“My parents had heard that I died in the Nakol war”

I was an SSC candidate in 1971. In the face of Pakistan's brutality and Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's declaration of independence in the then-West Pakistan, I decided to join the war for independence.

But it was tough for me to get my parents' permission to join the war. My elder brother Sardar Amzad Hossain somehow managed to convince our parents.

I planned to go to India for training but when freedom fighters late Amzad Hossain and Abdul Ajij Joarder's advanced team got caught at the border, I was instead trained at Magura's Sreepur camp.

If we only depended on the freedom fighters trained in India, it would take us around 12 years to become independent. Tens of thousands of members of the army, police and Ansar personnel received training in Bangladesh and joined the war.

There was a training camp in Khamarbari village where around 9,000 freedom fighters received training and fought the war of independence under the command of local commander Akbar Hossain.

Akbar was a valiant freedom fighter who has not been given enough credit for his courage in independent Bangladesh.

I participated in the Nakol war in Sreepur. At around 8 pm, we received the news of a Pakistani military team approaching Nakol from Wapdamo. I was having my dinner at the time. But as the call for duty for motherland came in, I said to myself that I will fight first.

At Nakol, we planted dynamites in the roads where the Pak military would be passing through and was waiting for a blitzkrieg. The Pak army, however, crossed the dynamites safely as they understood its presence. Then, the other freedom fighters and I launched an attack. As the firing continued, another civilian car approached the road and the Pak military personnel took possession of that car and fled the scene.

At the hour of the firing, I was behind a palm tree where I was almost shot. The bullet grazed my right ear by an inch.

When the war was over, I was the happiest soul on earth, but this happiness couldn't cure me of insomnia caused by the ferocity of the months-long war. I used to be in a trance as if a bullet would pierce me any moment.

My parents, on the other hand, heard that I died in the Nakol war. When I returned home as a valiant and triumphant hero, it was as if I was born again.