'MORRIS' EMBODIED THE SOLDIERING ETHIC...

Exceptional officers not only have steel in them, but they are humane even when uncompromising and professional in their official conduct. This is the story of one such officer.

- BY Maj Gen Raj Mehta

Col Madhavan 'Morris' Ravindran was my first military mentor, an officer who was the epitome of the epigram: 'an officer and a gentleman'. He excelled in everything he did in uniform. However, unknown to us young officers who sought to learn uncompromising professional conduct from exemplars, he carried deep wounds in life that he never revealed, and we dared not ask. This recall is an ode to his peerless mentoring skills..

The ugly crack of the 9mm Browning semiautomatic service pistol shot shattered the morning calm, taking the orderly standing guard near Col Ravindran's immaculate Standard Herald car; its well-tuned engine idling silently that cold December morning, by shock and apprehension. He rushed inside the officers' well-appointed Officers Mess suite of rooms with their refined Cavalry finish. It was all over. Morris had inexplicably moved on at his finest hour, when he was, that day, to take over one of our finest Armoured Brigades as a Brigadier. Instead, he had left us, his ICS father and Naval brother, shattered and broken.

This, however, was not how my mentoring under him had started...For many of us across our Cavalry uniforms of famous Regiments, he was THE German General Staff at its best...that paragon of military values which remains incomparable for soldiers to date despite its Patton's, Bradleys, MacArthurs, Slims and Giaps. That the equally mercilessly professional Col Hanut Singh, MVC, was his batchmate and close friend was a wondrous treasure we could discover later...We famous Regiments, were all part of 16 Independent Armoured Brigade and would be tested in war, but that was three years away...