The Light Horse Bar at Saturday Club. Picture by Rashbehari Das

If one were to step inside the bar at Calcutta?s Saturday Club, he or she would see a row of medals in glass cases displayed on the wall at the far end. Right on top is a single medal that elicits curiosity because this happens to be the Victoria Cross. It would be interesting to know the story of how this highest gallantry award of the Commonwealth landed here.

The bar is called the Light Horse Bar, so named after an irregular cavalry unit, the Calcutta Light Horse (CLH). This unit was originally raised by Robert Clive, circa 1760, solely as a mounted ?watch and ward? outfit whose principal task was the security of British residents in and around Calcutta of yore. The CLH not only addressed this task meritoriously but also contributed substantially to sports and games in close association with the Calcutta Cricket and Football Club that was born circa 1792.

Socially, too, the CLH was very much in the forefront, becoming one of the founder institutions of Saturday Club. Despite being an auxiliary army unit whose members were mainly British businessmen, the CLH devoted a great deal of attention to basic military training and became something of a legend in local small arms shooting competitions.

In the War heydays of the 1940s, the Allies not only suffered huge losses in shipping in the Atlantic Ocean due to the menace from German U-boats, but also began to note with consternation similar mounting losses in the Indian Ocean. After much exploration, Allied Intelligence zeroed in on the cause for shipping losses in Asian waters. A well-crafted German spy network operating from Goa managed to procure Allied shipping details, especially related to the Indian Ocean, and passed this information on to the German navy.

Added to this was the uncomfortable fact that three German warships led by the flagship Ehrenfels were in harbour at Goa and constituted the hub of the spy set-up. Portugal maintained friendly relations with the Axis powers and did not object to Goa being used as a naval base by their fleet. The Allied High Command in Delhi realised that unless this spy network was eliminated, their shipping losses in this theatre would become crippling.

Meanwhile, the commanding officer of the CLH of that time Colonel WG Grice decided to do something about it. He organised a number of brainstorming sessions with his officers ? reportedly many such interactions at Saturday Club ? till a tentative operational plan was formulated. Eighteen CLH officers were selected for this mission. Only a handful of the GHQ brass was aware of this top-secret assignment of the redoubtable CLH.

The plan was carried out in two parts. In the first part, two CLH commando types went off to Goa by train from Calcutta, struck up a friendship with the spy network?s leader and his wife, abducted them at gunpoint, took them to Belgaum, had them jailed there, and then calmly returned to Goa. The second part saw the rest of the mission bravehearts, 16 in number and calling themselves the Strike Team, commandeer a tramp steamer named Phoebe and set off from Diamond Harbour through the Bay of Bengal for Goa.

This apology of a sea-going vessel took considerable time and effort initially to be mechanically sound but ultimately chugged off, boasting a maximum speed of eight knots per hour! Amazingly, the Phoebe struggled on to reach the outskirts of Goa in the Arabian Sea without sinking and got ready for action soon thereafter. Col. Grice used to speculate later over a drink that he had expected to reach Davy Jones? Locker instead of Goa!

(For the rest of the Light Horse Bar story, read Club Sandwich by Jayanta Kumar Dutt next Sunday)