This column will not be complete without an anecdote. At the end of the Kargil War, fighting units had left behind 25 – 30 tons of surplus ammunition. As per rules, since the ammunition was no longer in sealed boxes, it was to be back-loaded to Ammunition Depots for destruction. I intervened to stop the back-loading and we put the ammunition to good use on the LOC. It was reported to me that in the ammunition dump, there were 20 Flame Throwers which were imported post haste for the Kargil War. Most readers would have seen the classic flame thrower in war movies, on the back of German soldier. It consisted of inflammable liquid and gas under pressure, in a container with a tube and nozzle. It could shoot a tongue of flame upto a distance of 30 to 40 feet. The flame thrower was one of the most dreaded weapons of World War II. However, what we had was a one-time use incendiary rocket of Russian origin, which is fired from a discardable tube and has a range of 1000 meters. I directed that these be put to use on the LOC. To my chagrin, I found that none of the units had used this weapon. The reason was not hard to find out. During the war, one of the units had an accident due to mishandling the flame thrower resulting in three casualties. This gave birth to a myth of it being a dangerous and unreliable weapon. Keen to break this unsoldierly belief, I directed one of the units to test it. After a few days the Commanding Officer (CO) sheepishly requested that his unit be taken off the task as there was no operating manual for the weapon and given the weapons’ dubious reputation, he did not want to take a risk, especially since the unit had suffered heavy casualties during the war. I refrained from using the prerogative of command to enforce the order and tasked another unit for the same task. After two days the second CO also came up with the same excuse. This time I was firm and told him that if he did not test the weapon, then I personally would test it.