The Falklands - A Very British War

[ArtistsRifles]

Was sent this tonight via the Reg't Assoc'n and thought all you folks might like to read it.

 

News Review: A very British war by Patrick Bishop

 

Patrick Bishop, who sailed 8,000 miles with the Task Force to recapture the Falklands, describes the highs and lows of the campaign against the Argentines, and explains how victory transformed the national mood and ushered in the brash new Thatcher era

 

The Falklands war looks strange now, a bizarre blip in modern British history. What is forgotten is that it seemed even more curious at the time. The scene on that Good Friday (April 9) as the cruise liner turned troopship Canberra slipped anchor and moved out into Southampton Water belonged to the age of Victoria - not to the Britain of 1982.

 

The quayside was packed with women and children, faces shiny with tears, calling farewells to the men hanging over the rails peering through the drizzle of the spring dusk for a last glimpse of their loved ones. As one of the journalists attached to the Task Force, I knew I was watching something very big. But it was not so much the human emotion that impressed me. It was the patriotic fervour that was so powerfully and unapologetically on display.

 

Displays of national sentiment were out of tune with the cynical, unconfident mood of the time. Yet the crowds on the dockside waved Union flags and banners urging the troops to ''Give the Argies some Bargy''. Over the hubbub a military band belted out the triumphant notes of Rule Britannia.

 

The story of the departure was reported in several newspapers under the Star Wars- inspired headline, ''The Empire Strikes Back''. We didn't have an empire and most people wanted to forget that we ever possessed one. We did, however, have a Navy, an Army and an Air Force. The Services, which had been kept to the periphery of public life for many years, were led blinking back into the limelight of centre stage.

 

Times had been lean for those in uniform in the years preceding the Falklands. The Navy, which was to take the lead role in the campaign, and the RAF, had faded from public sight. The Army was all too visible on the nightly news, engaged in a thankless and unglamorous low-intensity conflict with the IRA in Northern Ireland. The three-year-old Thatcher government, although it was to bathe in the glow of the subsequent victory, had been tight-fisted when it came to military spending, apart from on Cold War nuclear weaponry.

 

But now the Forces were desperately needed. Thanks to abysmal failures of intelligence and diplomacy, a little local difficulty had exploded into a crisis with the potential to do lasting damage to Britain's standing in the world and to its already battered self-esteem. More pressingly for Mrs Thatcher, a climbdown or a defeat could mean the end of her government.

 

The decision to send the Task Force to liberate a group of islands that few could identify on the map was, in retrospect, an enormous gamble - but it did not seem quite so risky at the time. The weirdness of the enterprise was obvious to everyone on the Canberra, from the red-tabbed commanders to the civilian laundry boys. Surely the frantic diplomatic activity would patch up a peaceful solution long before we got there? On the other hand, it was obvious that if it did come to war, the Task Force was horribly vulnerable. The overall commander, Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse, spelled out what was at stake. ''I hope that people realise,'' he said ''that this is the most difficult thing we have attempted since the Second World War.''

 

The mission required the Navy to carry out an extraordinary feat of power projection. Its carrier and amphibious force, supported by nuclear submarines and RAF aircraft, was to transport 3 Commando Brigade and the Army's 5 Brigade across 8,000 miles of water. The Argentines controlled the air and sea approaches to the South Atlantic, and the great, white bulk of the Canberra seemed impossible to miss. Its loss would bring a ghastly end to the expedition. The enemy showed its potential to cause mayhem from the air with the Exocet missile attack on the destroyer Sheffield on May 4. It caused so much damage that the ship had to be abandoned.

 

On the long voyage down, the mood among the Marines and Paratroopers and everyone else aboard the Canberra swung wildly with each new World Service broadcast. There was relief when it seemed that diplomacy was working but it was tinged with some regret. After all their training and preparations for a notional war, almost everyone in uniform wanted to taste the real thing. As a young journalist I was eager to take part in what would be an epic adventure. And so it was.

 

The night before our arrival in Falkland Sound, the bar of the Canberra took on the look of a morale-boosting wartime movie. Subalterns who had been born in the Sixties stood around the piano holding beer glasses singing along to The White Cliffs of Dover. On the morning of May 21, as we rode at anchor waiting to go ashore, I watched a Pucara ground attack aircraft whipping in over a hilltop. Rockets streamed brightly from under its wings. It was met by a barrage of machine gun bullets, and Blowpipe and Sea Cat missiles. My war had begun. A few hours later I was crouched on the deck of a landing craft butting through the chop of San Carlos Water surrounded by Marines from 42 Commando. The bow door went down and we struggled ashore, steeling ourselves for the punch of bullets that never came.

 

Incredibly, there were no Argentines waiting. A fatal strategic decision had been made to let the British come to them. The main threat was airborne, from the remarkably courageous pilots who braved the RAF's deadly fighter screen and screamed through blizzards of fire at mast-top height to try to destroy the invasion fleet lying in the anchorage.

 

That day they sank the frigate Ardent. The following day another frigate, Antelope. The day after that it was the destroyer Coventry and the transport ship Atlantic Conveyor. The latter sank with much-needed helicopters, which meant that troops had to be shipped forward. This resulted in the tragedy of June 8 when two logistic ships, the Sir Tristram and the Sir Galahad - full of 5 Brigade soldiers - were bombed at Fitzroy with the loss of 51 lives.

 

The toll of shipping would have been much worse had it not been for the Argentines' failure to fuse their bombs to explode at the right height.

 

But the thin logistical chain connecting the troops to the Mother Country could be snapped at any time. It was vital for the ground war to proceed as quickly as possible. The islands offered little incentive to hang around. The terrain was soggy and treeless, with granite uplands scoured by an unceasing, ear-numbing wind. The landscape was dotted with sheep-shearing sheds and wooden houses with flaky paint. The inhabitants seemed curiously uncurious. They appeared to regard the enormous effort made on their behalf as no more than their due.

 

The first land battle made no sense strategically. Goose Green was off the main line of attack to the capital, Port Stanley. Its garrison posed no real threat. Politically, though, a swift victory was highly desirable. The government needed a result. There was also a danger that a UN resolution might halt the fighting and leave the Task Force marooned in an enclave around the landing beaches. The attack was another gamble in a high-risk campaign. 2 Para, which was tasked with the operation, was refused the use of the few light tanks available and had only limited support from the artillery or the air force, which was crippled by atrocious weather. But after 14 hours of fighting, the Argentines surrendered. The victory was due to the tenacity, fitness and aggression of the Paras, armed only with rifles, machine guns and grenades, and a few mortars and missiles. Their commanding officer, Lt Col H Jones, died in the battle, winning the VC in the process.

 

The outcome cleared the way for the jump forward to Mount Kent, the dominating height over Stanley, to begin without having to wait for 5 Brigade to disembark. The soldiers travelled by helicopter and on foot, tabbing and yomping across wastelands of squelching peat and tussock grass and ankle-turning scree. On June 11 the fight for Port Stanley began. Many of the men had been living for days in the open on hillsides pelted with rain and cut by the wind. Action came almost as a deliverance.

 

The Argentines had had six weeks to prepare defences and their positions were aproned by minefields. The defenders looked out over recoilless rifles and heavy, 50-calibre machine guns to the approaches and could call in fire from 30 105mm and four 155mm artillery pieces. However, their morale was threadbare. Most of the men were conscripts, officered by upper-class professionals who cared little about their welfare and in some cases abandoned them as soon as the shooting started.

 

None the less, the soldiers fought hard at the outset, only cracking when it was clear that the British would keep on coming. All the battles were tough, fought uphill in darkness and confusion. The hardest was 3 Para's struggle to capture Mount Longdon which ended with the thrust of bayonets. It cost the lives of 23 Paratroopers with 47 wounded.

 

The night before the final assault I was at the foot of Mount Harriet, as the Scots Guards moved up to launch attacks on Tumbledown and Mount William. There was a calm stretch before the fighting started. It was clear and bitterly cold. The ground was crusted with ice. Shooting stars skidded across the inky sky. Then the darkness was wiped away by the ghostly light of an illumination shell and tracer began to stitch across the hillside.

 

I spent the night at a first aid post in a lorry container. Shells periodically landed around us, often failing to detonate in the boggy ground. There was a stream of casualties. One man had his foot blown off after his section strayed into a minefield. He sat smoking fag after fag waiting silently for the casevac helicopter while his oppo softly reassured him he was going to be all right.

 

In the morning, I struggled up the hillside to the 42 Commando positions on Harriet. Down below lay Stanley, so near it seemed you could throw a rock and hit it. As we warmed our hands around a brew someone shouted, ''There are white flags over Stanley"! It was finished. The Argies were surrendering without the street fighting that everyone was dreading. The adrenaline that had sustained us drained away. Suddenly everyone looked exhausted, frail and cold.

 

We hurried down the hill and across the moor that led into the capital. There were no crowds to greet us along the street lined with clapboard and corrugated metal houses that led to the centre of town, just little groups of flat-faced Argentine conscripts, country boys who had never heard of the Malvinas before they were sent there. They shook our hands and smiled nervously, sharing with us the furtive relief of survivors.

 

Looking back, it is possible to see the Falklands war as a hinge in our history. Attempts were made during and after the conflict to invest it with some large strategic significance but they were mostly bogus. One claim was that robust action against the Argentine junta would make other repressive regimes around the world think twice before setting off on some brutal adventure. The dictators of the day appear not to have noticed.

 

Another was that it would persuade the Soviet Union of the unity and resolve of its Cold War opponents. But America's support for us was fickle and the first, thawing rays of glasnost and perestroika were already in the air. The main importance of the Falklands war was that it changed the way we felt about ourselves. Before it, Britain was haunted by self-doubt. Prevailing conventional opinion was anti-militarist and anti-tradition. Failure seemed to be our lot. And then, out of nowhere, this brilliant feat of arms.

 

The homecoming was very different to the departure. Everyone was out to see the rust-streaked hull of the Canberra sliding triumphantly into Southampton Water, escorted by a huge flotilla of yachts and motorboats. The Services were back in the nation's bosom and have stayed there ever since. The victory marked the real beginning of the Thatcher era and the emergence of a different Britain, vulgar and materialistic perhaps, but also confident and patriotic.

 

The experience also marked a change in my life. I went on to cover many wars, some involving the British Army. None of them were like this one. In the Falklands there were no civilian casualties and both sides fought cleanly. The story of what we were doing there was told with remarkably little official lying. And after 25 years I feel no need to change the conclusion that John Witherow and I reached in a book we wrote at the time: ''No war is to be wished for, but if they have to be fought, this was a better one than most.''

 

[Lancastrian]

"RAF's deadly fighter screen"??

It seems the author has never heard of the Fleet Air Arm.

[Paul Drake]

Ref: "In the Falklands there were no civilian casualties".

Whoever wrote this needs to study history.

[diver99]

Mmmmm. journalists! to put it mildly, aka known as golgafrinchams. I would slot many journalists as they do tend to forget the story and concentrate on their own career soundbites.