16,000 feet up. Minus 10 degrees Celsius. A vertical cliff in the dark.
A young officer from Nagaland looks down at his boots…
and kicks them off.
Barefoot.
On ice.
Climbing toward enemy machine guns.
This actually happened.
His name was Captain Neikezhakuo Kenguruse.
Born in a small village in Kohima district. Commissioned into 2 Rajputana Rifles.
Tomorrow, June 28, Nagaland marks the day he didn't come home.
It's been 27 years.
The story still hits like it happened last week.
Kargil was burning.
Pakistani intruders had locked down the icy heights. Indian soldiers were climbing up at enemies firing down.
Kenguruse was handed one of the worst assignments of the war — a near-vertical cliff face known as Black Rock.
His canvas shoes couldn't grip the ice.
So he took them off.
Tied a rope around his waist.
And climbed.
👉 Barefoot.
👉 In sub-zero cold.
👉 Carrying a rocket launcher.
He reached the ledge.
He took out the enemy bunker.
Then he charged the next position with a commando knife when his ammunition ran out.
He was 24 years old.
He did not make it back.
For that night, India gave him the Mahavir Chakra — the country's second-highest wartime gallantry award. Posthumous.
The defence ministry's message this week wasn't really about medals.
It was about values.
A boy from a tiny Naga village. Fighting in the farthest corner of Kashmir. Dying so strangers thousands of miles away could sleep peacefully.
That's the whole point.
Not every kid will wear the uniform.
But every kid can carry the character.
They'll lay wreaths in Kohima tomorrow.
The Army. The administration. Villagers who still remember the quiet boy from Nerhema.
And somewhere in a textbook, a child will read about an officer who climbed a frozen cliff with bare feet because the mission mattered more than his pain.
That's not just history.
That's the kind of story a country tells itself when it needs to remember who it is.
Captain Kenguruse, MVC. Still standing tall, 27 years on.
That's all for now!
