Yes, they say that troops were already there. I want to give you my account of what actually happened. (At the time of Partition) a British Officer, Lieutenant General Sir Dudley Russell had a skeleton headquarters of territorial officers. I was on his headquarters with the rank of major. I was the only Indian officer at the HQ.

Our task was to restore law and order in Punjab and Delhi. It was known as East Punjab Command. We had to provide protection to millions of refugees moving from India to Pakistan and receive millions coming on the other side. The HQ was established on a rail.

(The last British Viceroy Lord Louis) Mountbatten had given us this special train and we were fully self-contained. Living accommodation with attached toilets, operations rooms for officers, mess, (facilities) for clerical staff, signal staff, security (personnel), even the vehicles were mounted on the train; we were thus moving on this command train in Delhi and Punjab.

On October 26, our train had come to the Delhi railway station yard. As soon as we reached in the afternoon, the army commander, Lieutenant General Russel was sent for by the prime minister and given the task of going to Kashmir the next day.

We were told at around 5-6 pm. We were all taken aback as we had to send troops the next day, early in the morning. I was given the task to write first an operation order to the units selected to go there (the Sikh I was the first) and to organise the airlift and logistics.

The troops going to Kashmir had to be given warm clothing and ammunition to go to war. They were (EM>presently) only deployed on internal security duty. We worked around the clock and by 6 am the next morning (October 27), the first troops were airborne from Delhi to Srinagar.