Charlie Company of the 13th Kumaon Fought on a Ladakh Ridge on 18 November 1962, and India's Official History Counts 14 Survivors Out of 112 Men

At about 4 a.m. on 18 November 1962, a forward observation post at Rezang La, a ridge in Ladakh’s Chushul sector, reported nearly 400 Chinese soldiers approaching the 8 Platoon position of C (Charlie) Company, 13th Battalion, the Kumaon Regiment. India’s Official History of the war says the last Indian machine guns fell silent at around 2200 hours that night, and that only 14 of the 112 men on the ridge survived.

The company was largely Ahir, with many men from Rewari district in Haryana, and its commander, Major Shaitan Singh, received the Param Vir Chakra, India’s highest award for wartime gallantry. Almost every number attached to the battle exists in more than one version: 112 to 124 men in the company, 109 to 114 dead, and Chinese losses from 21 killed to 1,300. Each figure below is given with the name of whoever states it.

Why a ridge south of Chushul mattered

Chushul is a village and airstrip at 14,230 feet, about 15 miles from the border, Mohan Guruswamy wrote in National Herald on 18 November 2018. The Official History says 114 Infantry Brigade, under Brigadier T. N. Raina, moved there on 27 October 1962 as part of the newly raised 3 Himalayan Division. It held nearly 40 km of front with three battalions and occupied its positions only in the last week of October. Snow clothing was short, and rifles and light machine guns could not be fired with gloves on, because the trigger guard forced the soldier to take a glove off. The history records a large number of frostbite casualties as a result.

The same history says that on 27 October the Corps Commander turned down Raina’s request for more troops, having made up his mind that Leh must remain secure at all costs.

The 13th Kumaon, brought in from Baramula in Kashmir, took the southern flank. C Company, with a section of 3-inch mortars, held Rezang La, which the history calls an isolated feature about 11 km south of the Spangur gap and puts at 5,500 metres, or 18,000 feet. Other accounts say 16,000 feet, and the Param Vir Chakra citation says about 17,000. The ridge dominated the road link from Chushul to Leh by way of Dungti. With only one battery of field guns in the gap, the company had no artillery support. Its sole heavy fire came from its own mortars.

Lt Gen H S Panag (retd), writing in ThePrint on 29 January 2026, calls the brigade’s deployment flawed. It did not hold Black Top or Mukhpari, he says, which left Rezang La isolated across an 8 km gap.

How the day went, by the Indian and Chinese accounts

The Official History says the company held its fire until the Chinese were within range. At around 0500 the first attack was beaten back after nearly half an hour of firing. At 0540 Chinese artillery and mortars opened up, cutting the battalion telephone line and destroying the radio, and the company was on its own. The Chinese then attacked from the near and southern flank with two companies against the rear platoon, and the history says the Indians jumped out of their trenches to fight with bayonets and bare hands. Shaitan Singh moved from trench to trench, redeploying the light machine guns.

A paper by Saransh Srivastav of the United Service Institution of India, published in December 2025, adds the Chinese side, citing P. J. S. Sandhu’s USI study 1962: A View from the Other Side of the Hill. It names the attackers as a battalion of the 11th Regiment of the PLA’s 4th Division, reinforced by a company of the 10th Regiment. Both groups marched from near Ritu at 2000 hours on 17 November. The Chinese commanders, it says, noted that Indian fire was strong to the front and weaker on the flanks and rear, and planned to outflank the posts from the south. Srivastav and Panag both place the main assault at about 0915, and Srivastav adds an earlier first wave at 0500.

Strengths differ too. The Official History says the Chinese used nearly two battalions in the south against Rezang La. Panag estimates one battalion plus a reinforced company, 600 to 640 men, about five to one. The description of a 2021 book by Kulpreet Yadav says 5,000.

Shaitan Singh, the citation and the awards

The Param Vir Chakra citation, as reproduced by Honourpoint, says the Chinese attacked the company’s position in overwhelming strength in several successive waves, and that Shaitan Singh moved at great personal risk from one platoon post to another. When he fell disabled by wounds in his arms and abdomen, his men tried to carry him out and came under heavy machine-gun fire. The citation then says: “Major Shaitan Singh then ordered his men to leave him to his fate in order to save their lives.”

Col N N Bhatia, who wrote an account of the battle for Bharat Rakshak in 2012, says his body was found in February 1963 where he had been left, and was flown to Jodhpur and cremated with military honours.

Srivastav puts the company’s decorations at one Param Vir Chakra, eight Vir Chakras, four Sena Medals and one Mention in Despatches. Bhatia’s list includes the three platoon commanders, Jemadars Hari Ram, Surja and Ram Chander. A 2009 note by Ramesh Phadke of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses names five Vir Chakra recipients, so it counts fewer than the other sources. Brigadier Raina received the Maha Vir Chakra. The 13th Kumaon was given the battle honour Rezang La and the theatre honour Ladakh, and C Company was re-raised in 1963 as the Rezang La Company. The one airman to receive the Param Vir Chakra, in 1971, has his own article.

Counting the company: 112, 120, 123 or 124

The Official History says 112 all ranks were at Rezang La. Yadav’s book says 120. Brig Gurmeet Kanwal, Srivastav and Phadke say 123, and Guruswamy and Panag say 124. Panag adds that the 124 included administrative base personnel who were not in the battle. Srivastav counts 141 once the mortar, machine-gun and rocket-launcher teams are added.

The dead are counted just as variously. The memorial at Chushul carries the figure 114, which Kanwal quotes from its inscription, and the Defence Ministry’s November 2021 release speaks of Shaitan Singh and 113 soldiers. Panag revises the number to 110 killed in action, a count that includes one prisoner who died in captivity and two men of D Company killed on a patrol near Magar Hill, and says many accounts cite 114. Phadke gives 109 of 123. The Official History and Guruswamy agree on 14 survivors.

On prisoners the sources conflict. The Official History says the Chinese took none at Rezang La. Kanwal and Srivastav say six badly wounded men were captured and two of them escaped, and Panag says four prisoners came home in 1963.

What the Chinese lost, and who says so

The 1,300 figure appears in popular retellings. Penguin’s description of Yadav’s 2021 book says: “According to reports, a total of 1300 Chinese soldiers were killed trying to capture Rezang La.” It does not name the reports.

The same number appears in the Official History, but for a wider area. In its chapter on the cease-fire, the history says the formations in the Chang Chenmo and Chushul sector estimated Chinese casualties at around 1,300, and that a more conservative estimate was 500 to 600. For the whole western theatre it records a Western Command estimate of 2,500, which it calls a high figure, adding that the Chinese probably lost at least 1,000. It then says: “Till the time the Chinese bring out their official version, this would remain in the realm of speculation.”

Narrower Indian claims are lower. Kanwal writes that Shaitan Singh’s company killed over 500 Chinese, and Phadke cites an estimate of close to 500 killed and wounded. Panag gives the figure from the other side, writing that “As per Chinese accounts, the PLA suffered 21 killed and 98 wounded.” He does not name the Chinese publication.

China’s official line on the war is that it was a self-defensive counterattack. A Global Times article of 18 June 2020 quotes a Shanghai Television documentary in those terms. It gives no figures for Ladakh and does not mention Rezang La.

The bodies in the snow

A Ladakhi shepherd who visited Rezang La in the winter after the battle found the dead where they had fallen and told the Army unit at Chushul, according to Guruswamy, who dates his visit to January 1963. The description of Yadav’s book says a search party reached the battlefield on 10 February 1963. Bhatia says the first Indian party went under the International Red Cross, and Guruswamy says the bodies were recovered under Red Cross supervision.

Kanwal, Bhatia and Srivastav count 96 bodies recovered. Panag counts 97. Kanwal adds that a shepherd found two more in 1965, and that ten men of the company remained unaccounted for. He quotes an earlier book by Captain Amarindra Singh saying the Chinese had covered the bodies with blankets, “pegged down with bayonets.”

The Official History gives a different date. It says the bodies were recovered by the Indian Red Cross in November 1963, nearly a year after the battle, and that the place was littered with field dressings and blood marks. Every other account in this article puts the recovery in early 1963. The history also says the Indian government was reluctant to violate the Chinese claim line, so many bodies on battlefields inside it were collected only months later.

Bhatia says the 96 were cremated together at the former battalion headquarters site, with Raina lighting the pyre. The Tribune’s Vijay Mohan names that spot as Ahir Dham, near the memorial entrance at Chushul.

The war around it

The Official History’s Ladakh chapter says the border dispute had its origin in the surreptitious occupation of the Aksai Chin plateau by the Chinese in 1957. On the Indian forward posts it says that after the virtual breakdown of talks, “the forward policy became full of risks.” The Chinese account is different. Xinhua in 2017 quoted the journalist Neville Maxwell as saying that Indian provocations brought about “a forewarned Chinese counterattack”, a reading he drew from the Henderson Brooks-Bhagat report.

That report is the Army’s own review of its 1962 operations, commissioned by the Army chief soon after the war. Maxwell posted most of it online in 2014, and The Tribune reported that Arun Jaitley, as Defence Minister, told Parliament that “the disclosure of any information related to this report will not be in national interest.” This article makes no claim about what the report says beyond what Maxwell and the government have said in public.

On Ladakh itself, the Official History’s judgement is that Chushul was probably the only organised defensive battle the Army fought in 1962. After Rezang La fell, it says, the Chushul airfield and the Dungti track were threatened, and 114 Brigade ordered a withdrawal from Gurung Hill and Magar Hill on the night of 19 and 20 November. Its summary of the war is that it “was a military reverse, but not a rout.” On 12 December 1962 Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru told the Rajya Sabha that the Army had lost 197 killed, 291 wounded and 6,277 unaccounted for, and the history says there appears to have been an effort to downplay the magnitude of the human tragedy.

China announced a ceasefire from 00.00 hours on 22 November 1962 and a withdrawal, from 1 December, to 20 km behind its line of actual control. India fought on the same border again at Nathu La and Cho La in 1967, and in Ladakh above 16,000 feet at Kargil in 1999.

Memorials at Chushul and Rewari

The memorial on the Chushul plain was built in 1963 by all ranks of the 13th Kumaon. Its inscription names 114 martyrs, according to Kanwal, and carries two lines of Macaulay: “How can Man die Better than facing Fearful Odds.” On 18 November 2021, the 59th anniversary, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh dedicated a renovated memorial there. The work was ordered after a June 2021 visit to Leh, began in mid-July and took about three months under the Chushul Brigade. The complex has a two-storey museum, a mini-theatre showing a documentary on the battle, and a large helipad. Singh said the government would give “a befitting reply to anyone who threatens our sovereignty and integrity.” The Chief of Defence Staff, General Bipin Rawat, and Shaitan Singh’s son, Narpat Singh Bhati, attended.

The Defence Ministry’s release places the positions at over 16,500 feet in the Kailash Ranges of eastern Ladakh. Earlier in 2021, on 11 February, Singh had told Parliament that India and China had reached an agreement on disengagement on the north and south banks of Pangong Lake, with forward deployments to be ceased in a phased, coordinated and verified manner, ANI reported.

In Haryana, Phadke noted in 2009 that a memorial to the Vir Chakra winners stands in Gudiani village in Rewari district. There is also a Rezang La War Memorial in Rewari itself. In June 2025 a Rezang La yatra, a commemorative procession that began in Bawal town, reached it, and the Shaheed Sewa Dal Foundation honoured 24 families of Rezang La martyrs from the district, giving each a kalash holding soil from Ahir Dham. At the event Colonel Ranbir Singh Yadav called for an Ahir Regiment in the Indian Army, which he described as “a matter of justice and dignity for the community’s long-standing contributions to national defence.”