ENDEX(2): The Falklands War and my final thoughts on Argentina.

The Falkland Islands were originally found in 1600 by the Dutch, who had a tendency to find some of our more important colonies first, such as Singapore, New York City and South Africa.  They were then used and abandoned variously by the British and Spanish, who call them Las Malvinas.  At one point in the early 19^th century they were used as a base for pirates, which led to a visit from the United States Marine Corps, who solved that problem.  They were eventually set up as a colony by Britain in 1833, 30 years before Argentina had fully established itself as a country, and apart from a couple of months in 1982 they have been under British rule ever since.

Map of the Falkland Islands.  The capital Port Stanley is located on the East coast of East Falkland.

                                            

In the late 1970’s the, as ever, feeble British civil service had decided to give the Falklands to Argentina, oblivious to the views of the 2,000 Islanders.  They were also obviously confident that there would never be any reason why the Panama Canal could be blocked, thus forcing shipping around the Southern tip of South America.  The Governor Rex Hunt was sent out to specifically prepare the Islanders for the fact they were going to be given to Argentina, which at that time was under the dictatorial rule of a military junta, led by General Galtieri.

Gen. Galtieri, who led the Military Junta and ordered Argentine invasion.  "So, how do you think that went?"

                                                 

The junta had taken over Argentina in 1976 and were engaged in a brutal policy of killing off all their own domestic opposition, including the thousands of so called ‘Disappeared’.  It seems pretty horrendous, but unsurprising, that the spineless bean-counters in Whitehall were quite happy to give them 2,000 British citizens in the name of ‘down-sizing’ and ‘efficiency-savings’.  By 1982 the Argentine economy was collapsing and the Junta, like Mrs Kirchner today, was desperate for some foreign policy good news as a dstraction, so Galtieri ordered an invasion of the Falkland Islands, thinking that as Britain was going to give them away anyway, why would they care?

On the 2^nd of April 1982 thousands of Argentine troops landed on the Falklands, which were only defended by less than a hundred Royal Marines.  While the ‘boot necks’ put up a fight, managing to kill a couple of Argentine soldiers, and shoot down a helicopter they were ordered to surrender by Rex Hunt in the Capital, Port Stanley.

Royal Marines surrendering to Argentine forces after initial invasion.

                            

These Marines were then returned to the UK, where they swiftly joined the Task Force- “You lost them, you can get them back!”.  General Galtieri assumed optimistically that Mrs Thatcher would not put up a fight, but by that stage she had already shown her character with incidents such as letting Bobby Sands and his IRA mates starve themselves to death in the so called ‘Maze Prison Hunger Strike’, and she’d sent in the SAS to lift the siege at the Iranian Embassy in central London (http://charliecharlieone.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/sgt-john-mcaleese.html).

On the 5^th of April, just 3 days after the invasion, the British aircraft carriers HMS Invincible and HMS Hermes set sail from Portsmouth for the South Atlantic, as part of what would be a 127 ship Task Force, with 43 carrier based Harrier fighter aircraft, and thousands of highly trained infantry soldiers including Paras, Royal Marines, Scots and Welsh Guardsmen and the Gurkhas.  The Argentine Junta, under Galtieri had wanted to show how tough they were and now they were going to get their chance to see how good they were against, arguably, the best armed forces in the world.

The British Task Force sailing South.

Gurkhas were part of the Task Force, but due to no effort being spared in hyping up their reputation as the Task Force sailed South, the Argentine soldiers ran rather than fight them.

                         

By the end of April the outlying territory of South Georgia, 900 miles to the East had already been taken back by a combined force of Royal Marines and the SAS.  On the 1^st of May the garrison on the Falkland Islands got their first experience of the Empire striking back when Port Stanley airfield was bombed from 50,000 feet by a Vulcan bomber, which was similar capability to the B-52.  On the 2^nd of May the Argentine warship the Belgrano was sunk by torpedoes from the Royal Navy submarine HMS Conqueror, killing over 300 Argentine sailors.

Port Stanley Airfield after the 'Black Buck' Vulcan bomber raid.

The Belgrano sinking after being hit by Royal Navy submarine.  The Sun newspaper tastefully reported the incident under the headline "Gotcha!"

          

While the sinking of the Belgrano is controversial because it may or may not have been posing a direct threat at that moment, the result was that the Argentines became terrified of the British submarine threat.  They consequently withdrew all their surface warships, including an aircraft carrier ‘The 25^th of May’ back to their ports in Argentina.  This obviously made life much easier for the Royal Navy fleet. 

However, the Argentine Air Force began a sustained campaign against the Royal Navy surface fleet with their aging A4 Skyhawk aircrafts as well as more modern French Mirage and Super Etantard aircraft, using the Exocet anti-ship missile (supplied and maintained, throughout, by the glorious French, who always seem to be on the losing team).  On the 4^th of May HMS Sheffield was sunk, with the loss of 20 crewmembers, and was the first Royal Navy warship to be lost since WW2.  The British never had full air superiority through the war, and I remember hearing a presentation from the ‘celebrity’ Royal Navy doctor Rick Jolly saying that there was no more terrifying sensation for him than being on a ship, looking up at a fighter aircraft and recognising that it is not one of ‘ours’.  The Argentine Air Force managed to sink quite a few British ships during the war, including the Atlantic Conveyor which was transporting most of the Task Force’s Chinook heavy lift helicopters.

HMS Sheffield having been hit by Exocet missile.

                  

Super Etandard firing Exocet anti-ship missile, which has a range of 100 miles.

                        

There was a plan to counter this threat by sending an SAS Squadron to attack the Argentine bases on the mainland, although it was accepted that they would have been suicide missions.  I imagine that whatever winner came up with that plan had not intended to actually be the first man off the ramp of the C130, and fortunately for all concerned the idea was canned.  Whatever the SAS did actually do inside Argentina still remains secret, although the only ‘open source’ reference to it was that on the night of the 17^th of May a Royal Navy Sea King helicopter crashed in Southern Chile.  The crew then surrendered themselves to the Chilean authorities, who were actually, discreetly, supporting the British anyway.

The first large scale landings of British troops returning to the Falklands were on the 21^st of May on East Falkland.   Soldiers from the 2^nd Battalion the Parachute Regiment (2 PARA) and Marines from 40 Commando, Royal Marines (40 Cdo) landed at San Carlos.  On the same night 3 PARA and 45 Cdo also came ashore.  The first large scale land battle of the war was on the night of 27-28 May when 600 men of 2 PARA, using the ‘Para Reg’ interpretation of the 3:1, attacker: defender ratio, attacked and utterly defeated 1,800 Argentine troops at Goose Green.  This was despite the best efforts of the BBC who, in the interests of impartiality, had broadcast details of the attack before it had started.  During the battle the Commanding Officer of 2 PARA, Lt Col ‘H’ Jones, was killed while personally leading an attack on an enemy position, and was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.

Member of 2 PARA standing guard over captured Argentine prisoners at Goose Green.  By the end of the war more than 11,000 Argentines had surrendered to the numerically inferior British troops.

                             

Following on from this more troops from the Scots Guards and Welsh Guards were to be landed, in support of 2PARA at Bluff Cove.  However on the 8^th of June the Argentine Air Force attacked the 2 Landing Craft, the Sir Tristram and the Sir Galahad, carrying the Welsh Guards in Bluff Cove/ Port Pleasant killing more than 50, including 33 Welsh Guardsmen.   While this succeeded in putting the British plans back by 2 days, the Argentine commanders believed that 900 British troops had been killed in the attack- which really would have changed the game somewhat.

The iconic image of Royal Marines 'yomping' across East Falkland.

              

Having advanced or ‘yomped’ across East Falkland, on the night of the 11^th of June Royal Marines and 3 PARA launched a Brigade-sized attack on the Argentine positions at Mount Harriet, Two Sisters and Mount Longdon.  The fiercest fighting was at Mount Longdon, which 3 PARA eventually took.  During the battle, Sgt Ian McKay led an attack on a machine gun position that was holding up the advance.  Although fatally wounded he managed to fall on to the actual gun, providing enough of a delay for the remainder of the troops to continue the advance, and like Lt Col Jones, he was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.

Sgt Ian McKay VC at Mount Longdon.

Two nights later 2 PARA, the only unit to be involved in 2 significant battles, attacked Wireless Ridge and the Scots Guards attacked Mount Tumbledown.  One of the Guards Company Commanders at Tumbledown, Major John Kiszely who went on to be a General, recounted how in the confusion and the dark, he found himself grabbing a handful of Guardsmen and systematically attacking individual Argentine positions.  Once they’d taken one position, they’d regroup and then move on to the next one, and the next, before they reached the top of the hill and could look down at the lights of the capital Port Stanley, where the Argentine HQ was located.  The following day, the 14^th of June, the Argentinians surrendered and the war was over.

Scots Guards celebrate hearing that the war is over.

                               

The result of the Falklands War was that 255 British servicemen and 700 Argentinians were killed, with hundreds of others maimed- most famously Welsh Guardsman Simon Weston, who had been on the Sir Galahad.  Ironically, the best thing to come about from the Falklands War was that it lead to the end of the military Junta in Argentina, who had started the war in the first place, and the subsequent return of that country to democratic rule, which it has enjoyed ever since.  Diplomatic relations were re-established between the UK and Argentina in 1990 and, apart from the odd bit of attention-seeking by Senora Kirchner, the 2 countries have enjoyed reasonably good relations ever since.

For us in Britain the Falklands War is going out of the national psyche as the last of the Falklands veterans leave the army.  When I first joined in the late 90’s there were quite a few Falklands veterans still serving, and in training my first Commanding Officer had been at Goose Green.  However, on my tour to Afghanistan this year there were just 2 that I knew of, both of whom had been on the Sir Galahad, which I don’t think anybody particularly wanted to talk about.

This is in contrast to the Argentinians, who all have an opinion on it, and want to share it.  In Paris earlier this year I ended up in a conversation with an extremely attractive Argentine lawyer girl (again…) and she told me, charmingly, that she agreed with Senora Kirchner’s attempts to get back ‘Las Malvinas’.  I asked her if she wanted her family to go back to being under the rule of General Galtieri, which she didn’t.  I then asked her if she felt it was right that British citizens should have been subjected to the same Junta regime, and she conceded that Mrs Thatcher did have a point.  I then asked her if she supported the principal of National Self Determination, which she said she did.  She subsequently accepted that, actually, the Falklands were better off remaining British.  Shame her boyfriend was with her at the time.

On my travels to South America over the past couple of months, I realised that there are always Argentinians travelling around the whole continent- and if you know what you're looking for, you can always spot them.  While distancing themselves from the indigenous South Americans, they look and dress like typical western backpackers from Oz, Holland,  etc, but they keep themselves to themselves, to an extent, as they often can’t speak English.  However the first 2 that I spoke to in Cartagena wanted to speak about the Falklands, the first launching into a tirade against Mrs Kirchner, and the second asking if I’d ever been there.  I side-stepped that one by saying that I’d done Iraq and Afghanistan, while the Falklands War was my father’s generation, and he was happy to leave it at that.

I thought Argentina was an incredible country and I really enjoyed my time there, and I really like the people.  I will also always support 'Los Pumas' when they're playing against Australia, New Zealand or South Africa.  It is just a shame they have this obsession about a bunch of rocks.  If they really wanted them, they’d be better off, rather than periodically blockading and buggering around the Falklands population, actually offering them incentives to come to Argentina and integrate.  This could be via free healthcare, free university or even just playing rugby as that will be the most likely common ground.  If I was an 18 year old ‘Benny’ (as the Army charmingly call Falkland Islanders) and I had the choice of paying thousands of pounds to go to university in England, or getting it for free in BA, I know where I’d chose.  However common sense does not appear to be very much in the thought process of Argentine politicians any more than it is with ours, so I’m sure something will flare up again at some point.