Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Battleground podcast. I'm Saul David and today Patrick Bishop and I will be talking about the Great Yomp across East Falkland, the Battle for Mount Kent and the arrival of Five Brigade. This latter event would lead in turn to the fatal decision to launch a two-pronged attack on Port Stanley that would end in tragedy at Fitzroy Bluff Cove and, some would argue, delay the end of the war.
5th Brigade had originally been composed of three battalions, 2 and 3 Para, and the 1st, 7th Gurkha Rifles, but after 2 and 3 Para were transferred to 3 Commando Brigade at the start of the conflict, two replacement battalions were found.
the 1st Welsh Guards and the 2nd Scots Guards. Both joined the 3,000-strong brigade from tours of ceremonial duties, during which their infantry training was obviously less intensive than it would have been for a marine or parachute battalion.
The warning signs were there during a full-scale brigade exercise which took place at Selly Bridge in the Brecon Beacons in late April and early May, which was definitely not a success. It went so badly that there was even a suggestion that the brigade commander, who was a stylish 47-year-old light infantryman called Tony Wilson...
might be replaced by his ultimate boss, the Field Marshal Sir Edwin Bramall, who was the army chief of the general staff, i.e. the head of the army. But Bramall, after some misgivings, decided to give Wilson the benefit of the doubt and he remained in command. Now, 5th Brigade left the UK on the 12th of May, again on a luxury cruise liner, this time the QE2, and
And they were joined at Ascension Island by Major General Jeremy Moore and his 80 strong staff. Now, Moore was going to take over from Julian Thompson as ground commander once they reach the islands. The assumption by Thompson and most of those already in the Falklands was that 5th Brigade would act as a reinforcement rather than a separate combat formation.
They were trained to fight from armoured personnel carriers. They were a kind of NATO Cold War type force. And they were not really going to be as mentally and physically ready for this rather peculiar sort of war that they were now going to have to fight in the harsh terrain of.
of the Falklands, unlike, of course, the Marines and the Paras who were trained exactly for that. Yet, nonetheless, members of Fire Brigade clearly thought they were going to fight. We hear this from Philip Dimmock, who was then a junior captain commanding the 50-strong Welsh Guards Mortar Platoon, and this is what he told us about their thoughts on the journey south.
It was comfortable. We did, however, do training throughout the daytime. Serious training, running around where possible, all the enclosed training that we could do. Obviously, no field training. That's a bit of an obvious one. Having said that, it was a liner, cruise liner, and we did live very comfortably in the mess and in the accommodation. I remember
remember I shared a room with another chap, but it was very comfortable. Was there a sense among you and the other occupants of the QE2, the Welsh Guards, the Gurkhas and the Scots Guards, that you'd better get out there relatively quickly, otherwise you might miss out on the whole thing? I mean, was there a kind of sense that you were coming late to the party? I know the actual fighting war hadn't started at that point. No, we were not preparing to be the garrison force at the end of the times.
Our minds were set on we were going to be involved. Now that came down from obviously above, within the military sphere, within the QE2, the commanders were making it quite clear we had to do the training and be prepared to carry out the role of an attacking force. Well, that was Philip Dimmock. And it's interesting, Patrick, I think that he and other members of 5th Brigade
clearly believed, having been briefed by their superiors, as he mentions, that they were destined to fight and not simply act as a reserve or garrison force, as has long been suggested by commentators of the conflict. But he does say that that was coming from above on the QE2. So I think...
we can deduce from that that it's coming from his brigade commander Tony Wilson and indeed from Jeremy Moore now this is something we'll come on to later but the feeling is that this new role for the 4-5 brigade was actually dreamt up while they're on board rather than at Northwood or as envisaged in Jeremy Thompson's plans on the island it's interesting also that he makes it very clear that they trained as hard as the circumstances allowed them to and this is obviously a
controversial issue that again will surface later.
We know that despite the fact that Philip Dimmock says that the journey was comfortable, the Gurkhas didn't enjoy it. There were stories that they were very worried about the ship getting sunk and doing lifeboat drills wearing blindfolds so they'd be able to find their way to the ships from their cabins in the darkness. The fact that they were included in the force was controversial from the start. It seems to have been rather a peculiar decision. The Argentinians are claiming that this is a sort of colonial war and
an attempt by a kind of ageing empire well past its sell date to try and reclaim old colonial possessions, i.e. the Falkland Islands, which don't rightly belong to them. And here they are sending what's essentially a colonial mercenary force to aid in that ambition. But people did point out this at the time and say it doesn't look very good. But nonetheless, just like the decision to send five brigade and Tony Wilson, it went ahead. We'll talk a little about that later.
later on. Yes, it's interesting, Patrick, that you picked up from Philip Dimmock's account that the instructions were coming down on the voyage. I think that's key, really, isn't it? Because what we're getting a sense of is that Wilson was very keen to, you know, to get into the action. He was a flamboyant character and
Was he thinking, this is my one opportunity in war to make my mark? He wouldn't be alone in thinking that. I mean, after the event, it doesn't look great when we unfold exactly what's going to happen next. But I think it's fair to say that any mid-ranking, in fact, lower than that, all the way through to senior officers do want to make their mark. And it's completely understandable that both he
and the guardsmen and the Gurkhas want to fight when they get down there. They want to be in at the kill and claim some of the glory if they can get it. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. Again, it's something that civilians maybe don't see at first sight. But yeah, soldiers want to fight. And one of the saddest things you can do if you're a career army officer is never actually fire your weapon in anger and command men in battle. And if you're a soldier, you actually want to prove yourself. They always say it over and over again.
I wanted to see whether all that training, all that preparation actually stood up to battle conditions. So it's a real concern. So I think professional soldiers wouldn't blame someone for trying to get in to the actual fighting end of an operation.
It always comes out to whether it works out well or not. So if it doesn't work out well, you're going to be criticised. If it does, no one's going to mention it. So I think that was kind of the situation we are in here. Just on the question of the change of plan, many people I've spoken to about how this came about...
There's a divided opinion, but one opinion expressed by the SAS commander down south, Mike Rose, was that between Ascension Island and arrival in the Falklands, there were no satellite comms between QE2. They broke down, basically. There were no satellite communications between the QE2 and either Northwood or the Falklands. His view is that it was then that Wilson...
essentially bent Jeremy Moore's ear and said, look, you know, we're not going to just sit back in the rear and act as a garrison force while the Marines and the Paras get all the glory. So we need to be part of this. And Moore, who was actually just approaching retirement and was, again, rather a strange choice for commander, said,
thought in the army service politics, okay, well, I'm a Royal Marine. He was a Royal Marine General. We can't be seen to be completely dominating the show, so let's give the army a bit of the action. That's how it was explained to me by various people.
Again, it seems strange, but this is service culture. These kind of things happen. Yeah, and the consequence of that, of course, is, as we will discover, a very capable unit for fighting in the Falklands 40 Commando are actually left behind at Ajax Bay as effectively covering the logistical movement of supplies when they could have been fighting.
But let's move back to the sequence of events. Major General Jeremy Moore, as you mentioned, and the advance elements of 5th Brigade reached San Carlos water in East Falkland, having earlier transferred from the QE2 to HMS Antrim on the 30th of May. Now, by that time, Julian Thompson had already begun the advance of 3 Commando Brigade across the island by sending 45 Commando and 3 Para to march towards Teal Inlet.
He had also identified Mount Kent as the key to the attack on Argentine forces in the chain of hills defending Port Stanley. The dominant feature in East Portland is Mount Kent. It's the highest mountain in the islands. And you've got to remember, these are not alpine mountains or even Norwegian mountains. They're actually great big moorland hills, but high enough.
And once you're on Mount Kent, you look down what I described as a staircase of hills leading you down to Stanley. So it's very important. And we spent a lot of time early on getting recce forward onto Mount Kent. And night after night, you had to do it at night, no point doing it in daylight because you'd advertise your presence to the enemy.
And flying forward, night after night, there were blizzards, snow blizzards, helicopters flew, taking chaps halfway there, three quarters of the way there, almost there, never got there. The effort was to get guys onto Mount Kent, to make certain we had a foot on the ground before we flew forward anywhere else. That was the main purpose of what we were doing early on.
And of course our plan was to fly everyone forward using Chinooks, which were coming south in Atlantic Convair. There were four Chinooks in Atlantic Convair plus a lot of other helicopters, something like 12 other helicopters. And of course she was sunk by an exocet. And I was sitting in my CP putting the finishing touches to my plan to fly everyone forward when a guy stuck his head around the corner and said Atlantic Convair has been sunk. So he was tearing it up and started all over again today.
In fact, of course, one Chinook had survived because it was away on a task. But of course, without any spares or manuals, so when all the red lights came on in the cockpit saying, don't fly me anymore, the chaps had to make up their minds, were they going to carry on and do it? Well, they did. To them, best, you know, good, terrific to them. Well done. That was Julian Thompson.
Now, the march across the island was very, very tough. Hugh Pike was commanding three para, and this is what he told us about it. It's a big country. I mean, I remember you and the Southern Battalion, again, on that first briefing in Plymouth, you and Southern Battalion were holding up the Falkland Island flag and saying,
By the way, these might look like dots on the map of the world, but it's actually big country. And it is big country. And it's very likely the Western Isles or the Orkness or Shetlands. You know, you get these rock runs, which can be awkward obstacles.
and very, very soft, boggy terrain. And you're carrying heavy loads, a lot of ammunition. Generally speaking, the men coped pretty well with it. To us, it did reflect not so much training we'd done on the Western Isles, but certainly a lot of training we'd done in places like Brecon and the Black Mountains and Cheney Bridge and places like that.
We felt very much at home, much more at home than our enemy, to whom the terrain was quite unfamiliar with most of the terrain in Argentina. I think Hugh Pike actually makes quite light of it. So talking to some of the participants, they point out that even though both the paras and the marines have this sort of marching ethos, they've got this masochistic desire to prove how far they can go, carrying quite big loads. To qualify as a marine, you've got to do a 30-mile march within a sort of limited range.
period of time, but you're not actually laden down with your own body weight in kit and ammunition, etc. And that's what they had to do on this occasion. So it really was an epic march, or as the Marines would say, an epic yomp. And as the Paras would say,
an epic tab. Now, do you know anything about the derivation of these terms? They went into the English language. You're too young to remember, Saul, but immediately after, people would start back in London and start saying, I'm just going to yomp, you know, go for a yomp on the convo, they would say. Now, I've never got to the bottom of why yomp. It's very onomatopoeic. It sounds great. Tab, I'm not sure
I heard as Tactical Advance 2, and then I can never remember, is it Base or Tactical? Have you heard that one? Battle? Oh, that's it. That's it. Yeah, Tactical Advance. Does that sound plausible to you? I don't know. I mean, I'm guessing on that one, but I suspect it's right. Tactical Advance to Battle. Yeah, I think so. What about you, Omp? Where do you think that comes from?
Well, I don't know. I think it's just on a matter of pick. There are some kind of marine words that come from the time they've spent in the Arctic or in Norway and in Scandinavia, training for their Arctic and mountain warfare stuff. Saying out in the ulu, which means out in the middle of nowhere. And that apparently is a corruption of a Norwegian word.
Well, we get an interesting perspective, I think, Patrick, about the difficulty of that march from Mark Hankin of 42 Commando, who we've heard from before. He didn't do the march, but he had done a lot of timed marches. He knew how difficult they were and he gives us a sense of perspective. Now, Marines are no strangers to yomping long distances and carrying heavy equipment. Every Royal Marine, as part of the final commando test, has got to complete a timed 30-miler to win the Green Beret.
However, it's not normally done with this amount of kit that the guys were carrying. I don't think any of us had ever carried so much weight in any previous exercise we'd ever done. We never trained with the actual weight of live ammunition that we were required to carry down south. Certainly, 82 over 100 pounds of kit wasn't uncommon per man.
So with this weight of kit and the conditions underfoot and the atrocious weather and the distance they had to cover, it was a really epic effort by 4-5 commando and 3-power. It must have been a real test of grit and determination to not only complete it, but then to fight battles once they had arrived at their intended locations. That was Mark Hankin, who we'll be hearing from a bit later on.
Now, while all this was going on, the Great Yomping and the Tabbing, the vital battle for Mount Kent was underway, as Julian Thompson explains. At the same time as the Goose Green operation started, three para and four fire commanders started marching east on foot to go via Teal Inlet, which is in Salvador water, a big bit of water in the middle down there, and eventually on to the Mount Kent area.
And the reason we went via Thiel was we could take supplies round there by LSL and land things like artillery ammunition, fuel, and all sort of heavy things by sea. And so it was a very convenient intermediate place to hold on our way to Mount Kent.
That had all started, so they were actually moving while the battle was going on down the other end of the island. When it was over, I went forward, by which time they'd all got to either Teelim, they were short of it. Good effort indeed, carrying a lot of kit. It was very unpleasant ground. And they continued marching on, and then what I then did was fly 4-2 Commando forward by helicopter onto Mount Kent.
to get ahead of them. And by this stage, thank goodness, Dee's squadron were there.
because as the helicopters carrying Fortou Commando flew in, starting to land, Argentine special forces had arrived and were starting to engage them. Well, D Squadron left, dealt with them and kept them out of the way, which enabled Fortou Commando to get onto the top of Mount Kent and hold the high ground. And then we flew guns in and we were really in business then to start the descent of the staircase down to Fortou.
Stanley, but it took some time because we're bearing in mind that you have to fly ammunition and guns forward by helicopter over a distance, a turnaround distance, something like 120 miles, refueling every time. And it took something like two days to fly one battery and its ammunition there. We were going to fly forward four batteries.
And we're not going to start this battle until I had enough gun ammunition in place to support them. This all took time. Well, that was Julian Thompson. And we get from him a pretty clear idea of what the plan is now. His forward battalions, 3 Para and 45 Commando, are marching across the island. And he is effectively preparing the battle. He wants to get on with the war. He wants to end it as quickly as possible.
Now, the specifics are that the advanced elements of 42 Commando, K and L companies, were helicoptered into Mount Kent at dusk on the 31st of May 1982. When they arrived, a firefight was already taking place between SAS and Argentinian forces. K Company of 42 Commando was tasked with carrying out a night attack to capture the summit of Mount Kent.
When they reached the summit, they discovered to their immense relief that the Argentinians had withdrawn. We hear now from Mark Hankin, the 17-year-old GPMG gunner from 42 Commando. We piled into the Seaking's, all lights off. It was a night flight. It was contour flying close to the ground at fast speed. The helicopter was swaying left to right. We were getting buffeted by winds.
The pilots were using night vision goggles to fly and we just seemed to be going at breakneck speed and obviously there was a thump of the rotors above us and the noise of the engine and the wind flying past us and it was proper adrenaline pumping because we didn't know what we were going to land at. We didn't know whether we were going to have a hot LZ and we'd be fighting for our lives or whether there was anybody there. Anyway, after about half an hour, the helicopter sort of flared up and then dropped us on the side of the feature.
And the helicopters took off. Obviously, the noise eventually disappeared into the distance. I just remember it being quite eerie that, you know, here I was 8,000 miles from home, 17 years old, 50 miles away or more from the nearest support. We dropped into our all-round positions facing out and I just thought, here we are in the dark on the side of this mountain. And it just seemed, you know...
It was just a surreal moment. Anyway, we were met by a Special Forces patrol and we moved off onto Mount Kent and then eventually on Mount Challenger before first light. And I remember getting into position, hiding amongst the rocks on Challenger. And I remember seeing in the distance Argentinian helicopters flying. They seemed to be around Two Sisters and out towards Port Stanley.
At the time, we only had our fighting order on, so we'd carried loads of ammunition up there. But we did have our sleeping bags with us, but no bergens, no spare clothing. And I think we carried either one, maybe two 24-hour ration packs and a water bottle. And we'd be on this mountain for the next 11 days and very long nights. We were shivering and starving, waiting for these other units to catch up.
Eventually we'd end up attacking Mount Harriet on the 11th of June. During this 11 days on Mount Challenger, we were hiding amongst the rocks. We had no cover from the elements, should I say. And by now my feet were in a really bad way. I had trench foot. My feet hadn't been dry since we landed at San Carlos.
and they wouldn't actually get dry again until I was back on camera after the war. I was trying everything, I was rotating my socks, my spare pair was under my armpits during the day or at night, trying to dry them out with my body heat. Nothing seemed to work. The weather was atrocious. One minute it'd be gales, then it'd be frost, then it'd be pouring with horizontal rain, hailstones, you name it. It just seemed to be changing all the time, but it was always horrible.
Our 24-hour ration packs, we were trying to make them last two or three days. We'd run out of water and we were using the water out of muddy puddles. We were just loading the water bottles up with Steri tablets and then boiling the water. But obviously we could only cook during the day because obviously we didn't want our cookers giving away our position in the dark at night.
At this time we started to receive tasks so after we'd been there three or four days, I think it was the 3rd of June, four troops, my troop, were tasked with a fighting patrol and basically some of the lads on it had described it as a suicide mission. We knew the enemy were on Mount Harriet. They had .5 Browning heavy machine gun positions there and they also obviously had weeks and weeks to prepare the defensive positions.
The unit had an OP, I think on Challenger, looking towards Harriot and obviously what we wanted to do in preparation for the attack was find out exactly where these heavy machine gun positions were. So the plan was for 4 Troop to go out last light, wait for it to go dark and then approach Mount Harriot
and basically bumped the enemy. At some point, we would just keep walking towards Mount Harriet until they actually saw us, at which point, obviously, we would expect them to start shooting at us, thereby giving away the position of their heavy machine guns. And at that point, it would be down to us to give them everything we were carrying and then turn tail and scarper back to Mount Challenger, hopefully with the OP managing to plot where all these heavy machine guns positions were.
I just remember this was probably the longest night of our young lives because we set off in daylight and we did get a bit of sporadic artillery shells, but we never picked up any casualties and we waited for it to go dark and at which point the fog came rolling in. I remember it was like a really crisp cold night
night you know you could hardly see but a few meters in front of you so we ended up just an extended line one behind the other walking and it just seemed to go on for hours and hours and hours and of course we know what was going to happen when we bumped into the enemy so of course the adrenaline was picking up and it just seemed to go on and on for ages and
And eventually, as we're creeping towards the feature, we had this loud explosion. And the next thing, one of the lads is screaming in pain. Turns out that one of the lads in the troupe, Mark Curtis, we used to call him Tony Curtis, he trudged on an anti-personnel mine, had a really serious injury to his leg. He'd end up losing his leg from just below the knee.
As that explosion went off, we just hit the deck. We're now in a minefield. We don't know if our next step or our next movement is going to be another mine. And all we can hear is Argentinians shouting to each other.
So it's the middle of the night. Have we disturbed him in the trenches? They're unsure what's going on. They've just heard the explosion. So although Tony was obviously in a lot of pain, I think some of the guys ended up having to sort of try and muzzle him and quieten him down because we didn't want him to give away our position. And some absolute heroic action from his section corporal, Corporal Cuthill, and the rest of the lads,
got some immediate first aid to Tony and they carried him out. At this point we started to receive incoming mortar and artillery fire. I guess they were just spraying the area hoping to catch us. Being a GPMG gunner, me and my number two Chris Burns along with some of the other gun teams, we were left behind to sort of act as a rear guard while the rest of the troop carried Tony out of the position.
It was just the next sort of 10 hours or more it took us to get Tony back to Mount Challenger. It was just a long, long night trying to carry him across rock runs. We didn't have a stretcher. In fact, in 1982, as far as I'm aware, the British military had no field stretcher, which sounds a bit bizarre when you look at it.
But we were improvising, trying to make stretches out of ponchos and combat jackets. And it was just a real struggle over the difficult terrain to get Tony and all his kit back to safety. Because we obviously, we couldn't call in helicopters. It was too foggy to start with, but they just got blown out of the sky. We were that close to the enemy.
Well, that gives us a real feel for the dreadful conditions up there. I arrived with 4-2 Commando on a Seaking, and I remember it was incredibly bleak. It was the middle of the night. The wind was howling. It was a pretty surreal place to be. I remember seeing these characters looming out of the darkness towards me. It was an SAS patrol, and even under the sort of grime and the camouflage cream and all the rest of it, I recognised this...
It looked strangely familiar. And he said to me, hello, is that Patrick? And I said, yeah. And he said, it's me. I forgot his name then. He said, don't you remember, we were at dinner about six weeks ago. And it all came back to me. I'd been at this sort of sloney dinner party in London. And there was this guy there from, allegedly, from the Royal Tank Regiment. And in fact, he was in the SAS. Of course, he couldn't say that.
So he knew I was a journalist, but he had no expectation whatsoever of seeing me on top of Mount Kent 8,000 miles away. So weird things like that happened. So very dramatic stuff, but it was drama all the way. Two hours after the initial landing by Fortu Commando, the one surviving British Chinook was tasked with bringing up three 105mm guns in
and 300 rounds of ammunition to plonk on top of Mount Kent in order to support the troops up there to be able to fire down onto Port Stanley and basically keep the enemy's heads down. Now, on its flight back, well, while it was there, it had some pretty hairy moments, but on the flight back,
They were hit by a snowstorm and this near catastrophic event ensued, which the co-pilot Andy Lawless will tell us about now.
We were going in there to provide them with fire support and also we were told there was some casualties were taking off as well. So we flew in there, low level, on goggles, and then as we come into the hover, the supposed secure landing site, it was, if anybody's been to the Falklands, it's Stone River, so massive stones, which we spent, we must have spent about 10 minutes just manoeuvring the guns because you can't just put...
put guns down and let the guys move them. So we were craning them, almost like a mobile crane. We would go in, we had some of the guns underslung with the ground teams, and they would point the guns in the direction they wanted them. During that time, we actually could see incoming fire. And I can remember at one point, one of the troops running under the desk, firing his machine gun. And I'm thinking, secure landing site? I don't really think so. However...
We did spend about 10 to 15 minutes making sure the guns were in the correct position and picking a good spot to land on to get rid of our troops and what have you. We did all that and then we were going back to do another serial. So we came off Mount Kent, then back into the, it was a sort of routing so we wouldn't be flying back into our own troops, a one-way system basically.
And away we went. As we went away, I picked up in our RWR some basic indications that there was a search radar looking at us. I was discussing that with Dick. He was flying. What I concluded was there was a Roland in the area.
And so if we pulled up, then the next thing after the search radar would be the fire radar. So we were talking about that. As we were talking about that, we went into a massive South Atlantic storm. When I say storm, snowshoer, these things used to appear from nowhere. And the goggles completely went out. Dick was flying, me navigating and operating the ECM. We just lost all references. And very quickly think, well, if we pull up,
you know, we'll be pulling up straight into the parameters for, say, a Roland, you know, a surface-to-air missile taking you out. We couldn't turn around because that was straight back into the high ground off Mount Kent. And as we were trying to form a hit our flag, bang, massive bang. And that was when we now know we hit water. But because Dick was slowing down and as we were slowing down, we were descending. Remember, we were extremely low level.
I thought we had been hit with something, a missile or something like that. And I remember thinking that. We were down, Dick was shouting at me. You know, we both were on the controls, but they were locked. The controls were locked because when the aircraft hit the water, luckily the Chinook, well, number one luck is we hit water. If we'd hit ground, we wouldn't be here. You know, that would have been the end. So we hit water, but the Chinook's designed to operate off water. So it's, you know, you can actually...
land in water, taxiing water. So it landed, if you think the way they shook it, it's just like a boat, you know, the way it is. So bang, we hit water. Very quickly, the aircraft decelerated, but there was a bow wave which came over the front of the aircraft. I can remember that very clearly.
So water spilled over the cockpit. That continued back down through the engines, which actually wound down the engines. So when you get a dramatic reduction in rotor speed, the hydraulic pumps, everything, they all drop off.
so there was no control of the aircraft whatsoever and the aircraft slowed down by then although this is a few seconds I then realised it was an uncontrolled ditching if you want I pulled my door the crewman pulled his door in the back you always give yourself exits for all the crew out your door out the back door back onto the controls and what have you and then the engines wound up again as the aircraft slowed down
So the water is not flowing, if you like, cascading over the aircraft. And because the controls were where they were, it was still saying we require this amount of power. We didn't fly the aircraft off, the aircraft flew itself off.
because the aircraft was, this is the position I should be in. I've got lots of power here. When the rotors spooled up again, engines and rotors wound up again, the aircraft is like a champagne cork out of the bottle. Bang, the aircraft took off and then we were back in control of the aircraft again.
So that was that. We were quite fortunate then. Gathered ourselves, what had happened, you know, the crewmen are checking round the back outside of the aircraft. Have we actually been hit? Is there any damage to the aircraft? No, you're checking. No, everything's fine. So we'll continue, we'll continue back. And then I thought, well, I'll give them the good news or the bad news.
And I went, see where I pulled my door off? That's where all my maps, all the IFF, that identification of friend and foe codes to get in through our rapier batteries, all that stuff had gone with the door. So I was left there. Luckily, I'd memorised the route. So there was no problem at all going back, but we didn't have the codes to get back in. So what we had to do was fly back towards the beachhead of Ports and Carlsson
And we just employed what we used to do in Germany was what we called lame duck procedures. So if you lost radios or lost something, you would just go back and make yourself very obvious, you know, by flashing your light on and off. So you weren't being aggressive at all.
came back over the beachhead at St Carlos and a sea king came up, checked us out and then we followed the sea king back in and landed on for our engineers to inspect the aircraft and call on you and that was when we decided that was the...
That was the end of our sortie that evening. So that was it. Well, that was Andy Lawless, the co-pilot of the last surviving Chinook pilot. And it's interesting, in that extract, you don't actually hear, he said to us also that he'd been briefed by Lieutenant Colonel Mike Rose, the commander of the SAS, who insisted that the landing site was secure. And you very much get a sense of...
of that extract, but it certainly was not. As you say, Patrick, it was pretty hairy when they arrived, but the survival of actually hitting the lake was pretty remarkable. And I was struck, I must admit, by the description of the Chinook itself as a boat. When you look at its outline, of course, it's got a great flat surface
sort of oblong shape and it literally skimmed across the water and then came out, as he put it, like a cork from a bottle. I mean, amazing story of survival because frankly, that genu was really vital to the British effort in the Falklands. A great testimony to the fantastic durability of the aircraft as well. And it's a brilliant, brilliant piece of kit which has done
and sterling service all over the world for all sorts of forces. Just incidentally, after that, I was told by Andy that when the SAS orders came down from on high, from basically from more,
that the SAS would have no further access to the Chinook helicopter. They were now barred from using the Chinook after that one. Anyway, after the break, we're going to discuss the arrival of 5th Brigade at San Carlos and the fateful decision by Major General Jeremy Moore to order a two-pronged attack on Port Stanley, which meant delaying three commando brigades' assault while 5th Brigade got into position.
Welcome back. Julian Thompson's hope was that three commando brigade would be allowed to fight the battle for Port Stanley alone, coming in from the north and west, with five brigade in a supporting role, basically maintaining the rear area coming forward if reinforcements were needed.
But when Moore reached the Falklands, that is the overall land commander, on the 30th of May, he decided, or rather he announced, that Tony Wilson's 5th Brigade, with two para now reattached to it, should also open up the southern axis of advance towards Port Stanley via Fitzroy and Bluff Cove, which were adjoining settlements 36 miles east of Goose Green and to the south and...
and west of Port Stanley. The problem, as usual, was helicopter lift capacity. To maintain itself with rations and equipment and to build up its position at Mount Kent, three commando brigades needed every heavy helicopter available to the landing force and Moore accepted this. Yes, now the Gurkhas of 5th Brigade came ashore from Canberra on the 1st of June and started to march to Goose Green.
These tough little soldiers would make light of this difficult yomp. Wilson, meanwhile, flew to Goose Green in a helicopter and, at the suggestion of Chris Keeble of Tupara, who was still in command, whose patrols had discovered that Fitzroy and Bluff Cove were undefended, Wilson decided to send two companies of Tupara forward to take possession of those settlements on the south coast of East Falkland.
It was a move, of course, designed to ensure that 5th Brigade would play a full part in the final battle. Yet the decision had been taken without the knowledge of either Jeremy Moore or, more seriously, Julian Thompson at Mount Kent. Well, I heard about it first by accident, really, because they didn't keep us in the picture. Because what happened was, and I don't want to tell the story because lots of other people will, they eventually flew forward to Parra.
to Fitzroy and I had OPs quite a long way away something like 15,000 metres away up in the high ground and and 4-2 commander by that time were on Mount Challenger not a great distance from Fitzroy and they suddenly said hey there are Argentines landing in a
Chinook because it didn't have any markings on it. Most of us didn't realize, I did, but most of the guys didn't realize that a Chinook could survive. And so my recce troop, my brigade recce troop and 4-2 commander were starting to give orders to their gunners to fire on to para landing at Fitzroy. Luckily the gun trails were pointing one way and they had to move them through 90 degrees.
And my brigade major, my chief of staff, said, I think we better just check it as an archive. So we got on to divisional headquarters and said, hey, who are these people landing in Fitzroy? And they said, we'll just go and check. They didn't know either. They said, God, it's too para. Five brigades had not told even divisional headquarters they were going to do it. As a result, we nearly had a mega king-sized blue-on-blue, which really would have spoiled everyone's day, I suggest.
because of not keeping people in the picture. And Tony was absolutely obsessed with beating us into Stanley, I think. So he kept it all under his hat. And Jeremy was then landed with this. He then had a battalion sitting out on his own, had to be supported. And the divisional staff went down almost on bended knee to Mike Clapp and said, can you take some ships around to support this lot? And so he said, yes, I can. But the trouble was,
choosing that was that it was a 17-hour trip by LSL from St Carlos to Fitzroy. That's a 14-hour night
So there's no way you can completely get there in daylight and offload in night time, I mean. Whereas going to Teal Inlet, it was only a seven-hour trip. So you could get there in darkness and probably do most of your offloading, probably all of it in darkness. What he should have done is put them in the north, not run the other way. So Julian Thompson there really getting to the crux of the matter. This is
real divergence of opinion about how the next and crucial and leading to the final phase of the battle should be approached. So he was clearly taken by surprise at the change of plan. And I think this is further evidence of one of the real failings, I think, of the campaign in general, which is this
real problem they have with communicating with each other it's not just a question of the equipment and the technical ability to talk to each other it's also about a kind of mindset i think don't you so yes i do but i think you also get this mindset in war that if you want to take an autonomous decision you make sure you're out of communications i mean it's there's no question that communications were tricky on the falcons in particular for five brigade i mean one of the tragedies uh
that we'll come on to was incurred because they were trying to bring forward communication equipment. So that's not in doubt. But what is also pretty clear from Julian Thompson's memory is that Wilson clearly wanted the opportunity to get involved. And so this is really driving things. I mean, to not even consult with Moore that he's going to actually do this
Great leap forward. And once the leap forward's done, of course, it's got to be backed up. I mean, he's really taking the initiative himself and he's forcing events on the ground. Now, his initial plan was for the rest of 5th Brigade to follow the Gurkhas, at least at first, overland to Goose Green. And so in the afternoon of the 3rd of June, the Welsh Guard set off and walked for 12 hours before 5th Brigade HQ agrees with their CO that the attempt should be abandoned.
The guardsmen were too heavily laden and the few vehicles that were carrying their heavy kit kept getting bogged down. We hear this from Captain Phil Dimmock. We have all our kit. I was the mortar officer and therefore we needed ammunition. Actually, I went to tie up with the Gurkhas...
to get our ammunition, collect our ammunition in order to take part in any operation that was going on. The mortar ammunition is quite heavy. The mortar platoon could not carry its own ammunition. Two tractors and trailers, because we couldn't get, or our battalion couldn't get transport to move forward
We got two local Falklanders to drive two tractors and trailers. And we loaded our kit onto the tractors and trailers, the heavy kit. Every man had what kit he was carrying, all his rucksacks, ammunition, everything, apart from the support weapons, weaponry ammunition.
which was not insignificant. These two vehicles were able to help us. We set off to Goose Green. We set off on the walk through the night. Last thing, as it was getting dark or was dark,
But actually, the vehicles, the tractors, the required equipment was not able to move easily. It was bogging in. The tractors were bogging in. They weren't able to pull the trailers full of kit. So at one stage, if I remember rightly, we were sort of pushing the tractors to keep them going through the mud. But I think...
It was realized, actually, it was a damn sight harder moving across this country than was anticipated. And therefore, the decision was made, we would pull back, go back to where we started, and then work out how we were going to move forward.
If it was just people on foot, it would have been easy. But to take the weapon systems, as were the battalion, in that case the battalion's weapon systems, and wait was not going to work. We were sinking. They were not tracked vehicles, as we know. So that was Captain Dimmock there with his recollections. And I must admit, I find that very persuasive and rather moving. You know, they're doing their best. Everything is going wrong for them.
It's just a chapter of accidents. But others didn't see in quite such a sympathetic light as we'll hear from the coxswain of landing craft Foxtrot 3, Dave Watkins, who picked them up after their march. We landed 4-5 Commando in the Paras and the Scots Guards at San Carlos Beachhead. And they disappeared off and they got on with the job they were supposed to do.
And then we also landed the Welsh Guards. And they left the boats in exactly the same manner as everybody else. They were fully kitted up with bergens. They had the weaponry, the ammunition, everything else, in order for them to do the same yomp march across the Falklands that everybody else had done. And I think it was about 24 or 48 hours later, we were recalled to the beach to pick them up again because they couldn't do the march. They weren't fit enough.
And a lot of the equipment that they had, they'd thrown away because they couldn't carry it. I had reason to speak to a company commander because he was insistent upon we make his troops a cup of tea on the boat, which was a physical impossibility anyway. And when I asked him why his men had not done the same march as everybody else had done,
He basically told me to shut up and get on with my job, which is like red rags to a bull. So I'm afraid that I let him have a bit of a mouthful about the weakness of his troops and so on and so on and so forth. Well, that was Dave Watkins, a landing craft coxswain, who clearly was less than impressed with the performance of the Welsh Guards and the attitude of one of their officers.
Whether that's an absolute fair retelling of the story, given that he wasn't on the march itself, apart from having seen them coming back, is another matter. But that was his opinion. And clearly you get a sort of arrogance coming through from at least some of the Welsh Guards officers asking Watkins to make tea on his landing craft when clearly that wasn't possible. Yeah, I mean, people have different recollections. I think we've got to sort of put ourselves in the minds of the
of the Welsh Guards as well, that they're at the end of a very unpleasant experience. Everyone's morale wasn't at the greatest heights at all times. So, you know, I've got a lot of sympathy for the Welsh Guards in this one, I have to say. Okay, so without helicopters and unable to march, the only way now to get the Welsh Guards and the Scots Guards to Fitzroy was by sea.
The plan was to send the Scots Guards first on the night of the 5th to 6th of June in the amphibious assault ship HMS Intrepid. It was Ewan Sudby-Taylor who was given the job of getting them there safely. I got a message saying, report to the Commodore on board HMS Fearless.
So I grabbed an off-duty little rigid raiding craft, which is a Dory, a Boston Dory with an outboard. And I sped off to Fairless and saw the common orders. I said, Eamon, HMS Intrepid is taking the Scots guards around to Bluff Cove. And you are to navigate them from a landing point, which is one mile too south of a place called Elephant Island at the entrance to Chesil Sound, which is
Leeds all the way up to Derby and Goose Green. And you ought to take them, 600 men in the four-lander craft, Intrepid's landing craft, and take them to Bluffco. Right, sir. Very good. I'd go back to the beach and collect my charts. No, you haven't got time. You're going straight to Intrepid. He said, well, you've got your memory. Yes, very good, sir. And so I joined Intrepid. Scott Scars were on board.
I wasn't privy to the comings and goings of the guards because I think there was some confusion over the time since they arrived and since they started moving off. Anyway, on board, the captain was a chap called Peter Dingermans and the officer commanding Ron Reeds was an old friend of mine, obviously, and I knew most of the officers anyway. And we set off.
with the scotch cards and my club had told dingy ones to land us as i said about a mile south of elephant island an hour and a half's run to bluff cove in the dark which i i knew the way and i actually kept on the floor of the the roman officer's cabin then i was working told that we were approaching the um launching point so i went up the bridge to see captain demons and i'm afraid this is where it gets a bit personal
But he showed me, or he didn't show me because that's part of the problem, I didn't know where we were. He said, "Ewan, I'm not taking you to Elephant Island because I'm worried about the exocet threat, shore-based exocet threat." Which was only then a rumor. "I'm going to drop you to the west of Lively Island." Well, if you look at the chart, you can see that was a hell of a long way from Elephant Island. And Lively Island is a large island to the south of the entrance to Chesil Sand.
I said, "Well, I don't think it's a very good idea, sir, because I've got 600 men in four open landing craft, unarmed, unarmored. The weather right now is quiet, but I knew jolly well that it probably wouldn't be quiet for long. And it was going to be at least seven hours." Well, the port mugger sitting in an open landing craft in the beginning of the Austral winter
And no matter how calm, there's going to be spray coming in. And also the landing raft, this large landing raft, had great freeing ports at deck level through which the sea could come in and go out because they were designed to carry tanks, not people. The way it wouldn't have mattered. And I'd say, well, this is not a good idea.
And I then said, if I meet any British warships, can I have the recognition signal? He said, no, you won't meet any British warships because there aren't any. Because south of Chesil Sand was, and all that area was used as a sort of naval gun line supporting the paras and the marines up in the mountains. And so they'd come, steam up and down, firing their 4.5-inch guns. But there weren't going to be any that night, I was told by Dingeman's.
And so he wouldn't give me the recognition signal, which I thought was a bit childish of him.
I wouldn't have done any harm. So I said, well, any ship I meet is going to be Argentinian. So he said, yes, I think that's probably a fair assumption. Not that the Argentines had warships, but they did have two or three little gunboats and you didn't need much to sink an unarmed landing craft anyway. So I said, can we discuss this in private? So we went back into the rear end of the bridge, which is a chart house, which can shut the door.
And I said, "I think you should know, sir, but I think the whole fucking thing stinks." And he said, "You don't speak to me like that on my bridge." I said, "Look, come on, we're about to carry out a pretty complicated operation." They were asking me to do at least a seven-hour journey with no navigation charts, no echo sounder. Radar can only be used occasionally, if at all.
Anyway, I said, well, it's the effect that the loss of 600 men in the Scots Guards was going to be considerably more of a loss to the task force than the loss of HMS Intrepid. And Intrepid, I mean, who knows, they helped design the latest additions, Bulwark and Elbeard, and I know that's going on a bit, but they were the same principle. They were designed to take on something like 6,000 tonnes of water so they could sink down to flood their dock so they could let the landing craft out.
An enemy X-SET is an above-water system, and I think you'll find, it may be created, but originally when the French made the X-SET, it was designed to be fired in salvages of four to guarantee sinking a ship. And they were talking about sinking destroyers, frigates, cruisers, not 12,000-ton LPDs designed to take on 6,000 tons of water. There's no way that Phyllis or a Trepid would have been sunk or been damaged by
heavens, not by one exercise. And he said, well, he didn't agree with the loss of intrepid would be more important. Or he thought loss of intrepid would be more important than loss of syndrome. Well, that's how I read it. So I said, well, just remember my last words to you, sir, were, I think, get off my bridge, which is not actually the way to treat somebody
who's being invited to do a bloody complicated and dangerous task. So we went down and finished. I was told we were at the launching position. So I went down to the landing craft, got on board the lead one, and we were launched into a very calm evening or late night. I can't remember what time it was.
I think it was before midnight. And Senior Coxon in the landing car drives in said, where are we, sir? I said, do you know what? I haven't the slightest bloody idea. We're somewhere west of Blively Island. And, you know, Coxon is a very experienced by the time he gets to that level. And he just couldn't believe what I was saying. And I couldn't believe that I had to say it.
Then we set off. I did recognise Lowland. We set off north-east, recognised Lowland, turned to the south. Then there were kelp beds which had to be skirted round. Then we turned up towards the north from the south end of the island. And at some stage along there, there were six massive explosions around us as though we'd been targeted by either an aircraft or heavy artillery. I mean, it all missed, thankfully. But nobody to this day knows where those projectiles came from.
They weren't missiles. And then the wind started getting up quite quickly and the men were getting really soaked. You've got to remember this is in the dark at the beginning of the Austral's winter, absolutely no cover at all in the landing craft. And out of the darkness came two black shapes, no lights obviously,
And I remember Dingeman in his words saying, "If you see any ships, they're going to be Argentinian." Well, you couldn't make out the size of these things, but there were two ships approaching us from the southeast. I decided that we would run in to Chesil Sound because I knew the islands. Even without my charts, I reckon we could find somewhere to hide. At that point, a little red pinpoint light flashed, "Friend." Well, I reckon they were obviously British warships. So I said to my signal, "Stand back to which fucking side?"
Actually, I didn't know. I'm not sure I said fucking, I said to which side, but I was bloody angry because before that had happened, they had star shelters. So they'd lit us up for miles around, bloody four and a half inch star shells up in the sky. So any enemy would have seen exactly what was happening. And then this little light-same friend, and I said, oh, I came to which side. And they pushed off to the southeast. And I thought, well, that's not very friendly. We could do a little bit of help.
navigation if not um you know militarily anyway we said we continued on our way and when we reached there's a passage between an island called east island and the mainland and in between that there's a whole collection of rocks which i knew and it's what i call the z bend because it is a z through these rocks you have to negotiate only recommended in broad daylight and a calm sea
But I think I was determined to try and get through there in the dark because the alternative was to go way around East Island and beyond the kelp beds because they were full of rocks. Therefore, pretty close to Stanley before we turned west up Fitzroy, up towards Bluff Cove. And I really didn't want to do that because that was dangerous.
Seriously dangerous. And of course, if dinghams had dropped us at Alderford Island, we'd have been through there in flat calm seas because we would have been seven hours earlier or five hours earlier. Anyway, we got round East Island, the east end of East Island, turned quickly to port and found Bluff Cove at dawn. And I landed the 600 men of the Scots Guards with quite a few cases of exposure.
And they were bloody stoic. I'm not a Scot, so I wouldn't say that, but my heart went out to them. Well, that was Ewan Southby Taylor with his account of what happened. Of course, we haven't got Captain Dingaman's version of events. He died a few years back, and I think we have to bear that very much in mind. It's always difficult when you have two possibly conflicting points of view and you can't actually...
hear one of them. So I think that's just a caveat we ought to enter there when we're considering this aspect of the story. I think when bad consequences flow from things, there is a tendency to draw a line, a direct line of responsibility, if you like, which isn't necessarily apparent at the time. War is always a thing of many parts, many
moving parts which don't necessarily all mesh at the right time. As I've often said, if things go right, it's all fine. No one goes back and pours over it. If they go wrong, they do.
And there's a natural human tendency, I suppose, to try and simplify cause and effect, which is not really how life works. That's absolutely right, Patrick. And we need to add that caveat. But we also need to make the pretty clear point that there's no doubt the Scots guards were dropped off too soon. And this, unfortunately, as you say, we know what happens next. But this, unfortunately, begins a chain of events that's going to lead to tragedy.
Now, on arrival at Bluff Cove, the exhausted guardsmen make their way from the beach to join two para, now commanded by the recently arrived Lieutenant Colonel David Chandler on the high ground above. Yeah, this is interesting. I mean, why David Chandler? You've got Chris Keeble, who's actually taken over the goose green battle after H. Jones is killed.
And, you know, won it, yet he's now replaced as CEO of Tupara by David Schoendler, who, a very able officer, I'm sure, and all the rest of it, but he arrives in the most spectacular fashion. He's dropped in from an aircraft and does what they call a halo. It stands for high altitude, low opening, which means that you kind of plummet through the skies, the dark South Atlantic freezing winter skies, and then pull the ripcord down
when you're, I don't know what height, but very low height, lands in the sea, there's a prearranged place and then a landing craft or something goes out to go, a rigid radar or something goes out.
and picks him up. Now, again, this is a kind of, you know, service protocol, which is beyond the civilians understanding. But basically, you know, the rules are okay. You know, Chris Keeble isn't sufficiently senior to take over, even though he's done a great job. And it's David Chalmers' right. Of course, David Chalmers does a fantastic job thereafter.
But it's just a bit of an odd one for the civilian mind. Yeah, and it's interesting that General Moore, who, of course, after the event, there was a little bit of criticism that he took an awful long time to get to the island and should have got there earlier. He says, in retrospect, I should have done the same thing. I should have parachuted out of a plane and arrived a little bit quicker.
Yeah, he's quite a bit older, of course, than David Chodler. So I think that's very bold of him to say that. Anyway, the Welsh guards arrive at Bluff Cove. They don't have any orders. There's no one there to give them any. And the Paras are in a bit of a perilous... This is two Para who've moved forward. ..are also in a bit of a perilous situation. They've got only two days' rations to last them five days. They're hungry and they're cold.
Then at last, it was agreed that the guards would take over the positions established by two parallel chandlers men retired to the shearing sheds at Fitzroy and began to
dry themselves out for what came ahead, the very arduous time that lay ahead. Yes, well, great drama to come. That's all we have time for this week. Next time, we'll discuss the chain of events that led to the tragic loss of life among the Welsh guards on the Sir Galahad at Fitzroy on the 8th of June, 1982.
the bombing of the landing craft Foxtrot 4, and the revenge meted out by a Harrier pilot, David Mog Morgan, who we've heard from before and who shot down two of the three attacking Argentinian planes.