Battle for the Falklands: The Winter War

Patrick Bishop, John Witherow

• Publisher: HarperPress
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9780007479382
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

‘Boldly planned, bravely executed and brilliantly accomplished’ was Margaret Thatcher’s assessment of the Falklands campaign. But what did the war mean to the men in the trenches and below decks?

This gripping first-hand account of the Falklands War, written by bestselling military historian Patrick Bishop and Sunday Times Editor John Witherow, reveals the true experiences of the British soldiers and seamen on the front line. The authors, then rookie reporters, lived alongside the fighting men, experiencing the daily realities of a British task force that was hugely outnumbered on a barren island 8,000 miles from home. The Falklands: The Winter War looks at the covert role of the SAS and the heroic death of Colonel ‘H’ Jones at Goose Green, and considers just how close Britain came to defeat.

This is an extraordinarily frank and unsparing account of a military campaign that has held a defining place within the British national conscience since victory in 1982.

1

The Empire Strikes Back

HMS Invincible edged away from the quayside shortly before 10 a.m. on Monday, 5 April, tugs and small chase boats buzzing around her like impatient flies (writes John Witherow). She moved grandly down the Portsmouth Channel, exchanging salutes with ships and acknowledging the cheers of thousands of people lining the rooftops, quays and beaches in the crisp spring sunshine. Union flags skipped and curled above blurred heads and caps were doffed in extravagant gestures. From the Admiral’s bridge we could see the lone Sea Harrier fixed to the ‘ski jump’, its nose pointing skywards. At the stern, helicopters squatted on the flight deck, their blades strapped back. The order for ‘Invincible’s Attention’ to the 500 men lining the deck in their best rig was swept away by the wind and they ‘came to’ like a group of conscripts on their first day’s drill. We moved away from the small boats, past the old sea forts and into the Channel. Behind us came HMS Hermes, the old warhorse, already looking stained and weatherbeaten. A small group of men, for once not caught up in the urgency of departure, stood staring back at ‘Pompey’, others gazed towards the horizon. It had been a long time since the country sailed to war.

The speed of developments since Argentina invaded the Falklands three days earlier had been breathtaking. Crewmen, called back at short notice from their winter sports, had clambered aboard carrying skis while others arrived with rucksacks from hiking holidays. Every available Sea Harrier had been grabbed and warehouses emptied of spares and food.

The departure, however, gave the men a chance to collect their thoughts. There was a slight sense of the absurd; of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta with the might of the Royal Navy off to bloody the noses of who they referred to as ‘a bunch of bean-eaters’. But the tears in the eyes of the young man on the bridge were real enough and there was no doubt on board that we had to avenge a wrong and restore national pride. Alongside pictures of the ships in the Task Force someone had put up a notice: ‘The Empire Strikes Back’.

But would it come to a fight? We were confident we were off on a cruise, a piece of sabre-rattling to concentrate General Galtieri’s mind and hasten a diplomatic solution. The days of gunboat diplomacy were over and surely no one would be foolish enough to fight over some far-flung islands at the bottom of the world? Not everyone on board, however, was so convinced. Captain Jeremy Black said on the second day, while we were still within sight of land, that war was likely. He had to say this to prepare the crew for the worst, but he also identified the issue of sovereignty over the islands as the stumbling block to a peaceful settlement. In the end he was proved right.

Gradually the rather jolly outing began to appear less jolly and hearing a rating sing ‘Don’t cry for me Argentina’ lost its charm. The only two board games in the wardroom were Risk and Diplomacy. The latter was rarely played. Even the notice in the flying room which said ‘Due to the untimely death of Mae West all life preservers will be known as Dolly Partons’, became less amusing. We were simply more concerned with getting a life jacket. As the mood of the ship darkened the closer we moved to the Falklands, so the British bulldog spirit of affronted pride gave way to a greater degree of realism and apprehension.

The officers, and especially the pilots, though, remained pugnacious throughout. ‘I’ve been dying for ages to have a limited war,’ commented Lt.-Com. ‘Sharky’ Ward. ‘It enables us to sort out the chaff and cut through the red tape.’ A helicopter pilot, Lieutenant Darryl Whitehead, married two days before we sailed, added in a surprising aside: ‘I know it sounds a bit bloodthirsty, but I would like to drop a real depth charge on a real target.’

The ratings demonstrated a more understandable desire to stay alive. Officers would speak of them getting ‘the jitters on the lower decks’ and at times they looked distinctly nervous. The crew were careful to express their doubts out of earshot of the officers. On a visit to the frigate, HMS Broadsword, we asked junior ratings in their tiny mess in the bowels of the ship, ‘What do you think of it so far?’ ‘Rubbish,’ came the stock reply. ‘Do you want to go home?’ ‘Not ’alf,’ they said, more seriously. An officer stuck his head round the door. ‘Do you think we ought to kick the Argies off the Falklands, lads?’ he enquired encouragingly. ‘Yeah, they orta be taught a lesson,’ was the response. As we filed from the room one of the boys, no older than eighteen, winked.

But however nervous we became at times, the men were touched by that Portsmouth send-off and the mass of mail and the young girls demanding to be pen pals. They knew the country was united behind them and their tattoos ‘Made in Britain’ (or ‘Brewed in Essex’ on their beer guts) displayed their nationalism.

The pulse of the ship was taken daily by the Captain, like a caring family GP. Much later in the voyage, after the Belgrano and Sheffield were sunk, the question of morale was raised when he doubted the veracity of two pieces we had written. One hack had seen a rating sitting on the floor during the threat of an Exocet attack, tears rolling down his cheeks as he looked at a picture of his girlfriend, and another had told me that until Argentina fired that first missile all he knew about the country was that they ate corned beef and played football. Now he rated them. The captain found it hard to believe his men could behave or speak in such a way. In the cramped confines of a ship, where men lived cheek by jowl for months on end, discipline was essential; especially during a push-button war where seconds matter. By writing about the crew’s doubts the Captain thought discipline and morale would be undermined. One thousand men were crammed together on Invincible, from Prince Andrew, then second in line to the throne, to the lowliest rating from the Gorbals. Although there was interplay between the different ranks, their boundaries were jealously guarded. Most preferred it that way. Morale was certainly mercurial. It could ebb and flow according to ship ‘buzzes’, the internal word-of-mouth system that got messages around almost as fast as the tannoy. It was widely believed, for instance, there would be R and R (rest and recreation) at Mombasa then Rio de Janeiro. Spirits soared. When the speciousness of these rumours was exposed they plummeted. Such buzzes frequently seemed to originate from the cooks’ galley, inhabited by large red-faced chefs who dreamed up mischief as they stirred their pots.

As the Task Force moved south, Operation Corporate, as it was now known, became increasingly secretive. Naval ships with their supply vessels had been leaving Britain and Gibraltar over a period of days bound for the rendezvous point at Ascension Island. Radio silence was observed and vessels were darkened at night. The crew was told it could not mention the ship’s position, speed and accompanying vessels in letters home. Invincible, in fact, was travelling south on only one propeller at about fifteen knots. Almost as soon as we left Portsmouth one of the gear couplings of the giant engines had shattered and teams of engineers worked round the clock for two weeks to replace it by the time we reached Ascension. It was a remarkable effort that went unreported due to the Navy’s desire to keep everything from the Argentinians that could prove useful. For the first few days we hardly caught a glimpse of any other ships and we imagined a lonely voyage for 8,000 miles with empty horizons. Then Hermes moved closer and for the remainder of the journey we could see at least four or five vessels, their dull, grey shapes discernible against the skyline. It was not quite like scenes from The Cruel Sea, with warships hammering along with only a few cables between them, but it was oddly reassuring.

The secrecy reflected not only the Navy’s obsession with stealth but also the growing state of readiness for war. Harriers were flying more or less continually; rocketing a ‘splash target’ dragged behind the ship, firing a Sidewinder heat-seeking missile at a phosphorus flare, dropping bombs and feigning attacks on other ships to test their responses. Sea King helicopters flew endless missions, probing the oceans with their active sonars like huge insects dipping their probosces into the sea. They would look for unidentified shipping, throwing the £5m. machine around the sky. Besides searching for hostile submarines they acted as scouts for missile-carrying ships, doing ‘over the horizon targeting’ which involved popping up for a look and then getting out of radar contact, very fast. I was just recovering from a bout of sea-sickness in the Bay of Biscay (the first and last time) and could scarcely take my eyes off a fixed point three feet in front of me as the helicopter dropped from 400 feet to just above the waves in seconds. They had a favourite trick of allowing a guest to take the controls and then switching off the stabilizer. The aircraft would plunge wildly before the co-pilot took over. Outings would turn into sing-songs, with the four-man crew going through 820 Squadron’s repertory over their internal radios. Every flight ended with a return to ‘mother’, the pilots’ term for Invincible. The helicopter crewmen tended to be younger than the Harrier pilots, many of whom were in their mid-thirties and had years of experience flying Buccaneers and Phantom jets. The Sea King crews were wilder, liable to stand round the wardroom piano singing lewd songs and play fearsome games before crawling to bed.

One of the junior pilots was Sub-Lieutenant Prince Andrew, who had joined 820 Ringbolt Squadron (motto: Shield and Avenge) the previous October. The other pilots were fiercely protective, thinking it poor form to talk about him behind his back. The most one of his friends would say was that he had improved since his training days at Dartmouth, when he had appeared rather standoffish. At first he had avoided the journalists in the wardroom, slightly ill-at-ease with having the press at such close proximity, especially newspapers like the Sun and Daily Star which had hardly endeared themselves to the Royal family We had been told not to make the first move and after a while he approached us, curious about the working of the press and telling us how he had evaded the paparazzi with tricks ‘the length of his arm’, none of which he would disclose. Another of his friends said he actually liked appearing in the papers, and became slightly irritated if there was no photograph or harmless story about ‘Randy Andy’.

For a twenty-two-year-old he was a curious mixture of maturity and youth. His voice and mannerisms were strikingly similar to those of Prince Charles, although his sense of humour, always just below the surface, was more direct than Charles’s satirical approach. One one occasion he took great delight in telling the man from the Sun that he relaxed by playing snooker on a gyro-stabilized table – an age old joke in the Navy which none the less continues to find victims.

You could tell Andrew was in the wardroom when a film was being shown by the guffaws of laughter from the ‘stalls’. Not everything pleased him though. He walked out of the film The Rose starring Bette Midler as a drugged-up rock star muttering ‘silly cow’. He neither drank nor smoked, at least in public, and while looking relaxed among his fellow pilots was perhaps inevitably conscious of his position. It is hard to feel one of the boys when your flying overalls sport the name ‘HRH Prince Andrew’. He was known to his colleagues simply as ‘H’ and was delighted weeks later when he came ashore in Port Stanley and I referred to him as ‘H’. ‘I’ve been trying for ages to get you journalists to call me that,’ he laughed. From the interviews he gave in Stanley after the fighting had finished, it almost seemed as if a different character had emerged. He was more articulate than before and less self-conscious. Perhaps the endless flying, the responsibility and the danger had matured him.

Andrew was always smartly dressed. His clothes seemed that bit crisper than the rest of the officers’, and his hair was always well cut and the same length. We wondered if there was a hairdresser on board by Royal Appointment. The first day on board we were told that, ‘As far as we are concerned he is like anyone else. He is just another officer.’ It became apparent over a period of time that this was true. He flew dangerous missions to rescue a pilot from a ditched helicopter off Hermes and the survivors of the Atlantic Conveyor after she was hit by an Exocet. He was also apt to be called on to be ‘Exocet decoy’, flying his helicopter alongside Invincible to distract the missile and draw it away beneath the aircraft. It was a hazardous exercise that required a cool nerve, hovering twenty feet above the waves, ready to rise up above the missile’s (allegedly) maximum height of twenty-seven feet as it fizzed over the horizon just below the speed of sound. On the day Sheffield was hit, Invincible fired chaff from near the bridge that almost brought down the Prince’s helicopter as he flew alongside. Piloting a helicopter in the South Atlantic was a dangerous operation and twenty were lost, including four Sea Kings which ditched in the ocean. But there was never any suggestion that Andrew did any more or less than the other pilots. To have treated him differently would have undermined his confidence and alienated the rest of the squadron.

On Good Friday, just four days after we sailed from Portsmouth, we heard for the first time the harsh, rasping note of the klaxon calling the ship to action stations. Men rushed down passages, dragging anti-flash hoods over their heads and putting on white elbow-length gloves. The urgency that the klaxon conveyed was contagious and you would find yourself running, slamming down hatches as a disembodied voice kept repeating, ‘Action stations, action stations. Assume NBCD state one. Condition Zulu.’ The initials referred to nuclear, biological and chemical defences, which meant making the ship airtight from attack. Condition Zulu meant all the hatches and doors had to be sealed, a higher state of alert than ‘yankee’. Sealing up Invincible could take anything between ten to twenty-five minutes, depending on the training of the crew. Once completed it was rather like being locked in a vast tomb, knowing escape would be hindered by sealed decks with scores of men competing to get through the ‘kidney hatches’. At first we found ourselves assigned to the Damage Control Centre of the ship during action stations. This was presided over by Lt.-Com. Andy Holland, known to everyone as ‘Damage’, who gaily chattered about Invincible being able to take five Exocet hits before sinking. After some thought this seemed a bad place to be. It was right in the centre of the ship and at Exocet height. Discussing the safest position during threat of attack became a pastime, rather in the manner that overweight people discuss the merits of diets. The press wandered around the ship debating the chief targets, sometimes watching what was going on from the Admiral’s bridge and at other times seeking refuge in the Captain’s day cabin, lying on the carpets and staring at the bulkhead.

But at least we could move around in search of safety. Most of the crew had no choice but to stay in their assigned positions sweating it out. Many would try and sleep. Others would just lie there, write letters, read girlie magazines or play cards. Some were distinguishable only by their names written across the forehead of their white anti-flash hood, disguising all but their eyes. It was possible to go for days, even weeks, without tasting the salt on your lips or feeling the wind. The weather throughout continued to belie all predictions. Instead of raging seas we had fog and instead of sleet we had crisp sunny days. There were one or two gales but down in the bowels of Invincible, fitted with stabilizers, the roll was barely discernible. Steaming along in a large British warship had as much to do with the sea as flying has with travel in a jumbo jet. At times, it seemed, we might as well have been in a submarine. The sense of vulnerability, even claustrophobia, was impossible to avoid. Modern warships have abandoned armour plating, taking the view that the money is better spent on missile defences. One hair-raising theory that ‘Damage’ told us about the light construction of Invincible, was that an Exocet could pass right through without exploding. No one seemed keen to test the theory.

I had acquired a small cabin at the stern of the ship, just above the waterline. The escape routes from this cubicle were negligible. You had to move down a passage, through several sealed doors and then up ladders. ‘It’s not worth it,’ one sub-lieutenant told me. ‘All the doors will buckle if we’re hit and you’ll never get out.’ At the outset the hacks had been placed in the Admiral’s offices. This was rather like sleeping in a canning factory during an earth tremor. The rooms were full of filing cabinets and as the ship vibrated the files reverberated, as in an outlandish and off-key tintinnabulation. I tried sleeping with ear-defenders and then with cotton wool ear plugs. Neither was effective. We tried to locate the root of the noises, sticking sheets of paper between the cabinets – also with no success. Gareth Parry of the Guardian struggled naked over desk tops in the middle of the night, tapping the ceiling in a futile attempt to pinpoint a particularly irritating rattle. He retired to his camp bed muttering, ‘Sleep is release. The nightmare starts when we wake up.’

Apart from the calls to action stations, training exercises were given greater verisimilitude with the addition of smoke canisters, thunderflashes and one pound scare charges dropped alongside the ship. ‘We’ve got to give the men the smell of cordite,’ the captain said. The mood of impending struggle was heightened with notices recommending the crew to make out their wills and ensure the name of their next of kin was up-to-date on official documents. We were issued with identity discs which gave rank, name and blood group. Later on we had to carry at all times a life jacket at our waist and a bright orange survival suit. Anti-flash hoods were worn relaxed around necks, like grubby cravats.

Many crewmen received brief courses in first aid. The ship’s surgeon, Bob Clarke, gave a humorous account on television of how to shove morphine injections into your leg, ending the programme with a smile and saying ‘have a good war’. Although extra supplies of plasma, morphine, antibiotics, plaster of pans and intravenous fluids were on board, Clarke said cheerfully: ‘We’ll decide those people who are worth saving, and make it as comfortable as possible for those who are not.’ Potential hazards from whiplash, such as mirrors, glasses, and loose objects, were removed and flammable material like curtains and cushions were stowed away. Invincible was gradually transformed from a relatively luxurious craft, certainly far more luxurious than we had been led to expect, into an austere fighting unit, prepared for the worst.

I remember sitting in the wardroom at the end of April watching the closed-circuit television churn out a more or less continual diet of soap opera, war films, Tom and Jerry cartoons and extracts from comedy shows. Pilots, wearing their green one-piece overalls or rubber ‘goon suits’ to protect them against the freezing South Atlantic, lounged casually in armchairs. Some carried 9mm Browning pistols in shoulder holsters. Around them coffee tables had been piled together and tied to pillars with string. The landscape watercolours had gone from the walls and the crests above the bar removed. The cabinet case which had displ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Maps
• Authors' Note
• Prologue: One Small War
• 1 The Empire Strikes Back
• 2 Sailing
• 3 D Day
• 4 ‘Follow Me’
• 5 Life on the Mountains
• 6 The Last Days
• 7 Surrender
• Epilogue: Going Home
• Acknowledgements
• About the Authors
• Copyright
• About the Publisher