Falklands War: The Untold Story (2022) Movie Script
1
MARGARET THATCHER: The Government
has decided a task force will sail
once preparations are complete.
In April 1982, Britain sent nearly
30,000 young soldiers,
sailors and aircrew 8,000 miles
to the South Atlantic
to reclaim the Falkland Islands
after they were invaded by Argentina.
I hope you're all well.
I will be home soon.
The hard-won victory
would transform the nation.
I think the Falklands War was an
extraordinary military achievement.
We came back after that war
to a different sort of Britain.
But success wasn't guaranteed.
Speaking publicly for the first time,
the then commanding officer
of the SAS
reveals how close
the task force came to defeat.
They say it was down to ten minutes
that we might well have lost the
war.
Commanders and ground troops
talk candidly,
shedding new light
on flaws in the operation.
The whole command chain
was utterly dysfunctional.
Some claim that Goose Green,
the most famous battle in the war,
need never have been fought
and was a waste
of lives and resources.
They ordered us to attack
and capture Goose Green.
I mean, I thought it was
a stupid thing to do.
Lieutenant Colonel Jones.
And how a sudden change in
the plan for the land campaign
nearly lost Britain the war.
They were sitting ducks.
It was completely unnecessary
and, sadly, cost 200 casualties.
The truth certainly needs to be told
about some of the things that went
wrong. I mean, how did it happen?
With recordings of the negotiations
to end the conflict
uncovered for the first time...
RECORDING: ..is
prepared to consider surrender.
..and secret satellite
communications
from a British
undercover mission in Chile...
Without this information,
we would have lost the war.
40 years on, the Falklands War
is still giving up its secrets.
Everyone happy? OK.
Jan Christopher Koops is my name
and I was the second in command
the Prince of Wales' Company,
The First Battalion
of the Welsh Guards.
I was the captain of the rugby team.
We had an outstanding team,
one or two really standout players.
There was a chap called Di Graham.
Alongside him,
Clifford Elley and Andy Walker,
and I could probably name you
the whole squad
as we're sitting here now.
And we had just won the Army Cup.
It's a pinnacle of my,
well, my youthful life.
Shortly after that sweet moment
of success,
we heard the news
that the Argentinians had invaded
the Falklands.
AMERICAN REPORTER: It would appear
the sun has set
on yet another corner
of the British Empire,
this one far down
in the South Atlantic.
Argentina today invaded
and seized the Falkland Islands,
which have been under British rule
for nearly 150 years.
At two o'clock in the morning
I was telephoned by Jeremy Moore,
my boss, and he just said,
"Bring your brigade to short notice
and sail on Tuesday."
This was Friday morning.
I was at home
and the duty driver
knocked at the door and he said,
"You've got to get back into camp."
I say, "Why?"
He says, "The Argentinians
have invaded the Falklands."
And I'm thinking, "Falklands,
that's got to be in Scotland.
"Why would they attack Scotland?"
In 1982, Britain was unprepared
to launch a military campaign
to reclaim islands 8,000 miles away
that few could find on a map.
Previous year, we'd just really been
hit by the Nott defence review.
It was going to take away
our carriers,
our amphibious ships,
possibly even the Royal Marines.
And the discussion went along
the lines of,
"Really, really need a war against
somebody,
"just to show the country and the
politicians how good we are."
If the frantic diplomacy failed,
thousands of British troops would
need to launch
a land campaign on the Falkland
Islands to retake them.
The task was given
to 3 Commando Brigade,
3,000 Royal Marines backed up by two
battalions of paratroopers.
But first, the navy had to transport
them to the South Atlantic
and land them on the islands.
It was the biggest
amphibious logistical challenge
since D-Day. It was scary.
And time was short.
It would take at least seven weeks
to get a naval task force
to the remote islands.
And the South Atlantic winter
was less than 75 days away.
We knew that this was all
going to happen
8,000 miles from home,
which is an awful long way.
We knew that the weather was liable
to be dreadful.
In wars, things have a ghastly habit
of going horribly wrong.
In 1982, Michael Rose
commanded Britain's elite special
forces regiment, 22 SAS.
He's speaking publicly for the
first time about the Falklands War.
After 40 years, it's time
our full story was told.
In 1980, just two years earlier,
the SAS had become national heroes
when they ended
the Iranian Embassy siege.
But some at the top seemed reluctant
to use them in the new crisis.
After a couple of days of not
hearing from anyone,
it became apparent that
the Royal Navy had never heard
of the Special Air Service
and that we were not
on the Order of Battle.
We had to do what we normally do,
is make our own way.
I telephoned Julian Thompson.
Mike Rose, who I knew from
Northern Ireland days,
rang me up and said,
"Do you want us?"
I said, "Right, well, come on,
join the party."
100 SAS would now join the task
force on the journey south.
With their naval counterparts
in the Special Boat Service,
they would be inserted behind enemy
lines
to prepare for the main landings.
It wouldn't all be plain sailing.
We were badly equipped.
We hadn't got enough
of many things that we could expect
to have going to war.
It was all,
what's the expression, a lash-up.
That's a naval expression.
A very British lash-up was about
to be complicated further.
Overall command of
the task force
was assigned to the Royal Navy,
working from its headquarters
in a bunker
deep under Northwood in Middlesex.
Now, the trouble with Northwood
was that they were accustomed
to harassing Russian submarines.
Now, you can do that very happily
by radio,
sitting in a bunker in Middlesex.
But trying to run an amphibious
operation 8,000 miles away
is a totally different ball game.
It was a good decision that the
Royal Navy should be in the lead,
but what Northwood didn't do
was turn itself into
an integrated joint headquarters.
It had no military or air force
input. It was inevitable
that it was going to be a command
and control muddle from the start.
Admiral John Fieldhouse
would oversee operations
from the Middlesex bunker.
But instead of appointing
a single commander in the field,
the Navy appointed three.
Royal Marine Brigadier
Julian Thompson was in charge
of the land force
comprising 3 Commando Brigade.
Admiral Sandy Woodward
commanded the naval task force.
And Commodore Michael Clapp
directed the amphibious landings.
The whole command chain
was utterly dysfunctional.
Throughout, there was this feeling
of, "Who's in charge of this bit?"
We were never sure at any one point
who was driving bits of
the campaign.
We very nearly lost the war
because of some extraordinarily bad
decisions
that were taken by Northwood
with regards to the land battle.
There was one other choice
that would have a profound effect
on the campaign.
In 3 Commando Brigade's wake
would come a second force,
5 Infantry Brigade,
to provide reinforcements
after the landings.
It was made up of a battalion each
from the Welsh and Scots Guards
and the Gurkhas.
In April, it was put through its
paces
by its commander,
Brigadier Tony Wilson,
on a training exercise in Wales.
So I thought I'd better go
and have a look at this lot.
And my first impression was, "God,
what a bloody shambles this lot is.
"Surely they're not thinking
of sending them abroad
"to fight a real war."
We were sitting
in the Brecon Beacons
and the Brigade Commander
appeared and said,
"We're going to do
a brigade attack tonight
"and I want you to make the plan."
And we thought, "Hang on.
"He should be giving us the plan."
Brigadier Tony Wilson had come out
as so indecisive
and so incompetent in Wales
that they decided that he should be
removed from his command.
General Brammel,
who was the Chief of Defence,
overruled that decision
because he thought it would be bad
for the morale of the brigade
to have his brigadier removed.
Brammel told me that it was
the worst decision he had taken
in 45 years of soldiering.
And it was.
I would have sacked the Brigade
Commander then and there,
just on the evidence I saw
on this test exercise,
let alone what he got up
to when he got to the Falklands.
CROWD CHEER
When we sailed from Southampton,
suddenly everybody's waving
the Union Jack again
and suddenly all the jingoism,
it's all back.
It's back to Kipling
and standing there on
the quayside waving the flag
to go off and fight Jonny Foreigner
somewhere on
the other side of the world.
On board were the men who
would launch the initial landing,
the marines and paratroopers
of 3 Commando Brigade.
My name's Sulle Alhaji.
During the Falklands War, I was
a private soldier in 3 Para.
I thought, "When they hear
that we're going to come,
"they're just going to say,
let's go home."
But when this ship blew its horn
and we started to sail, I thought,
"Hang on, I'm probably
not going to come back."
In fact, I was convinced
I was going to die.
For years, the army had been mired
in the Northern Ireland Troubles.
The crisis gave them a chance
to fight a more conventional war
against an enemy in uniform.
# Oliver's Army is here to stay... #
All the way down, we kept getting
little news snippets
of what the politicians were trying
to do and head off this war.
We were hoping the politicians
weren't successful.
We were all sort of anxious
to sort of,
"Come on, let's get down
and get on with it."
You know, when I look back
now I think it was great, you know!
# Rule Britannia!
# Britannia rule the waves... #
As the task force headed south,
the SAS made a secret deal
with US special forces friends
to ensure they were equipped
with the latest hi-tech kit.
Before leaving England,
I got a call from Lieutenant
Colonel Lewis Burruss,
known to everybody as Bucky Burruss,
who was the Chief Executive officer
of Delta Force.
He said, "Michael, you're going to
need some things I've got here."
I said, "What are those, Bucky?"
He said, "You'll need
portable tactical satellites."
I said, "Yeah, I've seen you
demonstrate,
"they would be incredibly useful for
us.
He said, "I'm going to send you
eight or nine of those."
The new satellite phones
allowed Michael Rose to talk
to his commanders in the field
and his headquarters in
Northwood back in the UK,
using an American satellite channel.
What the Americans did
was allow us to use that segment of
the satellite.
The day the war ended,
the satellite was switched off.
With the British army still tapping
out
some of their battlefield
communications in Morse code,
portable satellite telephones gave
the SAS an invaluable advantage.
The tactical satellites we had been
lent by Bucky Burruss
was a personal loan to me.
There was a great pressure for me
to hand two of them over
to the MoD,
and I absolutely refused
to allow that to happen.
They had their naval communications
and I was not going to let them
interrupt my own communications.
The British were already facing
an enormous challenge.
The Argentinians had complete
control of the islands.
For Argentina,
the war was a diversion
from a vicious internal conflict.
John Shakespeare, my name.
I was at the British Embassy
in Buenos Aires.
My name is Nicholas Shakespeare.
I was in Argentina
as an adolescent.
The Argentine military dictatorship
were getting more and more brutal.
Military persecution of the young
and of anybody left-wing
was going on.
I mean, we now know that 30,000
people upwards were killed.
I think the armed forces felt very
contaminated
by what they'd done
to their population.
And I think they thought an external
adventure,
that would kind of purify them.
Britain was also shaken
by its own upheavals.
It's very hard to recapture
the sense of failure
that hung over Britain in
the late '70s and early 1980s.
We couldn't make cars that anyone
wanted to buy.
We couldn't make a washing machine
that was likely to work until the
end of its guarantee.
It was politically
a very divided time.
There were riots in many British
cities in the summer of 1981.
MUSIC: Ghost Town by The Specials
Polls showed
that Margaret Thatcher
was the least popular
prime minister since 1945.
Going to war was a high-risk gamble
for Mrs Thatcher.
So an early success was essential.
The first objective was
the recapture of South Georgia,
800 miles east of the Falklands
and part of its territory.
South Georgia was absolutely vital
to be taken quickly,
because it signalled
that we meant business.
A force including 150 marines
and 70 SAS troops who had joined
the taskforce on the way down
was assigned to retake
South Georgia.
The SAS seized the initiative
by planning a recce behind
enemy lines.
They wanted to land on a glacier
which was called Fortuna,
it's about 4,200 ft up
and it was a fairly
hostile environment.
It took three attempts
by three Wessex helicopters
to get the SAS troopers
onto the glacier.
The weather was really
quite atrocious,
very high winds up to 80 knots
and there was driving snow and rain.
We put the troops on the ground,
went back to the ship
and thought, "Thank God for that,
"we're not going to have
to do that again."
That night, we had
a hurricane come through.
It was a disaster.
Within 24 hours,
the 16 men had to be evacuated
in appalling weather.
It's really like flying down
the streets of Manhattan
in thick fog
with mountains either side of you.
Of the three helicopters
that took off on the rescue mission,
two crashed...
..fully laden with SAS.
All survived.
After Chris and his crew in
the remaining chopper
dropped off their load of SAS
survivors,
they had to return to pick up
the rest.
We put the survivors,
all 12 of them, in the back.
The aircraft only takes
four people.
And we were a ton overweight
and we had to wait for an 80 knot
wind to take off to give us a lift.
And I have to say,
a little bit of me was saying,
"I wonder how they're
going to explain this.
"We've just lost two aircraft
"and our first sort of attempt to
get on the island has gone badly."
When dear old SAS screwed up
on Fortuna Glacier,
had they lost a lot of people,
which they nearly did,
I believe it might have propelled
the Government into giving up.
Then luck and quick thinking
intervened.
We then picked up a high-powered
transmission from something.
Now, there aren't many ships in
the south Atlantic,
especially not that far south.
So we started thinking,
"Who is operating this type
of transmission?"
We went to have a look at it.
Ian, my first pilot,
said, "It's a submarine."
It was just breaking the surface
with its fin.
We ran in.
We dropped the depth charges
and the whole backend of the
submarine blew out of the water.
It totally transformed
the situation at South Georgia
because with the submarine out of
the way, it meant we could go ahead
and do almost what we wanted to.
Royal Marines and SAS went ashore
but before they could engage
the enemy,
HMS Antrim shelled
Argentine positions.
And they surrendered without
a fight.
Margaret Thatcher must have been
tremendously relieved.
It must have been the first moment
when she really felt her judgement
vindicated.
The White Ensign flies alongside
the Union Jack in South Georgia.
God save the Queen.
What happens next?
Thank you very much.
Just rejoice at that news
and congratulate our forces
and the Marines. Rejoice.
As Mrs Thatcher celebrated,
the SAS were planning
to insert patrols onto the islands
by helicopter
to prepare for the main landings.
But official reluctance to help
meant they had
to use their own initiative.
Admiral Woodward, at the planning
conference, asked me who I was
and what my contribution could be
which I told him
and he then said to me,
"Well, Michael, that sounds
absolutely wonderful.
"Please do the best you can", which
in fact were the only orders I got
through the rest of the war.
Unfortunately, his staff didn't pick
up on that
and give me the logistic support
I needed,
so I had to sort of wing it using
old contacts and common sense.
To get behind enemy lines,
the SAS needed the helicopters
of 846 Squadron.
The squadron commander,
I, by chance, had been at the same
school with him,
so we had certain things in common
and we found it very easy
to talk to each other.
Well, there was
a daily tasking conference.
I tended to take the brief
and then go and talk to Mike
and he would tell me what he
actually needed.
"Throw the rulebook to the wind,
get on with what we know is best,
"work together and let's win this
war."
And that's exactly what we did.
Three weeks before the invasion,
846 Squadron inserted special forces
using a new generation
of night vision goggles.
SAS patrols were flown
onto West Falkland.
Others were landed at strategic
spots on East Falkland,
overlooking Port Stanley,
at Darwin Goose Green to monitor
the Argentine garrison there,
at Bluff Cove,
seen as a potential landing zone,
and Mount Kent, ten miles from
the capital.
Ship right ahead on that bearing.
Ask sonar to identify each target if
we can.
One month after the crisis erupted,
the conflict escalated dramatically.
The British submarine Conqueror
sank the battle-cruiser Belgrano.
323 Argentine sailors were killed.
Retaliation was inevitable.
It's a right-hand ship.
It's a right-hand ship.
It's Sheffield.
20 British sailors died
after HMS Sheffield was hit
by an Exocet missile.
It was a sobering moment of, "This
is it, you know, it's started."
The loss of the Sheffield
highlighted the vulnerability of
the task force
as it closed in on the islands.
The manuals say that you should
not have an amphibious landing
unless you've got air superiority,
and here we are
without air superiority.
To help protect the fleet,
a secret weapon was needed.
It came in the form of
a wing commander
from the sales department
of the Ministry of Defence,
now speaking for
the first time about his exploits.
My job was to be totally covert.
Without this information,
we would have lost the war.
By sinking the Sheffield,
the Argentinian Air Force had proved
it could stop the task force in its
tracks. Something had to be done.
My name is Sid Edwards.
I was a wing commander at
the time of the Falklands War.
I was mowing the lawn in my little
house in the Thames Valley
when my wife threw
the kitchen window open and said,
"Darling, there's an air marshal
wants to talk to you from London."
I answered the phone and he said,
"How long will it take you
to get to Northwood?"
And I said, "About an hour, Sir"
and he said,
"Well, make it 45 minutes
"and I'll be there
at the main gate."
When Sidney Edwards met his boss,
Ken Hayr, at Northwood,
he was
offered an unusual mission.
There were more senior officers than
I have ever seen in my life
and then Ken Hayr said,
"Wing Commander Sid Edwards is
going to be going out to Chile."
That was the first time I heard
I was going to Chile.
And so I was a bit surprised,
to say the least.
For the first time,
Sid Edwards talks about his cloak
and dagger mission
to help protect the task force from
Argentinian bombers.
The cooperation I got in
Chile was absolutely first-class.
I was dealing with the Commander in
Chief of the Chilean Air Force,
working directly
with President Pinochet.
Britain, now in bed
with a dictatorship almost as brutal
as the Argentine junta,
negotiated access
to vital radar warnings
of impending Argentine air attacks.
I discovered that the radar cover
from Punta Arenas,
which is in
the south of Chile,
gave very good cover of
the Argentinian airfield
in the south of their country
and I thought that would be very
good
if we could get that information
as live as we could directly
to the fleet.
To pass this intelligence on
in time, an SAS team
armed with one of Bucky Buruss's new
portable satellite telephones
slipped into Chile.
Our soldiers,
using those satellites,
were able to give warnings
of Argentine aircraft
heading for the Falklands Islands to
hit the fleet.
And that allowed the Para
to be in position
when the Argentine air force
arrived.
So in a way, it was a war-winning
capability
that Bucky actually lent us.
Chile's secret contribution didn't
stop there.
Well, I was asked if we could base
a Nimrod intelligence gathering
aircraft in Chile.
I passed this request on to
the Chilean air force
and they said, "Yes, you may, but
you can't put it on mainland Chile."
So Sid helped put
the RAF spy plane
onto a Chilean island in the Pacific
to eavesdrop on Argentine
air movements.
Many of the skilled Argentine pilots
still got through,
but at least now there were warnings
of some of the raids.
I personally believe,
and it's been confirmed by people
with much more knowledge than me,
that without this information
we would have lost the war.
Argentine aircraft already on
the Falklands
also threatened the task force.
With invasion looming,
the SAS and 846 Squadron improvised
a daring raid
to take out a force
of Pucara aircraft.
How the raid actually came about is
revealed for the first time.
The Argentine Pucara
was an extremely capable ground
attack aircraft
and could do a lot of damage
to Julian Thompson's troops
moving in very open terrain.
So it was essential that we diminish
the numbers of Pucara.
There still remained eight
of them in Pebble Island,
and so Julian asked me if we could
destroy those.
The raid on the airfield on Pebble
Island
was initially vetoed by
Admiral Sandy Woodward.
To launch the Special Forces
helicopters,
vulnerable warships would have
to come within reach
of the Argentinians'
Super Etendard aircraft.
We persuaded Admiral Woodward by
talking about a radar
which we
suspected was on Pebble Island.
And so he became obsessed
with this radar
and said, "How can we destroy it?"
An SAS raiding party was
inserted near the Argentine base.
In a surprise attack,
with the support of naval gunfire,
11 aircraft were destroyed.
Afterwards, Admiral Woodward had
a burning question.
So when Admiral Woodward said,
"And what about the radar?",
"What radar?", said
the squad commander.
"There was never a radar,
we made it up."
I don't think he quite trusted us
after that.
After considering several plans,
task force commanders decided on
a landing in San Carlos Water.
From there they would attack
the capital, Port Stanley,
50 miles away.
Speed was essential - the South
Atlantic winter was looming.
Back in the UK,
the Welsh and Scots Guards
and Gurkhas who made up 5 Brigade
were ready to sail
a month after the first flotilla.
I think most people were surprised
at the two battalions that were sent
because both Guards battalions
had not really had an opportunity to
deal with the survival conditions,
you know, they were
going to face in the Falklands.
The Guards tell a different story.
We were fit, we were trained.
Psychologically,
we were prepared for it.
The battalion was in good shape.
Sailing with 5 Brigade
and its boss Tony Wilson
was Royal Marine General,
Jeremy Moore.
On his arrival in the Falklands,
Moore would assume overall
command of the land forces,
allowing Julian Thompson to focus on
the battles to come.
Before departing England, Moore was
questioned about his strategy.
Very senior British army general
said to him,
"So what are the plans for after
the landings have taken place?"
Jeremy Moore said to him,
"There are no plans."
He said, "Well, there have to be
some plans."
He said, "I shall decide what
the plan for onward movement
"from San Carlos water will be after
I've got to the Falkland Islands."
But he didn't get to
the Falkland Islands
until 30th May when it was
almost, the war was almost over.
In the meantime,
Julian Thompson
and his men pressed on
with their own strategy
for winning the war.
50 days after Argentina invaded
the Falklands,
British forces were finally poised
to attempt the islands' recapture.
$64,000 question is, day or night?
We decided we'd do
a night landing
because landing at night meant we
would be pretty well free
of the Argentine air force.
With the QE2 still steaming
to the South Atlantic,
the Royal Navy began landing
3 Commando Brigade
at San Carlos overnight.
But as dawn broke, men and supplies
were still going ashore
and the cruise liner Canberra lay
exposed in San Carlos Water.
It was the most beautifully clear
day you've seen,
it was absolutely
the worst type of weather
for being attacked by jet aircraft.
Suddenly, enemy air attacks came in
from all directions.
And I personally
was really frightened
because Canberra was stuffed
with ammunition and fuel.
And if we had actually been hit,
it probably would have been
a serious disaster.
There's no laughing or joking now.
The noise was
deafening, explosions.
It was terrifying. I can just
remember gritting my teeth.
Every muscle in my body
was locked tight.
REPORTER: The gun crews,
mostly 17 years old,
soon had more battle experience
than anyone else in the Navy.
They start shouting up on
the radio,
"Two hostile aircraft,
50 miles, five minutes."
Heart rate is getting faster,
mouth is getting drier.
The adrenalin is picking up now.
And these two Mirages come
screaming through.
They're literally at our eye level.
I'm just trying to put
a wall of lead down
ahead of the Mirage at the right
elevation so it flies through it.
So I'm chugging away.
And I can hear behind me
this sergeant,
he's jumping up and down like his
team's won the Cup.
The guy's going, "Yeah,
brilliant, you hit it, you hit it!"
I'm only 17 and here I am
on the bridge of the Canberra,
shooting at a fighter jet.
In four days, the Argentine air
force sank three British vessels
and damaged six others.
There was definitely
psychological wobble.
I think people were beginning
to worry
about how long the navy could
sustain losing ships
in the way they did.
The British ships suffered
heavy losses.
The ground troops landed unopposed.
It took six weeks to sail down there
and every day,
twice a day, I'd wax my German
paratrooper boots.
And I'd wrapped tape around the top
so water wouldn't get in the top.
And then I ended up in the water.
As I was walking I thought, "The
boots are good, the boots are good."
"No, they're not."
The water started coming in,
so I had wet feet from day one
and I was not a happy soldier.
British troops were now 50 miles
from Port Stanley.
But the small SAS patrol on
Mount Kent
was just ten miles from the capital.
Such an advanced position,
free of the enemy,
focused the minds of
the land commanders now ashore.
Mount Kent is rather like
the top of a stairway leading
down to Stanley.
It's the highest mountain
in the area.
And once you're up there,
it's downhill all the way.
So Mount Kent, to my mind,
was the key to this whole thing.
Julian Thompson
and Michael Rose wanted to act fast
and move troops up
to secure the mountain.
And we should have moved on
25th May,
four days after the landing.
From there, the British artillery
could shell all their positions.
But the advance to capture Mount
Kent was about to stall
due to the biggest logistical
disaster of the war.
I remember thinking and saying to
all my fellow officers,
"25th May is Argentina's
national day.
"It is inconceivable that they won't
conduct a big strike."
And we were all thinking
to ourselves,
"We've just got to get through until
sunset and things will be fine."
The biggest British supply ship,
Atlantic Conveyor,
moved in with a naval escort
to unload its cargo.
I have to say that I wasn't
aware
that Atlantic Conveyor
was coming in in daylight.
Unlike the Royal Naval vessels,
the civilian container ship
had no anti-missile protection.
When the convoy was attacked by
Exocet missiles,
the warships fired aluminium strips,
known as chaff,
to attract the projectiles
away from their targets.
But behind the wall of chaff
lay the Atlantic Conveyor.
And then we heard that Atlantic
Conveyor had been struck
by one, maybe two Exocets.
At the time we thought it was
criminal
that Atlantic Conveyor was brought
in before sunset on that day.
And even today, I don't know who
made that decision.
The ship's supplies were essential
to the land forces.
Four Chinooks,
a lot of Wessex helicopters,
all our combat supplies, rations,
tents
had all gone down
in the Atlantic Conveyor.
The whole game was changed hugely.
I remember thinking, "Oi-oi,
this is all getting a bit serious."
After the loss of five ships
and with 5 Brigade still
a thousand miles away,
the politicians back home
were becoming impatient.
Their attention was drawn
to the settlements of Darwin
and Goose Green,
the sites of an Argentine Garrison
and an airfield.
Margaret Thatcher was increasingly
saying,
"Look, we have to give something
to the people of this country
"to show what we're doing."
War is politics by another means,
isn't it?
So I sent for H and I said, "You're
now going to have to capture it."
"H" was Herbert Jones,
the commander of 2 Para.
We all called him H.
He was fiercely loyal,
he was fun to be with,
very proud of the battalion.
He was an absolute military fanatic
and he was a very good soldier.
The attack on Darwin Goose Green
to the south of the beachhead
meant delaying the move to Mount
Kent championed by Michael Rose,
good news for the 2 Para commander.
H Jones came running back saying,
"Ha, ha, you've lost your move
and I've got my battle back."
Well, it was an absolute shock
to me.
We were suddenly held up on our
main advance
and ordered to go
and attack Darwin Goose Green,
which was in quite
the wrong direction.
To go and attack off, the line of
march, an unnecessary target,
use up time, use up resources,
was completely nonsensical.
The plan was that they would have
taken Goose Green by first light,
but the light had started to come up
and I think things had ground to
a halt.
And this particular trench was
holding them up.
And he was not somebody who would
ask people
to do something he wasn't prepared
to do himself.
He was leading a platoon attack,
and as he approached the machine
gun position, he was scythed down.
That was taken where they
landed initially.
It was in his camera
when it was returned.
It's quite a precious photograph,
really.
20 paras were killed in that battle,
including my good friend H Jones.
Lieutenant Colonel Jones,
Captain Bush,
Captain James,
Lieutenant Burridge.
People say retrospectively
that it was a great psychological
blow to the Argentines.
But the psychological blow was not
nearly as great
as it would have been,
had artillery batteries from
Mount Kent been closing down
every single Argentine defence
position
with observed artillery fire.
With the advance on Port Stanley
delayed by
the assault on Goose Green
and as 5 Brigade prepared
to disembark in San Carlos Water,
the small SAS force on Mount Kent
was discovered by the Argentinians.
Because we hadn't moved
to Mount Kent
when we should have done on 25th
May,
the Argentines had already flown in
some special forces units
to knock us off
the top of Mount Kent.
Julian Thompson ordered marines from
42 Commando
forward by helicopter
to take Mount Kent.
We were hugging the ground,
the helicopter was thrown from side
to side.
Everything's in pitch black.
We were 60km into no man's land
here,
and we're going to be fighting for
our lives as soon as we jump off.
We pile out of the chopper
and there's a firefight
in progress
and tracers streaking all over
the place.
I was absolutely terrified.
I just huddled behind a rock
wondering at what moment
I'd meet my maker.
By the time we got there,
the Argentine Special Force were
almost up onto the ridge
from which they could have brought
direct fire
down onto the landing helicopters.
Then, as Julian Thompson said,
it would have been game over.
So it was down to ten minutes that
we might well have lost the war.
After a fierce fight,
the British drove off
the Argentinians from the peak.
We yomped right up to
the summit of the mountain
and through binoculars, we could see
the Argentines moving around.
For the first time, you thought,
"Maybe we are
going to win this thing."
We were in reach of Port Stanley.
We'd come all this way
and then suddenly
there was this little hamlet
with red roof houses
in the distance.
It made you wonder, "Have we come
all this way just for that?"
The capture of Mount Kent cleared
the way
for more marines and paras to move
up for the final assault.
But with a shortage of helicopters
from the loss of the Atlantic
Conveyor, most of them had to walk.
Everybody forgets how large
the Falklands are.
Taken together, the land mass is
the size of Wales.
The 3 Para and 45 Commando
were the only ones that walked
across the island.
It was about 90Ks.
We all had about 150lbs on our back.
The ground was terrible.
And if you stand on the tuft of
grass wrong,
you slide off
and you could snap your ankles.
And that was a march from hell.
It really was. It was so hard.
With Marines and Paras now advancing
across
the north part of East Falkland,
Julian Thompson and his team
still favoured a swift strike on the
capital.
But the arrival of Jeremy Moore
and Tony Wilson's 5 Brigade
at San Carlos put a stop to that.
I was about to give orders
for our attack
when I was told to move round to
the south, and I stopped it.
Moore proposed a new plan
moving 5 Brigade along
a separate southern route,
a so-called great leap forward,
allowing them to catch up
with the Marines and Paras.
Now scant resources would have
to be shared between two brigades.
I didn't for the life of me think
that I would have to look after the
logistics of 5 Brigade as well.
But I had to divide my very slim
resources
twice as much as before.
And I did get over and see the
commander of 5 Brigade
to try and bend his ear a bit.
And I came away empty-handed.
I think that's the probably as far
as I dared go.
We'll tell you everything that we
know at this time.
I'll also tell you what I intend
to find out
as soon as I may find it out
and how I intend to find it out.
And at the end of the day, well,
then you'll be right up to speed
totally in my mind
and you'll know
exactly what's going on.
Tony Wilson said,
"The intelligence
is going to be so good
"that you'll know the name of
the man in the trench opposite"
and we all thought, "Yep."
The only real intelligence we got
was off the BBC World Service.
And that bloody idiot
Wilson took it upon himself
to mobilise his brigade
and start moving along the South.
Crazy thing to do.
And I've long had my eye on moving
as far forward as I can get
so that I could get myself poised
for whatever comes in what you
might call the final phase.
And certainly,
Fitzroy and Bluff Cove
were two places that we particularly
wanted.
I perceived that Tony was engaged in
some sort of race
with 3 Commander Brigade
to get his chaps there first.
Thing about military setups is,
everyone thinks about their
own side.
Even people on your own side that
aren't part of you are the enemy.
Brigadier Wilson wanted 5 Brigade
to move quickly.
But there was little
transport available.
His first proposal met resistance.
John Crossland's
one of my favourite officers,
I love John Crossland dearly
because he's the sort
of complete rebel.
Tony Wilson wandered in and said,
"I want you to walk to Fitzroy."
And John looked up and said,
"Brigadier, are you pissed?"
Well, one of the principles of war
is to concentrate your force,
and we were spreading ours out
and it's like not having
enough marmite
to put on your bread
and butter in the morning.
If you start putting marmite on
the wrong things,
you'll end up with nothing
worth eating.
The idea that we should attack from
coast to coast
with inadequate combat
and logistic resources
and most of all an inability
to communicate
from the headquarters round
to the southern flank,
I was shocked when I heard
and I even tried to argue
with General Jeremy Moore,
who wasn't in a listening mode.
And it was the first time
I felt during the entire war
that we might actually lose this
war.
It was a very silly thing
to do in my opinion
because to start with,
the only way down there to take
supplies and people was by sea.
And it's a 17-hour trip round,
so you can't do it in darkness.
As 3 Commando Brigade consolidated
its positions around Mount Kent,
5 Brigade began their great
leap forward.
Most of the troops would
need to be moved by ship.
But without the knowledge
of other commanders in the field,
Brigadier Wilson decided to fly
2 Para to secure Fitzroy
by commandeering the last remaining
Chinook helicopter.
We shoved as many soldiers as we
could in that Chinook
and we kept cramming them in
and when they didn't fit any longer,
we literally booted them into
the helicopter and got them in.
My brigade recce troop
were on some high ground overlooking
Fitzroy about ten miles away.
And they saw a Chinook landing
in Fitzroy.
We assumed, because the Argentines
had Chinooks,
that it must be some
kind of raid.
And so we started to call down
an artillery strike
on the helicopter.
And the guns were being heaved round
from pointing that way
to pointing that way.
The senior gunner realised
that it actually might be our own,
so at the last minute,
the strike was called off.
So we nearly lowered a fire mission
regiment onto our own side
because we weren't kept in
the picture
as to what the hell was going on.
But 5 Brigade's troubles
were only just beginning.
By the evening of 7th June,
the final shipment
of Welsh Guards was being moved
to catch up with
the rest of 5 Brigade.
The only way to ferry them round to
the southern forward bases
was by ship from San Carlos.
This meant a 17-hour journey
on the unprotected vessel,
the Sir Galahad.
We were given a clear set of plans.
We would be taken around
under cover of darkness
and offloaded into Bluff Cove.
Things slightly altered. The medical
core was put on board the Galahad
to go round to come off at
Fitzroy. This delayed our sailing,
as a result of which there was not
the possibility
of offloading us in or around
Bluff Cove under cover of darkness.
By daybreak, Sir Galahad
and another supply ship
Sir Tristram were off Fitzroy,
still short of Bluff Cove.
250 Welsh Guards on board the
Galahad waited whilst ammunition,
a medical team and an anti-aircraft
unit were unloaded.
I remember that I thought we were
meant to be escorted
with some frigate or some ship
or something which weren't there.
That was a bit worrying.
We were quite shocked that the ships
were out there in the open,
somewhere where none of us expected
the campaign to have gone,
to tell you the truth,
in plain sight of an Argentinian
observation position
and also during daylight.
My concern is, why was it taking
so long unloading?
I spoke to the Commanding Officer.
I tried to urge him to get off.
They were sitting ducks and totally
open to Argentinian air attack.
He advised us to get off as
soon as we could,
which my immediate boss
understood.
Wanted to clarify orders
but at the end of the day,
we wanted to get ashore
as soon as we could.
REPORTER: The Skyhawks came in to
attack...
..and were out again, with our
gunfire chasing them too late.
LOUD BOOM
There's a massive explosion,
the whole ship rocked
and everything went sort
of instantly black.
There were a load of lads
burst through the door and they just
said, "The ship's been hit."
REPORTER: We knew nothing
until we saw the black smoke
billowing out of
the landing ship, Sir Galahad.
I was physically lifted up
and blown probably about eight
feet backwards.
You breathe in and you're breathing
in this toxic mess.
And you shout out to everyone else,
"Get down, get down on the floor!"
In that moment,
you are so vulnerable.
You just felt like a child
that's been completely...
..immersed in some
appalling experience.
We were now on our hands and knees.
We couldn't go back, because you had
guys coming in behind us.
You couldn't go any further,
it was just absolute pandemonium.
I remember turning round saying,
"We're done for, this is us."
There was a couple of lads
with their heads on fire.
Anyone that was in there
wasn't surviving.
It was just rounds coming at us.
Bombs.
We looked to see if there were any
more casualties
but I think anyone in there was,
was gone.
Just horrific, really.
I've never seen anything like
that before
and probably never seen anything
like that afterwards.
Every boat and landing craft
went out to help.
The unanswered question was,
why hadn't they been used five hours
earlier
to get the men off as soon as they'd
arrived?
There had been some incredibly
heroic acts
carried out by a number of
guardsmen
in the way in which they went
back into this blazing inferno
to try and help pull people out.
The way in which they came
together...
..to get themselves off that boat
was outstanding.
I think it needs to be recognised.
I mean, what were we doing tracking
a thin red line coast to coast?
I mean, how did it happen?
Had we rolled the attack on 30th May
when Julian Thompson felt he was
able to do it,
then of course we would have
probably won the war
in the next two or three days.
And we would never had to suffer
the awful losses that we did incur
by any other southern flank.
This great leap forward was
completely unnecessary
and sadly cost 200 casualties from
the attack on the Sir Galahad.
I was fortunate enough to be
the captain
of the Welsh Guards rugby team.
Unfortunately, on the Galahad,
we lost two really prominent members
of that side,
two outstanding members of that
side, in Cliff Elly and Andy Walker.
There hasn't been a day since
8th June 1982
that I have not remembered them in
some way.
32 Welsh Guardsmen lost their lives,
along with 11 other servicemen
and five crew members.
150 were wounded.
Despite the setback of Fitzroy,
the war still had to be won.
The advance on Port Stanley
was blocked by
a ring of mountain-top defences
and time was running out.
Admiral Woodward said
the he was unable to sustain
the carrier force at sea beyond
mid-June.
So in Wellington's words, it was
really a very close-run thing.
I've never been so cold in my life.
It was the wind chill.
But on top of that, every couple
of hours
you've got a torrential rainstorm.
Some people went without resupply
of food for three days.
The logistic shortfall
created by 5 Brigade
was a very significant effect on
us.
I can remember being
starving hungry.
We were making 24-hour ration packs
stretch to two or three days.
We were using water out of muddy
puddles. Very grim existence.
Boots simply were hopeless.
And trench foot became
an increasing issue.
In the morning when I looked at
my feet, I couldn't believe it.
They were, like, size 15,
they were massive.
The pain I was going through was
like someone had grabbed your foot,
got a needle, stuck it in and start
scratching the bone.
There was no danger
of being defeated by the Argentines.
There was a serious danger
of being defeated by exposure.
If we had to go on
for another two weeks,
probably things would
have been different.
The next day British forces began
the battle for Port Stanley,
attacking the mountaintop defences
around the capital.
Royal Marines prepared to attack
Mounts Harriet and Two Sisters
in night assaults.
3 Para's objective
was Mount Longdon.
The Sergeant Major, Jonny Weeks,
what a man, amazing man.
He give his speech, you know, and he
said,
"If you've got a god, perhaps you
might want to pray to them"
and "some of yous might not come
back."
He gave us the truth,
which is what we needed.
We knew we were going to go
into hell's gate.
We then set off and it was silent
and I could see Mount Longdon.
It was a silhouette, and it reminded
me of Scooby Doo
when you see
the haunted castle in a silhouette.
My skin was alive, it was prickly,
it was really weird.
As we got closer, I heard that
noise, the explosion.
Friend of mine, Brian Mills, stood
on a mine and he was in agony.
And then the whole world lit up.
It was pitch black.
The sky changed colour with
illuminated rounds.
It was just hell.
The guy who was just one foot away
from me
got shot in the eye and went down.
The guy was dead before he hit
the ground.
We were up fighting for a day
and a half
and then getting bombarded for
a day and a half. We couldn't sleep.
All of a sudden,
this flash went past my eyes
and I dropped down and I looked up
and I could see a sniper
taking a headshot at me.
A lot of the leaders had been
taken out
and we'd just pick our own battles,
basically.
We'd do what we trained to do.
We actually defeated the enemy
by using our initiatives
and fighting together.
I'll tell you who wins wars -
the troops.
Generals can make plans.
The responsibility for making it work
devolves very quickly down
to the lowest level.
In the battle for Longdon, more than
200 British and Argentine troops
were wounded and 50 killed.
After we defeated the enemy, we had
to then look after our dead.
It's only right and proper.
To pick them up and move them was
the worst thing I've ever done.
It actually is one of
the triggers for my PTSD today
because I keep seeing
a certain incident
where I had to remove one of our
soldiers' helmets.
And it wouldn't come off,
so I got told to kick it off
and when I did, I wasn't expecting
to see what I saw,
but that haunts me to this day.
After more desperate hand
to hand fighting,
the Scots Guards took
Mount Tumbledown
and 2 Para captured Wireless Ridge.
The British army had fought some
of its hardest battles
since World War II, but another
struggle for Port Stanley loomed.
The intention was that people would
move out from defensive positions
and go out to fight in
an offensive way.
To avoid a bloodbath
and heavy civilian losses,
the Argentine Commander,
General Menendez,
had to be persuaded their situation
was hopeless.
Michael Rose opened negotiations
and relayed them back to London
using the portable satellite phone.
RECORDING:
Listening to them now
after 40 years really makes the hair
go up on the back of your head,
hearing a sort of voice from 40
years ago
who did not know what the outcome of
the negotiations would be.
No one's ever listened
to them before.
This is me talking now, sitting in
the room opposite Menendez,
who had a sort of team of people.
Whereas Menendez was having to leave
the room and go to talk
to obviously President Galtieri
about what the next steps should be,
all I had to do if I needed
reassurance
or clarification of some point was
to pick up the telephone
and talk straight back to London.
And so I had the moral
and psychological advantage
during the negotiations from
the outset.
End of the war.
I have just heard that the white
flag is flying over Stanley.
ALL CHEER
It has taken 40 years for some
to reveal
what they really think
about key aspects of the war.
I mean, the truth certainly needs
to be told
about some of
the things that went wrong.
The Board of Inquiry
into the loss of the Tristram and
the Galahad
turned out to be a complete
whitewash by saying it was necessary
to open up a southern flank.
Actually, the opposite is true
by 180 degrees.
But that remains in
the public record today
that the southern flank was
essential
to the retaking of Port Stanley.
Wrong - it was not,
and it nearly cost us the war.
Lieutenant Colonel Jones.
The order to attack and capture
Goose Green,
well, it slowed
the whole thing down.
I mean, I thought it was
a stupid thing to do.
And we wouldn't have lost
so many people.
Maybe H would be alive today.
Corporal Hardman.
Corporal Sullivan.
These lessons do need to be learnt
so it does not happen again.
It's not about catching people out
and slagging people off or anything
like that,
it's about making the difference
in the future, isn't it?
The task force returned to
a rapturous welcome.
There were all these boats
and people and bands.
It was fantastic.
There was one unexpected cost
of the victory.
It is estimated that up to 28%
of those involved in close quarters
action suffered some form of trauma.
I was violent.
I was having fights with people.
I was getting into trouble.
I was doing things that were
just nonsensical,
things that I would never, ever
dream of doing now or before.
Totally changes your personality.
40 years on, it's a long time
but in many ways, it's no time.
I've got those families with me now.
I've got those guys with me as I'm
sitting here now talking to you.
They've been with me every day
of my life, and will be so.
And then wherever we go at the end
of life, I'll go and join them.
There we are.
It's the end of
the British stiff upper lip.
It would have been unthinkable
to a previous generation
of veterans
to talk about their
combat experiences
and in a way, it also indicates
a breaking down
of rigid class divisions.
I think the Falklands War
was an extraordinary
military achievement.
I don't think it is
just sentimentality
to say that we came back after that
war
to a different sort of Britain from
the Britain that we left.
And we discovered that even if we
weren't very good
at making motor cars, we could still
win
a jolly good little colonial war.
It was crazy, but it was wonderful.
So I went back to the Falklands in
2002 and we looked out,
the water was still,
and we just started crying.
It was uncontrollable crying,
with my shoulders rocking up
and down.
I've never felt like that before
like that in my life.
The last day, I got up
Mount Longdon
where the sniper took a head shot at me.
I just felt sorrow.
I'm so proud of what we did.
But the price of having
PTSD is quite a high price,
but I wouldn't change it.
It is what it is, you know.
And the thing is, I'm alive.
There's 23 of my colleagues
who are not alive,
so I have to live my life for them
and I do that every day.
MARGARET THATCHER: The Government
has decided a task force will sail
once preparations are complete.
In April 1982, Britain sent nearly
30,000 young soldiers,
sailors and aircrew 8,000 miles
to the South Atlantic
to reclaim the Falkland Islands
after they were invaded by Argentina.
I hope you're all well.
I will be home soon.
The hard-won victory
would transform the nation.
I think the Falklands War was an
extraordinary military achievement.
We came back after that war
to a different sort of Britain.
But success wasn't guaranteed.
Speaking publicly for the first time,
the then commanding officer
of the SAS
reveals how close
the task force came to defeat.
They say it was down to ten minutes
that we might well have lost the
war.
Commanders and ground troops
talk candidly,
shedding new light
on flaws in the operation.
The whole command chain
was utterly dysfunctional.
Some claim that Goose Green,
the most famous battle in the war,
need never have been fought
and was a waste
of lives and resources.
They ordered us to attack
and capture Goose Green.
I mean, I thought it was
a stupid thing to do.
Lieutenant Colonel Jones.
And how a sudden change in
the plan for the land campaign
nearly lost Britain the war.
They were sitting ducks.
It was completely unnecessary
and, sadly, cost 200 casualties.
The truth certainly needs to be told
about some of the things that went
wrong. I mean, how did it happen?
With recordings of the negotiations
to end the conflict
uncovered for the first time...
RECORDING: ..is
prepared to consider surrender.
..and secret satellite
communications
from a British
undercover mission in Chile...
Without this information,
we would have lost the war.
40 years on, the Falklands War
is still giving up its secrets.
Everyone happy? OK.
Jan Christopher Koops is my name
and I was the second in command
the Prince of Wales' Company,
The First Battalion
of the Welsh Guards.
I was the captain of the rugby team.
We had an outstanding team,
one or two really standout players.
There was a chap called Di Graham.
Alongside him,
Clifford Elley and Andy Walker,
and I could probably name you
the whole squad
as we're sitting here now.
And we had just won the Army Cup.
It's a pinnacle of my,
well, my youthful life.
Shortly after that sweet moment
of success,
we heard the news
that the Argentinians had invaded
the Falklands.
AMERICAN REPORTER: It would appear
the sun has set
on yet another corner
of the British Empire,
this one far down
in the South Atlantic.
Argentina today invaded
and seized the Falkland Islands,
which have been under British rule
for nearly 150 years.
At two o'clock in the morning
I was telephoned by Jeremy Moore,
my boss, and he just said,
"Bring your brigade to short notice
and sail on Tuesday."
This was Friday morning.
I was at home
and the duty driver
knocked at the door and he said,
"You've got to get back into camp."
I say, "Why?"
He says, "The Argentinians
have invaded the Falklands."
And I'm thinking, "Falklands,
that's got to be in Scotland.
"Why would they attack Scotland?"
In 1982, Britain was unprepared
to launch a military campaign
to reclaim islands 8,000 miles away
that few could find on a map.
Previous year, we'd just really been
hit by the Nott defence review.
It was going to take away
our carriers,
our amphibious ships,
possibly even the Royal Marines.
And the discussion went along
the lines of,
"Really, really need a war against
somebody,
"just to show the country and the
politicians how good we are."
If the frantic diplomacy failed,
thousands of British troops would
need to launch
a land campaign on the Falkland
Islands to retake them.
The task was given
to 3 Commando Brigade,
3,000 Royal Marines backed up by two
battalions of paratroopers.
But first, the navy had to transport
them to the South Atlantic
and land them on the islands.
It was the biggest
amphibious logistical challenge
since D-Day. It was scary.
And time was short.
It would take at least seven weeks
to get a naval task force
to the remote islands.
And the South Atlantic winter
was less than 75 days away.
We knew that this was all
going to happen
8,000 miles from home,
which is an awful long way.
We knew that the weather was liable
to be dreadful.
In wars, things have a ghastly habit
of going horribly wrong.
In 1982, Michael Rose
commanded Britain's elite special
forces regiment, 22 SAS.
He's speaking publicly for the
first time about the Falklands War.
After 40 years, it's time
our full story was told.
In 1980, just two years earlier,
the SAS had become national heroes
when they ended
the Iranian Embassy siege.
But some at the top seemed reluctant
to use them in the new crisis.
After a couple of days of not
hearing from anyone,
it became apparent that
the Royal Navy had never heard
of the Special Air Service
and that we were not
on the Order of Battle.
We had to do what we normally do,
is make our own way.
I telephoned Julian Thompson.
Mike Rose, who I knew from
Northern Ireland days,
rang me up and said,
"Do you want us?"
I said, "Right, well, come on,
join the party."
100 SAS would now join the task
force on the journey south.
With their naval counterparts
in the Special Boat Service,
they would be inserted behind enemy
lines
to prepare for the main landings.
It wouldn't all be plain sailing.
We were badly equipped.
We hadn't got enough
of many things that we could expect
to have going to war.
It was all,
what's the expression, a lash-up.
That's a naval expression.
A very British lash-up was about
to be complicated further.
Overall command of
the task force
was assigned to the Royal Navy,
working from its headquarters
in a bunker
deep under Northwood in Middlesex.
Now, the trouble with Northwood
was that they were accustomed
to harassing Russian submarines.
Now, you can do that very happily
by radio,
sitting in a bunker in Middlesex.
But trying to run an amphibious
operation 8,000 miles away
is a totally different ball game.
It was a good decision that the
Royal Navy should be in the lead,
but what Northwood didn't do
was turn itself into
an integrated joint headquarters.
It had no military or air force
input. It was inevitable
that it was going to be a command
and control muddle from the start.
Admiral John Fieldhouse
would oversee operations
from the Middlesex bunker.
But instead of appointing
a single commander in the field,
the Navy appointed three.
Royal Marine Brigadier
Julian Thompson was in charge
of the land force
comprising 3 Commando Brigade.
Admiral Sandy Woodward
commanded the naval task force.
And Commodore Michael Clapp
directed the amphibious landings.
The whole command chain
was utterly dysfunctional.
Throughout, there was this feeling
of, "Who's in charge of this bit?"
We were never sure at any one point
who was driving bits of
the campaign.
We very nearly lost the war
because of some extraordinarily bad
decisions
that were taken by Northwood
with regards to the land battle.
There was one other choice
that would have a profound effect
on the campaign.
In 3 Commando Brigade's wake
would come a second force,
5 Infantry Brigade,
to provide reinforcements
after the landings.
It was made up of a battalion each
from the Welsh and Scots Guards
and the Gurkhas.
In April, it was put through its
paces
by its commander,
Brigadier Tony Wilson,
on a training exercise in Wales.
So I thought I'd better go
and have a look at this lot.
And my first impression was, "God,
what a bloody shambles this lot is.
"Surely they're not thinking
of sending them abroad
"to fight a real war."
We were sitting
in the Brecon Beacons
and the Brigade Commander
appeared and said,
"We're going to do
a brigade attack tonight
"and I want you to make the plan."
And we thought, "Hang on.
"He should be giving us the plan."
Brigadier Tony Wilson had come out
as so indecisive
and so incompetent in Wales
that they decided that he should be
removed from his command.
General Brammel,
who was the Chief of Defence,
overruled that decision
because he thought it would be bad
for the morale of the brigade
to have his brigadier removed.
Brammel told me that it was
the worst decision he had taken
in 45 years of soldiering.
And it was.
I would have sacked the Brigade
Commander then and there,
just on the evidence I saw
on this test exercise,
let alone what he got up
to when he got to the Falklands.
CROWD CHEER
When we sailed from Southampton,
suddenly everybody's waving
the Union Jack again
and suddenly all the jingoism,
it's all back.
It's back to Kipling
and standing there on
the quayside waving the flag
to go off and fight Jonny Foreigner
somewhere on
the other side of the world.
On board were the men who
would launch the initial landing,
the marines and paratroopers
of 3 Commando Brigade.
My name's Sulle Alhaji.
During the Falklands War, I was
a private soldier in 3 Para.
I thought, "When they hear
that we're going to come,
"they're just going to say,
let's go home."
But when this ship blew its horn
and we started to sail, I thought,
"Hang on, I'm probably
not going to come back."
In fact, I was convinced
I was going to die.
For years, the army had been mired
in the Northern Ireland Troubles.
The crisis gave them a chance
to fight a more conventional war
against an enemy in uniform.
# Oliver's Army is here to stay... #
All the way down, we kept getting
little news snippets
of what the politicians were trying
to do and head off this war.
We were hoping the politicians
weren't successful.
We were all sort of anxious
to sort of,
"Come on, let's get down
and get on with it."
You know, when I look back
now I think it was great, you know!
# Rule Britannia!
# Britannia rule the waves... #
As the task force headed south,
the SAS made a secret deal
with US special forces friends
to ensure they were equipped
with the latest hi-tech kit.
Before leaving England,
I got a call from Lieutenant
Colonel Lewis Burruss,
known to everybody as Bucky Burruss,
who was the Chief Executive officer
of Delta Force.
He said, "Michael, you're going to
need some things I've got here."
I said, "What are those, Bucky?"
He said, "You'll need
portable tactical satellites."
I said, "Yeah, I've seen you
demonstrate,
"they would be incredibly useful for
us.
He said, "I'm going to send you
eight or nine of those."
The new satellite phones
allowed Michael Rose to talk
to his commanders in the field
and his headquarters in
Northwood back in the UK,
using an American satellite channel.
What the Americans did
was allow us to use that segment of
the satellite.
The day the war ended,
the satellite was switched off.
With the British army still tapping
out
some of their battlefield
communications in Morse code,
portable satellite telephones gave
the SAS an invaluable advantage.
The tactical satellites we had been
lent by Bucky Burruss
was a personal loan to me.
There was a great pressure for me
to hand two of them over
to the MoD,
and I absolutely refused
to allow that to happen.
They had their naval communications
and I was not going to let them
interrupt my own communications.
The British were already facing
an enormous challenge.
The Argentinians had complete
control of the islands.
For Argentina,
the war was a diversion
from a vicious internal conflict.
John Shakespeare, my name.
I was at the British Embassy
in Buenos Aires.
My name is Nicholas Shakespeare.
I was in Argentina
as an adolescent.
The Argentine military dictatorship
were getting more and more brutal.
Military persecution of the young
and of anybody left-wing
was going on.
I mean, we now know that 30,000
people upwards were killed.
I think the armed forces felt very
contaminated
by what they'd done
to their population.
And I think they thought an external
adventure,
that would kind of purify them.
Britain was also shaken
by its own upheavals.
It's very hard to recapture
the sense of failure
that hung over Britain in
the late '70s and early 1980s.
We couldn't make cars that anyone
wanted to buy.
We couldn't make a washing machine
that was likely to work until the
end of its guarantee.
It was politically
a very divided time.
There were riots in many British
cities in the summer of 1981.
MUSIC: Ghost Town by The Specials
Polls showed
that Margaret Thatcher
was the least popular
prime minister since 1945.
Going to war was a high-risk gamble
for Mrs Thatcher.
So an early success was essential.
The first objective was
the recapture of South Georgia,
800 miles east of the Falklands
and part of its territory.
South Georgia was absolutely vital
to be taken quickly,
because it signalled
that we meant business.
A force including 150 marines
and 70 SAS troops who had joined
the taskforce on the way down
was assigned to retake
South Georgia.
The SAS seized the initiative
by planning a recce behind
enemy lines.
They wanted to land on a glacier
which was called Fortuna,
it's about 4,200 ft up
and it was a fairly
hostile environment.
It took three attempts
by three Wessex helicopters
to get the SAS troopers
onto the glacier.
The weather was really
quite atrocious,
very high winds up to 80 knots
and there was driving snow and rain.
We put the troops on the ground,
went back to the ship
and thought, "Thank God for that,
"we're not going to have
to do that again."
That night, we had
a hurricane come through.
It was a disaster.
Within 24 hours,
the 16 men had to be evacuated
in appalling weather.
It's really like flying down
the streets of Manhattan
in thick fog
with mountains either side of you.
Of the three helicopters
that took off on the rescue mission,
two crashed...
..fully laden with SAS.
All survived.
After Chris and his crew in
the remaining chopper
dropped off their load of SAS
survivors,
they had to return to pick up
the rest.
We put the survivors,
all 12 of them, in the back.
The aircraft only takes
four people.
And we were a ton overweight
and we had to wait for an 80 knot
wind to take off to give us a lift.
And I have to say,
a little bit of me was saying,
"I wonder how they're
going to explain this.
"We've just lost two aircraft
"and our first sort of attempt to
get on the island has gone badly."
When dear old SAS screwed up
on Fortuna Glacier,
had they lost a lot of people,
which they nearly did,
I believe it might have propelled
the Government into giving up.
Then luck and quick thinking
intervened.
We then picked up a high-powered
transmission from something.
Now, there aren't many ships in
the south Atlantic,
especially not that far south.
So we started thinking,
"Who is operating this type
of transmission?"
We went to have a look at it.
Ian, my first pilot,
said, "It's a submarine."
It was just breaking the surface
with its fin.
We ran in.
We dropped the depth charges
and the whole backend of the
submarine blew out of the water.
It totally transformed
the situation at South Georgia
because with the submarine out of
the way, it meant we could go ahead
and do almost what we wanted to.
Royal Marines and SAS went ashore
but before they could engage
the enemy,
HMS Antrim shelled
Argentine positions.
And they surrendered without
a fight.
Margaret Thatcher must have been
tremendously relieved.
It must have been the first moment
when she really felt her judgement
vindicated.
The White Ensign flies alongside
the Union Jack in South Georgia.
God save the Queen.
What happens next?
Thank you very much.
Just rejoice at that news
and congratulate our forces
and the Marines. Rejoice.
As Mrs Thatcher celebrated,
the SAS were planning
to insert patrols onto the islands
by helicopter
to prepare for the main landings.
But official reluctance to help
meant they had
to use their own initiative.
Admiral Woodward, at the planning
conference, asked me who I was
and what my contribution could be
which I told him
and he then said to me,
"Well, Michael, that sounds
absolutely wonderful.
"Please do the best you can", which
in fact were the only orders I got
through the rest of the war.
Unfortunately, his staff didn't pick
up on that
and give me the logistic support
I needed,
so I had to sort of wing it using
old contacts and common sense.
To get behind enemy lines,
the SAS needed the helicopters
of 846 Squadron.
The squadron commander,
I, by chance, had been at the same
school with him,
so we had certain things in common
and we found it very easy
to talk to each other.
Well, there was
a daily tasking conference.
I tended to take the brief
and then go and talk to Mike
and he would tell me what he
actually needed.
"Throw the rulebook to the wind,
get on with what we know is best,
"work together and let's win this
war."
And that's exactly what we did.
Three weeks before the invasion,
846 Squadron inserted special forces
using a new generation
of night vision goggles.
SAS patrols were flown
onto West Falkland.
Others were landed at strategic
spots on East Falkland,
overlooking Port Stanley,
at Darwin Goose Green to monitor
the Argentine garrison there,
at Bluff Cove,
seen as a potential landing zone,
and Mount Kent, ten miles from
the capital.
Ship right ahead on that bearing.
Ask sonar to identify each target if
we can.
One month after the crisis erupted,
the conflict escalated dramatically.
The British submarine Conqueror
sank the battle-cruiser Belgrano.
323 Argentine sailors were killed.
Retaliation was inevitable.
It's a right-hand ship.
It's a right-hand ship.
It's Sheffield.
20 British sailors died
after HMS Sheffield was hit
by an Exocet missile.
It was a sobering moment of, "This
is it, you know, it's started."
The loss of the Sheffield
highlighted the vulnerability of
the task force
as it closed in on the islands.
The manuals say that you should
not have an amphibious landing
unless you've got air superiority,
and here we are
without air superiority.
To help protect the fleet,
a secret weapon was needed.
It came in the form of
a wing commander
from the sales department
of the Ministry of Defence,
now speaking for
the first time about his exploits.
My job was to be totally covert.
Without this information,
we would have lost the war.
By sinking the Sheffield,
the Argentinian Air Force had proved
it could stop the task force in its
tracks. Something had to be done.
My name is Sid Edwards.
I was a wing commander at
the time of the Falklands War.
I was mowing the lawn in my little
house in the Thames Valley
when my wife threw
the kitchen window open and said,
"Darling, there's an air marshal
wants to talk to you from London."
I answered the phone and he said,
"How long will it take you
to get to Northwood?"
And I said, "About an hour, Sir"
and he said,
"Well, make it 45 minutes
"and I'll be there
at the main gate."
When Sidney Edwards met his boss,
Ken Hayr, at Northwood,
he was
offered an unusual mission.
There were more senior officers than
I have ever seen in my life
and then Ken Hayr said,
"Wing Commander Sid Edwards is
going to be going out to Chile."
That was the first time I heard
I was going to Chile.
And so I was a bit surprised,
to say the least.
For the first time,
Sid Edwards talks about his cloak
and dagger mission
to help protect the task force from
Argentinian bombers.
The cooperation I got in
Chile was absolutely first-class.
I was dealing with the Commander in
Chief of the Chilean Air Force,
working directly
with President Pinochet.
Britain, now in bed
with a dictatorship almost as brutal
as the Argentine junta,
negotiated access
to vital radar warnings
of impending Argentine air attacks.
I discovered that the radar cover
from Punta Arenas,
which is in
the south of Chile,
gave very good cover of
the Argentinian airfield
in the south of their country
and I thought that would be very
good
if we could get that information
as live as we could directly
to the fleet.
To pass this intelligence on
in time, an SAS team
armed with one of Bucky Buruss's new
portable satellite telephones
slipped into Chile.
Our soldiers,
using those satellites,
were able to give warnings
of Argentine aircraft
heading for the Falklands Islands to
hit the fleet.
And that allowed the Para
to be in position
when the Argentine air force
arrived.
So in a way, it was a war-winning
capability
that Bucky actually lent us.
Chile's secret contribution didn't
stop there.
Well, I was asked if we could base
a Nimrod intelligence gathering
aircraft in Chile.
I passed this request on to
the Chilean air force
and they said, "Yes, you may, but
you can't put it on mainland Chile."
So Sid helped put
the RAF spy plane
onto a Chilean island in the Pacific
to eavesdrop on Argentine
air movements.
Many of the skilled Argentine pilots
still got through,
but at least now there were warnings
of some of the raids.
I personally believe,
and it's been confirmed by people
with much more knowledge than me,
that without this information
we would have lost the war.
Argentine aircraft already on
the Falklands
also threatened the task force.
With invasion looming,
the SAS and 846 Squadron improvised
a daring raid
to take out a force
of Pucara aircraft.
How the raid actually came about is
revealed for the first time.
The Argentine Pucara
was an extremely capable ground
attack aircraft
and could do a lot of damage
to Julian Thompson's troops
moving in very open terrain.
So it was essential that we diminish
the numbers of Pucara.
There still remained eight
of them in Pebble Island,
and so Julian asked me if we could
destroy those.
The raid on the airfield on Pebble
Island
was initially vetoed by
Admiral Sandy Woodward.
To launch the Special Forces
helicopters,
vulnerable warships would have
to come within reach
of the Argentinians'
Super Etendard aircraft.
We persuaded Admiral Woodward by
talking about a radar
which we
suspected was on Pebble Island.
And so he became obsessed
with this radar
and said, "How can we destroy it?"
An SAS raiding party was
inserted near the Argentine base.
In a surprise attack,
with the support of naval gunfire,
11 aircraft were destroyed.
Afterwards, Admiral Woodward had
a burning question.
So when Admiral Woodward said,
"And what about the radar?",
"What radar?", said
the squad commander.
"There was never a radar,
we made it up."
I don't think he quite trusted us
after that.
After considering several plans,
task force commanders decided on
a landing in San Carlos Water.
From there they would attack
the capital, Port Stanley,
50 miles away.
Speed was essential - the South
Atlantic winter was looming.
Back in the UK,
the Welsh and Scots Guards
and Gurkhas who made up 5 Brigade
were ready to sail
a month after the first flotilla.
I think most people were surprised
at the two battalions that were sent
because both Guards battalions
had not really had an opportunity to
deal with the survival conditions,
you know, they were
going to face in the Falklands.
The Guards tell a different story.
We were fit, we were trained.
Psychologically,
we were prepared for it.
The battalion was in good shape.
Sailing with 5 Brigade
and its boss Tony Wilson
was Royal Marine General,
Jeremy Moore.
On his arrival in the Falklands,
Moore would assume overall
command of the land forces,
allowing Julian Thompson to focus on
the battles to come.
Before departing England, Moore was
questioned about his strategy.
Very senior British army general
said to him,
"So what are the plans for after
the landings have taken place?"
Jeremy Moore said to him,
"There are no plans."
He said, "Well, there have to be
some plans."
He said, "I shall decide what
the plan for onward movement
"from San Carlos water will be after
I've got to the Falkland Islands."
But he didn't get to
the Falkland Islands
until 30th May when it was
almost, the war was almost over.
In the meantime,
Julian Thompson
and his men pressed on
with their own strategy
for winning the war.
50 days after Argentina invaded
the Falklands,
British forces were finally poised
to attempt the islands' recapture.
$64,000 question is, day or night?
We decided we'd do
a night landing
because landing at night meant we
would be pretty well free
of the Argentine air force.
With the QE2 still steaming
to the South Atlantic,
the Royal Navy began landing
3 Commando Brigade
at San Carlos overnight.
But as dawn broke, men and supplies
were still going ashore
and the cruise liner Canberra lay
exposed in San Carlos Water.
It was the most beautifully clear
day you've seen,
it was absolutely
the worst type of weather
for being attacked by jet aircraft.
Suddenly, enemy air attacks came in
from all directions.
And I personally
was really frightened
because Canberra was stuffed
with ammunition and fuel.
And if we had actually been hit,
it probably would have been
a serious disaster.
There's no laughing or joking now.
The noise was
deafening, explosions.
It was terrifying. I can just
remember gritting my teeth.
Every muscle in my body
was locked tight.
REPORTER: The gun crews,
mostly 17 years old,
soon had more battle experience
than anyone else in the Navy.
They start shouting up on
the radio,
"Two hostile aircraft,
50 miles, five minutes."
Heart rate is getting faster,
mouth is getting drier.
The adrenalin is picking up now.
And these two Mirages come
screaming through.
They're literally at our eye level.
I'm just trying to put
a wall of lead down
ahead of the Mirage at the right
elevation so it flies through it.
So I'm chugging away.
And I can hear behind me
this sergeant,
he's jumping up and down like his
team's won the Cup.
The guy's going, "Yeah,
brilliant, you hit it, you hit it!"
I'm only 17 and here I am
on the bridge of the Canberra,
shooting at a fighter jet.
In four days, the Argentine air
force sank three British vessels
and damaged six others.
There was definitely
psychological wobble.
I think people were beginning
to worry
about how long the navy could
sustain losing ships
in the way they did.
The British ships suffered
heavy losses.
The ground troops landed unopposed.
It took six weeks to sail down there
and every day,
twice a day, I'd wax my German
paratrooper boots.
And I'd wrapped tape around the top
so water wouldn't get in the top.
And then I ended up in the water.
As I was walking I thought, "The
boots are good, the boots are good."
"No, they're not."
The water started coming in,
so I had wet feet from day one
and I was not a happy soldier.
British troops were now 50 miles
from Port Stanley.
But the small SAS patrol on
Mount Kent
was just ten miles from the capital.
Such an advanced position,
free of the enemy,
focused the minds of
the land commanders now ashore.
Mount Kent is rather like
the top of a stairway leading
down to Stanley.
It's the highest mountain
in the area.
And once you're up there,
it's downhill all the way.
So Mount Kent, to my mind,
was the key to this whole thing.
Julian Thompson
and Michael Rose wanted to act fast
and move troops up
to secure the mountain.
And we should have moved on
25th May,
four days after the landing.
From there, the British artillery
could shell all their positions.
But the advance to capture Mount
Kent was about to stall
due to the biggest logistical
disaster of the war.
I remember thinking and saying to
all my fellow officers,
"25th May is Argentina's
national day.
"It is inconceivable that they won't
conduct a big strike."
And we were all thinking
to ourselves,
"We've just got to get through until
sunset and things will be fine."
The biggest British supply ship,
Atlantic Conveyor,
moved in with a naval escort
to unload its cargo.
I have to say that I wasn't
aware
that Atlantic Conveyor
was coming in in daylight.
Unlike the Royal Naval vessels,
the civilian container ship
had no anti-missile protection.
When the convoy was attacked by
Exocet missiles,
the warships fired aluminium strips,
known as chaff,
to attract the projectiles
away from their targets.
But behind the wall of chaff
lay the Atlantic Conveyor.
And then we heard that Atlantic
Conveyor had been struck
by one, maybe two Exocets.
At the time we thought it was
criminal
that Atlantic Conveyor was brought
in before sunset on that day.
And even today, I don't know who
made that decision.
The ship's supplies were essential
to the land forces.
Four Chinooks,
a lot of Wessex helicopters,
all our combat supplies, rations,
tents
had all gone down
in the Atlantic Conveyor.
The whole game was changed hugely.
I remember thinking, "Oi-oi,
this is all getting a bit serious."
After the loss of five ships
and with 5 Brigade still
a thousand miles away,
the politicians back home
were becoming impatient.
Their attention was drawn
to the settlements of Darwin
and Goose Green,
the sites of an Argentine Garrison
and an airfield.
Margaret Thatcher was increasingly
saying,
"Look, we have to give something
to the people of this country
"to show what we're doing."
War is politics by another means,
isn't it?
So I sent for H and I said, "You're
now going to have to capture it."
"H" was Herbert Jones,
the commander of 2 Para.
We all called him H.
He was fiercely loyal,
he was fun to be with,
very proud of the battalion.
He was an absolute military fanatic
and he was a very good soldier.
The attack on Darwin Goose Green
to the south of the beachhead
meant delaying the move to Mount
Kent championed by Michael Rose,
good news for the 2 Para commander.
H Jones came running back saying,
"Ha, ha, you've lost your move
and I've got my battle back."
Well, it was an absolute shock
to me.
We were suddenly held up on our
main advance
and ordered to go
and attack Darwin Goose Green,
which was in quite
the wrong direction.
To go and attack off, the line of
march, an unnecessary target,
use up time, use up resources,
was completely nonsensical.
The plan was that they would have
taken Goose Green by first light,
but the light had started to come up
and I think things had ground to
a halt.
And this particular trench was
holding them up.
And he was not somebody who would
ask people
to do something he wasn't prepared
to do himself.
He was leading a platoon attack,
and as he approached the machine
gun position, he was scythed down.
That was taken where they
landed initially.
It was in his camera
when it was returned.
It's quite a precious photograph,
really.
20 paras were killed in that battle,
including my good friend H Jones.
Lieutenant Colonel Jones,
Captain Bush,
Captain James,
Lieutenant Burridge.
People say retrospectively
that it was a great psychological
blow to the Argentines.
But the psychological blow was not
nearly as great
as it would have been,
had artillery batteries from
Mount Kent been closing down
every single Argentine defence
position
with observed artillery fire.
With the advance on Port Stanley
delayed by
the assault on Goose Green
and as 5 Brigade prepared
to disembark in San Carlos Water,
the small SAS force on Mount Kent
was discovered by the Argentinians.
Because we hadn't moved
to Mount Kent
when we should have done on 25th
May,
the Argentines had already flown in
some special forces units
to knock us off
the top of Mount Kent.
Julian Thompson ordered marines from
42 Commando
forward by helicopter
to take Mount Kent.
We were hugging the ground,
the helicopter was thrown from side
to side.
Everything's in pitch black.
We were 60km into no man's land
here,
and we're going to be fighting for
our lives as soon as we jump off.
We pile out of the chopper
and there's a firefight
in progress
and tracers streaking all over
the place.
I was absolutely terrified.
I just huddled behind a rock
wondering at what moment
I'd meet my maker.
By the time we got there,
the Argentine Special Force were
almost up onto the ridge
from which they could have brought
direct fire
down onto the landing helicopters.
Then, as Julian Thompson said,
it would have been game over.
So it was down to ten minutes that
we might well have lost the war.
After a fierce fight,
the British drove off
the Argentinians from the peak.
We yomped right up to
the summit of the mountain
and through binoculars, we could see
the Argentines moving around.
For the first time, you thought,
"Maybe we are
going to win this thing."
We were in reach of Port Stanley.
We'd come all this way
and then suddenly
there was this little hamlet
with red roof houses
in the distance.
It made you wonder, "Have we come
all this way just for that?"
The capture of Mount Kent cleared
the way
for more marines and paras to move
up for the final assault.
But with a shortage of helicopters
from the loss of the Atlantic
Conveyor, most of them had to walk.
Everybody forgets how large
the Falklands are.
Taken together, the land mass is
the size of Wales.
The 3 Para and 45 Commando
were the only ones that walked
across the island.
It was about 90Ks.
We all had about 150lbs on our back.
The ground was terrible.
And if you stand on the tuft of
grass wrong,
you slide off
and you could snap your ankles.
And that was a march from hell.
It really was. It was so hard.
With Marines and Paras now advancing
across
the north part of East Falkland,
Julian Thompson and his team
still favoured a swift strike on the
capital.
But the arrival of Jeremy Moore
and Tony Wilson's 5 Brigade
at San Carlos put a stop to that.
I was about to give orders
for our attack
when I was told to move round to
the south, and I stopped it.
Moore proposed a new plan
moving 5 Brigade along
a separate southern route,
a so-called great leap forward,
allowing them to catch up
with the Marines and Paras.
Now scant resources would have
to be shared between two brigades.
I didn't for the life of me think
that I would have to look after the
logistics of 5 Brigade as well.
But I had to divide my very slim
resources
twice as much as before.
And I did get over and see the
commander of 5 Brigade
to try and bend his ear a bit.
And I came away empty-handed.
I think that's the probably as far
as I dared go.
We'll tell you everything that we
know at this time.
I'll also tell you what I intend
to find out
as soon as I may find it out
and how I intend to find it out.
And at the end of the day, well,
then you'll be right up to speed
totally in my mind
and you'll know
exactly what's going on.
Tony Wilson said,
"The intelligence
is going to be so good
"that you'll know the name of
the man in the trench opposite"
and we all thought, "Yep."
The only real intelligence we got
was off the BBC World Service.
And that bloody idiot
Wilson took it upon himself
to mobilise his brigade
and start moving along the South.
Crazy thing to do.
And I've long had my eye on moving
as far forward as I can get
so that I could get myself poised
for whatever comes in what you
might call the final phase.
And certainly,
Fitzroy and Bluff Cove
were two places that we particularly
wanted.
I perceived that Tony was engaged in
some sort of race
with 3 Commander Brigade
to get his chaps there first.
Thing about military setups is,
everyone thinks about their
own side.
Even people on your own side that
aren't part of you are the enemy.
Brigadier Wilson wanted 5 Brigade
to move quickly.
But there was little
transport available.
His first proposal met resistance.
John Crossland's
one of my favourite officers,
I love John Crossland dearly
because he's the sort
of complete rebel.
Tony Wilson wandered in and said,
"I want you to walk to Fitzroy."
And John looked up and said,
"Brigadier, are you pissed?"
Well, one of the principles of war
is to concentrate your force,
and we were spreading ours out
and it's like not having
enough marmite
to put on your bread
and butter in the morning.
If you start putting marmite on
the wrong things,
you'll end up with nothing
worth eating.
The idea that we should attack from
coast to coast
with inadequate combat
and logistic resources
and most of all an inability
to communicate
from the headquarters round
to the southern flank,
I was shocked when I heard
and I even tried to argue
with General Jeremy Moore,
who wasn't in a listening mode.
And it was the first time
I felt during the entire war
that we might actually lose this
war.
It was a very silly thing
to do in my opinion
because to start with,
the only way down there to take
supplies and people was by sea.
And it's a 17-hour trip round,
so you can't do it in darkness.
As 3 Commando Brigade consolidated
its positions around Mount Kent,
5 Brigade began their great
leap forward.
Most of the troops would
need to be moved by ship.
But without the knowledge
of other commanders in the field,
Brigadier Wilson decided to fly
2 Para to secure Fitzroy
by commandeering the last remaining
Chinook helicopter.
We shoved as many soldiers as we
could in that Chinook
and we kept cramming them in
and when they didn't fit any longer,
we literally booted them into
the helicopter and got them in.
My brigade recce troop
were on some high ground overlooking
Fitzroy about ten miles away.
And they saw a Chinook landing
in Fitzroy.
We assumed, because the Argentines
had Chinooks,
that it must be some
kind of raid.
And so we started to call down
an artillery strike
on the helicopter.
And the guns were being heaved round
from pointing that way
to pointing that way.
The senior gunner realised
that it actually might be our own,
so at the last minute,
the strike was called off.
So we nearly lowered a fire mission
regiment onto our own side
because we weren't kept in
the picture
as to what the hell was going on.
But 5 Brigade's troubles
were only just beginning.
By the evening of 7th June,
the final shipment
of Welsh Guards was being moved
to catch up with
the rest of 5 Brigade.
The only way to ferry them round to
the southern forward bases
was by ship from San Carlos.
This meant a 17-hour journey
on the unprotected vessel,
the Sir Galahad.
We were given a clear set of plans.
We would be taken around
under cover of darkness
and offloaded into Bluff Cove.
Things slightly altered. The medical
core was put on board the Galahad
to go round to come off at
Fitzroy. This delayed our sailing,
as a result of which there was not
the possibility
of offloading us in or around
Bluff Cove under cover of darkness.
By daybreak, Sir Galahad
and another supply ship
Sir Tristram were off Fitzroy,
still short of Bluff Cove.
250 Welsh Guards on board the
Galahad waited whilst ammunition,
a medical team and an anti-aircraft
unit were unloaded.
I remember that I thought we were
meant to be escorted
with some frigate or some ship
or something which weren't there.
That was a bit worrying.
We were quite shocked that the ships
were out there in the open,
somewhere where none of us expected
the campaign to have gone,
to tell you the truth,
in plain sight of an Argentinian
observation position
and also during daylight.
My concern is, why was it taking
so long unloading?
I spoke to the Commanding Officer.
I tried to urge him to get off.
They were sitting ducks and totally
open to Argentinian air attack.
He advised us to get off as
soon as we could,
which my immediate boss
understood.
Wanted to clarify orders
but at the end of the day,
we wanted to get ashore
as soon as we could.
REPORTER: The Skyhawks came in to
attack...
..and were out again, with our
gunfire chasing them too late.
LOUD BOOM
There's a massive explosion,
the whole ship rocked
and everything went sort
of instantly black.
There were a load of lads
burst through the door and they just
said, "The ship's been hit."
REPORTER: We knew nothing
until we saw the black smoke
billowing out of
the landing ship, Sir Galahad.
I was physically lifted up
and blown probably about eight
feet backwards.
You breathe in and you're breathing
in this toxic mess.
And you shout out to everyone else,
"Get down, get down on the floor!"
In that moment,
you are so vulnerable.
You just felt like a child
that's been completely...
..immersed in some
appalling experience.
We were now on our hands and knees.
We couldn't go back, because you had
guys coming in behind us.
You couldn't go any further,
it was just absolute pandemonium.
I remember turning round saying,
"We're done for, this is us."
There was a couple of lads
with their heads on fire.
Anyone that was in there
wasn't surviving.
It was just rounds coming at us.
Bombs.
We looked to see if there were any
more casualties
but I think anyone in there was,
was gone.
Just horrific, really.
I've never seen anything like
that before
and probably never seen anything
like that afterwards.
Every boat and landing craft
went out to help.
The unanswered question was,
why hadn't they been used five hours
earlier
to get the men off as soon as they'd
arrived?
There had been some incredibly
heroic acts
carried out by a number of
guardsmen
in the way in which they went
back into this blazing inferno
to try and help pull people out.
The way in which they came
together...
..to get themselves off that boat
was outstanding.
I think it needs to be recognised.
I mean, what were we doing tracking
a thin red line coast to coast?
I mean, how did it happen?
Had we rolled the attack on 30th May
when Julian Thompson felt he was
able to do it,
then of course we would have
probably won the war
in the next two or three days.
And we would never had to suffer
the awful losses that we did incur
by any other southern flank.
This great leap forward was
completely unnecessary
and sadly cost 200 casualties from
the attack on the Sir Galahad.
I was fortunate enough to be
the captain
of the Welsh Guards rugby team.
Unfortunately, on the Galahad,
we lost two really prominent members
of that side,
two outstanding members of that
side, in Cliff Elly and Andy Walker.
There hasn't been a day since
8th June 1982
that I have not remembered them in
some way.
32 Welsh Guardsmen lost their lives,
along with 11 other servicemen
and five crew members.
150 were wounded.
Despite the setback of Fitzroy,
the war still had to be won.
The advance on Port Stanley
was blocked by
a ring of mountain-top defences
and time was running out.
Admiral Woodward said
the he was unable to sustain
the carrier force at sea beyond
mid-June.
So in Wellington's words, it was
really a very close-run thing.
I've never been so cold in my life.
It was the wind chill.
But on top of that, every couple
of hours
you've got a torrential rainstorm.
Some people went without resupply
of food for three days.
The logistic shortfall
created by 5 Brigade
was a very significant effect on
us.
I can remember being
starving hungry.
We were making 24-hour ration packs
stretch to two or three days.
We were using water out of muddy
puddles. Very grim existence.
Boots simply were hopeless.
And trench foot became
an increasing issue.
In the morning when I looked at
my feet, I couldn't believe it.
They were, like, size 15,
they were massive.
The pain I was going through was
like someone had grabbed your foot,
got a needle, stuck it in and start
scratching the bone.
There was no danger
of being defeated by the Argentines.
There was a serious danger
of being defeated by exposure.
If we had to go on
for another two weeks,
probably things would
have been different.
The next day British forces began
the battle for Port Stanley,
attacking the mountaintop defences
around the capital.
Royal Marines prepared to attack
Mounts Harriet and Two Sisters
in night assaults.
3 Para's objective
was Mount Longdon.
The Sergeant Major, Jonny Weeks,
what a man, amazing man.
He give his speech, you know, and he
said,
"If you've got a god, perhaps you
might want to pray to them"
and "some of yous might not come
back."
He gave us the truth,
which is what we needed.
We knew we were going to go
into hell's gate.
We then set off and it was silent
and I could see Mount Longdon.
It was a silhouette, and it reminded
me of Scooby Doo
when you see
the haunted castle in a silhouette.
My skin was alive, it was prickly,
it was really weird.
As we got closer, I heard that
noise, the explosion.
Friend of mine, Brian Mills, stood
on a mine and he was in agony.
And then the whole world lit up.
It was pitch black.
The sky changed colour with
illuminated rounds.
It was just hell.
The guy who was just one foot away
from me
got shot in the eye and went down.
The guy was dead before he hit
the ground.
We were up fighting for a day
and a half
and then getting bombarded for
a day and a half. We couldn't sleep.
All of a sudden,
this flash went past my eyes
and I dropped down and I looked up
and I could see a sniper
taking a headshot at me.
A lot of the leaders had been
taken out
and we'd just pick our own battles,
basically.
We'd do what we trained to do.
We actually defeated the enemy
by using our initiatives
and fighting together.
I'll tell you who wins wars -
the troops.
Generals can make plans.
The responsibility for making it work
devolves very quickly down
to the lowest level.
In the battle for Longdon, more than
200 British and Argentine troops
were wounded and 50 killed.
After we defeated the enemy, we had
to then look after our dead.
It's only right and proper.
To pick them up and move them was
the worst thing I've ever done.
It actually is one of
the triggers for my PTSD today
because I keep seeing
a certain incident
where I had to remove one of our
soldiers' helmets.
And it wouldn't come off,
so I got told to kick it off
and when I did, I wasn't expecting
to see what I saw,
but that haunts me to this day.
After more desperate hand
to hand fighting,
the Scots Guards took
Mount Tumbledown
and 2 Para captured Wireless Ridge.
The British army had fought some
of its hardest battles
since World War II, but another
struggle for Port Stanley loomed.
The intention was that people would
move out from defensive positions
and go out to fight in
an offensive way.
To avoid a bloodbath
and heavy civilian losses,
the Argentine Commander,
General Menendez,
had to be persuaded their situation
was hopeless.
Michael Rose opened negotiations
and relayed them back to London
using the portable satellite phone.
RECORDING:
Listening to them now
after 40 years really makes the hair
go up on the back of your head,
hearing a sort of voice from 40
years ago
who did not know what the outcome of
the negotiations would be.
No one's ever listened
to them before.
This is me talking now, sitting in
the room opposite Menendez,
who had a sort of team of people.
Whereas Menendez was having to leave
the room and go to talk
to obviously President Galtieri
about what the next steps should be,
all I had to do if I needed
reassurance
or clarification of some point was
to pick up the telephone
and talk straight back to London.
And so I had the moral
and psychological advantage
during the negotiations from
the outset.
End of the war.
I have just heard that the white
flag is flying over Stanley.
ALL CHEER
It has taken 40 years for some
to reveal
what they really think
about key aspects of the war.
I mean, the truth certainly needs
to be told
about some of
the things that went wrong.
The Board of Inquiry
into the loss of the Tristram and
the Galahad
turned out to be a complete
whitewash by saying it was necessary
to open up a southern flank.
Actually, the opposite is true
by 180 degrees.
But that remains in
the public record today
that the southern flank was
essential
to the retaking of Port Stanley.
Wrong - it was not,
and it nearly cost us the war.
Lieutenant Colonel Jones.
The order to attack and capture
Goose Green,
well, it slowed
the whole thing down.
I mean, I thought it was
a stupid thing to do.
And we wouldn't have lost
so many people.
Maybe H would be alive today.
Corporal Hardman.
Corporal Sullivan.
These lessons do need to be learnt
so it does not happen again.
It's not about catching people out
and slagging people off or anything
like that,
it's about making the difference
in the future, isn't it?
The task force returned to
a rapturous welcome.
There were all these boats
and people and bands.
It was fantastic.
There was one unexpected cost
of the victory.
It is estimated that up to 28%
of those involved in close quarters
action suffered some form of trauma.
I was violent.
I was having fights with people.
I was getting into trouble.
I was doing things that were
just nonsensical,
things that I would never, ever
dream of doing now or before.
Totally changes your personality.
40 years on, it's a long time
but in many ways, it's no time.
I've got those families with me now.
I've got those guys with me as I'm
sitting here now talking to you.
They've been with me every day
of my life, and will be so.
And then wherever we go at the end
of life, I'll go and join them.
There we are.
It's the end of
the British stiff upper lip.
It would have been unthinkable
to a previous generation
of veterans
to talk about their
combat experiences
and in a way, it also indicates
a breaking down
of rigid class divisions.
I think the Falklands War
was an extraordinary
military achievement.
I don't think it is
just sentimentality
to say that we came back after that
war
to a different sort of Britain from
the Britain that we left.
And we discovered that even if we
weren't very good
at making motor cars, we could still
win
a jolly good little colonial war.
It was crazy, but it was wonderful.
So I went back to the Falklands in
2002 and we looked out,
the water was still,
and we just started crying.
It was uncontrollable crying,
with my shoulders rocking up
and down.
I've never felt like that before
like that in my life.
The last day, I got up
Mount Longdon
where the sniper took a head shot at me.
I just felt sorrow.
I'm so proud of what we did.
But the price of having
PTSD is quite a high price,
but I wouldn't change it.
It is what it is, you know.
And the thing is, I'm alive.
There's 23 of my colleagues
who are not alive,
so I have to live my life for them
and I do that every day.