CHHAMB, Kashmir, Dec. 12 —This village in the Indian section of disputed Kashmir is a shattered ghost town once more, and the earth around it is scorched by battle.

Chhamb, a comfortable looking town that normally has perhaps 10,000 people, was seized by the Pakistani Army last Tuesday, after fierce fighting on the defensive lines protecting it.

The first to be pierced by the attackers was the ceasefire line, which separates the bulk of Kashmir territory, which is held by India, from the narrow strip under Pakistan's control. The second line, which was breached after bloody hand‐to‐hand combat during the night from Monday to Tuesday, was a ridgeline in one of whose recesses Chhamb sits.

The battle. Pakistan's major success in the war, has left the hillsides blackened, as intense shelling and exchanges of automatic fire with tracer bullets burned the brown, sere elephant grass that is the principal vegetation of these bleak and eroded hills.

Chhamb looks as it must have the last time Pakistan and India battled over Kashmir—in 1965, when the town fell to Pakistani forces.

Not a soul is left in the neat and solid‐looking one‐story stone or stucco houses. According to Pakistani officers, the Indians evacuated the civilians when fighting began earlier this month and gave up the town without much of a fight after the defense lines in this sector crumbled.

There is nothing left in the buildings but litter. Whether the shops and houses were emptied by those who left or those who came is unknown. Few of the houses bear scars of battle, but many show signs of hasty departure and entry by force.

Pakistani officers say that much of the damage to houses is the result of Indian shellfire after the Indians were driven out. But the many shells that were fired today from both sides whistled high over the town, crashing into the mountainsides held by the opposing armies.

After securing the town, Pakistani troops secured a bridgehead on the other side of the Munnawar Tawi River, which now presents a wide, mainly parched bed through which a few shallow streams run.

Pakistani officers say that their troops are consolidating and widening their gains across the river before pushing on farther. But in two days spent in this region an observer saw few signs of major action besides the shellings.

The Pakistani contention that the enemy left this side of the river in a rout is sustained by what they left behind. Entire volumes of records of the Sikh and Gurkha battalions that bore the brunt of the fighting were found in the large, neat camps from which they fled without destroying anything.

On the ridgeline, the defenders left communication equipment tuned to their air and ground frequencies and did not bother to destroy their codes.