Col Grewal, who completed MBBS from Armed Forces Medical College, Pune and was commissioned in the Army Medical Corps in 1996.With July marking 20 years since the Kargil war, Dr Capt Vikram Singh Grewal and his team, who attended to 75 casualties including two prisoners of war (POW), still remembers how paratroopers with dismembered limbs or bodies riddled with bullets would be brought to the Regimental Aid Post (RAP) set up with the para battalion in Batalik sector.
From stopping blood loss and splinting as well as administering IV fluids to keeping severely injured soldiers alive till first light, when helicopters would evacuate them, the “doctor saab” is grateful that whoever was brought to his RAP still lives to tell the tale.
“The trust and belief shown by my paratrooper friends in me was so complete and unquestioned… that it often shook me and sent shudders down my spine, thinking what if I fail them,” Col Grewal, who was then a Dr Capt, told The Indian Express.
The doctor and his team earned themselves a place in the book ‘Kargil: Untold Stories from the War' after the author, Rachna Bisht Rawat, dedicated a chapter to ‘The Doctor with a Maroon Beret'.
“The Kargil war had many heroes, and of course, the tallest of them were the infantry soldiers who climbed the craggy mountains and put their lives at stake for the country. But Army Medical Corps and Army Aviation were two unsung heroes of the war. The doctor, who is fondly…
