certainly not Sri Lanka's. First amongst them was Running Wicks (RW). He was backed by his judge advocate. Together they sang a strange if not shameless duet to denigrate and ridicule the efforts of the servicemen who in the service of their country, fought, were wounded and died at Thoppigala in the service of their country.
RW took it upon himself to announce at a public meeting that Thoppigala was not worth fighting for. He connected it with some disdainful theories of his about Mavil Aru too. He said Thoppigala was simply a rock set in a jungle environment of X square miles, which he worked out in Y acres, where there were also 5 irrigation tanks. He counted all this in public to get his figures absolutely straight but had not failed to count how many trees, leaves, boughs and rocks there were too to complete his statistics. As usual he had got lost in the woods for the trees. (The area commonly called Thoppigala which includes Narakamulla completely dominates the surrounding countryside. It gave the LTTE a secure rear base from which its artillery including a TBRL, mortars and ubiquitous snipers who despite all technological advances are still irreplaceable in modern battle, were directed. Kochalacholai and Kiran were their forward bases where their rampaging cadres were able to take a toll of our troops for over 20 years. They also terrorised the nearby villages with murder attacks and kidnappings directed at women, children and places of worship and novice monks. The duo also invented a myth of the main objective Narakamulla being 'captured' once before by the SLA 15 years ago by referring to it as Thoppigala - when RW was riding side saddle. There was no explanation as to where the rocks were then. They had also forgotten to mention what the LTTE if not the army had been doing there all this while and why. Surely they were not breaking rocks.
RW's only connection with campaigning is that he has been making an art of losing political battles with abandon. Having started as a directly commissioned officer without any training in the Beira and then Diyawanna corps, he made it to second in command twice with not a little bit of supporting and overhead fire from and sapping and mining by relatives and friends. But he never made it to Commander. RW has lately failed to prevent a mutiny in his own ranks and lost his seasoned frontline campaigners who deserted en masse. He is now left with odd bods and sods, the ear, nose, mouth and stomach ache troops. To make matters worse he has supported the Fuhrer's propaganda goons.
This is the first time in history that any political leader in the world has taken upon him to belittle his own armed services in battle even though the decision to begin (battle) was with his acquiescence. He also got his disordered cronies to imitate him.
When the WW2 battles were being fought in the Western desert were there any politicians from Britain or Germany to count the grains of sand in it to prove its worth? When the war spread to Russia no one strained himself to count the blades of grass on the steppes or tried to measure it in terms of square miles. There is no truth that Napoleon had tried to either earlier, just in case this man an expert in diverting attention from the battlefield by liberally tingeing history with addled war stories. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour was he there to fathom the depth of the sea or how many fish there were? Who found fault with either the Japanese or the British Fourteenth Army for not counting the trees in the jungles or the lengths of the rivers of Burma before engaging in battle. In Imphal a battle was fought across the tennis courts of a former planters' club but was there someone complaining that there were no tennis balls on it? When the Allied troops in WW2 fought bitterly to take Monte Cassino, the key to the Gustav line in Italy, neither Field Marshal Kesselring nor Generals Patton, Bradley, Clarke and Alexander had to answer to their political leaders as to why they were fighting over a large rock over 7000 feet high.
Why then this denigration by this duet of a hard battle truly won by the grit, guts, skills and with the blood of the SL soldiers who were simply carrying out their duties as laid down by their commanders?
Could it be that, as in 1983, RW favours attacking Colombo with his spearhead forces, the notorious national SS even if they were not Himmler's own? Then of course the counting would not have been trees, irrigation tanks and rocks but loot, rapine and murder and not with guns but with petrol bombs, axes, swords and knives against innocent Tamils. We succeeded in burning down a major part of our capital city as the political leaders looked on petrified at the monsters it had cloned; not knowing that the seeds of hatred it created would give rise to strident militant Tamil nationalism and nearly 25 years of ignoble strife.
What happened again in 1988/9? Who went around registering 60,000 heads and burnt bodies? How did RW quantify those blood drenched 'victories'?
Where were his buddies then? They did not get on platforms or even onto the streets to speak so blithely and with comic looks as they do now. Instead they locked their doors and peeped through the key holes to look at the carnage. Fortunately the governments that came after them did not give the SS and the police a 'holiday'.
The duet also began to strike a falsetto and claim that Thoppigala (was it not just a rock then?) had been captured about 15 years ago to belittle its actual capture by the armed forces in July 2007. The truth is that in 1992/3 when the present army chief was commanding a Brigade in Welikanda there were many LTTE hit and run attacks and ambushes on the Batticaloa - Polonaruwa road. The military response was to pull out the troops of the division in Batticaloa from their nearby camps including Vakarai and patrol the roads to keep them clear. The camps on the coast were denuded The whole strength of the LTTE in the East, armed then only with T56 mm rifles machine guns and RPGs was about 200 in 1992. Their bastion was and remained at Narakamulla, the capture of which was signaled as the fall of what is commonly referred to as Thoppigala. The Special Forces (SF) which then had only one regiment at the time had a strength of about 400 men and dominated the area including Thoppigala. Yet the SF bold and steady as they were and are did not 'capture' or attempt to capture Narakamulla then. They sent out regular fighting and ambush patrols to the area which had the habit of attracting the LTTE 'like bees to honey' as the Colonel commanding officer the SF used to state. Why did this duet then seek to distort history that Narakamulla which was denied by the LTTE to the IPKF had been in government hands about 15 years ago and was abandoned in 1995? It was not simply to mislead. It was deliberately hypocritical and dishonest. However even Goebells the master of all propagandists would not have stooped to shame his country's soldiers even to save his life. This duet couldn't care to what depths its propaganda digs down to.
After this where then could RW be running to now? Surely not Iraq where he had hopes of sending our troops to score brownie points with Bush. Lately he has shown a fascination nay obsession with Hitler, the original Fuhrer and not missed a single opportunity to make comparisons, not with the death camps which killed 12 million people for good personal reasons, but just the eviction of Jews from Germany. He appears to have forgotten what happened to the Tamils in 1983 in front of his eyes as he stood firm with all the other ministers of the time behind locked doors until it was all over. So could he now be aiming to go to a bunker like Hitler to call it a day? Surely not to Berlin? Where then is the other bunker? Only a cyanide carrier will know.
No one can take away from the armed forces the honour and glory they earned with their blood, guts and disciplined valour, defeating the LTTE in what was thought to be impregnable Narakamulla. This time the LTTE unlike in 1992 had TBRLs, artillery, medium and heavy mortars, anti tank guns, anti tank and anti personnel mines, and 2000 seasoned cadres armed with AK 47s. They fought against 6 infantry battalions and the Commando Regiment, supported by profuse artillery, some armour including APCs, first in and still there Engineers lifting mines, excellent comms provided by SL Signals and the pin point strikes by the intrepid SLAF from April to July, before conceding defeat and conducting a fighting retreat to the Wanni in their normal style.
Deranged politicians have a choice. They can plead insanity to charges of treachery and avoid becoming the state's guests or join the Fuhrer where ever he may be. But History will record their perfidy for eternity.
We Sri Lankan soldiers
For our freedom and yours
Have given our souls to the Gods
Our bodies to the soil of the East
And our hearts to Mother Lanka
(With apologies to the Polish II Corps which took Monte Cassino in May 1944)
(http://www.army.lk/morenewsfet.php?id=2128)
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