Roads to Delhi 293Kiani, J. K. Bhonsle, and A. C. Chatterjee to major- general rank, and
Shah Nawaz, Sahgal, and Dhillon had been made colonels. It was Ne-
taji’s historic retreat with the soldiers of the INA and the women of the
Rani of Jhansi Regiment from Burma to Thailand—a hazardous jour-
ney chased by the enemy in late April and early May 1945—that left an
indelible imprint on popular memory: these warriors made heroic sac-
ri fices to pay the price of freedom.
“Standing there in the open, in the bright moonlight, with fires and
explosions in the distance, and no defi nite news of the position of the
enemy, was a peculiar sensation,” S. A. Ayer has written. “We were liter-
ally living ev ery moment of our life in those hours. We continued our
march through the burning villages of Pegu.”^123 With enemy aircraft in
full control of the skies, the retreating column could travel only by
night. “Not only daylight, we dreaded the moonlight too, only a lit-
tle less,” Ayer remembered. “We felt comparatively safe on pitch dark
nights. Rather primitive, do you think? Well, quite so. Otherwise, how
can shelters dug 20 or 30 feet underground have such a fascination for
man? How else can the sun and moon be objects of horror?”^124 On the
night of April 26, the women of the Rani of Jhansi Regiment waded
across the River Waw, assisted by Swami and Shaukat Malik. Bose
would not cross until his entire entourage was safely on the other side.
With their trucks either destroyed in enemy air raids or stuck in the
muddy terrain, Bose and his column covered the last ten miles to the
Sittang River on foot. Earlier in the day a young of fi cer, Nazir Ahmed,
had been killed by machine- gun fire from the air in a trench next to
Netaji. “My girls are wonderful,” Janaki Thevar wrote in her diary.
“Each one of them is carrying her own pack, containing all their be-
longings.” These packs, weighing thirty- five pounds, included rations,
rifles, ammunition, and hand grenades. “Netaji is marching at the head
of the column,” she recorded, “also carrying his own pack.” It does
seem a miracle that the retreating column managed to cross the Sittang
River without being decimated on that moonlit night. East of the Sit-
tang, three long night marches followed. Bose refused to get into his car
or a truck, so long as his companions had to walk. As he sat under a
tree and took off his military boots, Janaki Thevar saw that his feet
were “a mass of blisters.”^125 “We were asked to get ready,” Ayer continues