With the smell of singed eyebrows in my nostrils, I settled back in my chair. Another Last Supper was drawing to a close and the REMFs were on an all-time high with their next chant, ‘Jump-jet the Junta’. The troop was busy discussing Paul’s facial burns. The whole room vibrated with jingoism. But I was far from happy.
As the alcohol in the cocktails and the flaming Drambuies began to take hold, it helped tranquillize the negative thoughts that had invaded my brain since our departure from the UK. They say history repeats itself, and it seemed that the Head Shed were about to prove it. Back in the briefing room at the Kremlin in Hereford, they had outlined a plan to crash two C-130s containing a heavily armed B Squadron onto the runway at Port Stanley with the aim of bringing the Falklands War to a rapid conclusion. It occurred to me they were making the same mistake as Monty when he sent the Paras into Arnhem in an attempt to short-circuit the Second World War. As in the case of Arnhem, the Head Shed wouldn’t believe the intelligence reports presented to them. The airfield at Stanley was ringed by General Joffre’s Tenth Brigade, 7,000 fighting men, and, worse still, the 601 Anti-Aircraft Battalion equipped with surface-to-air missiles. Coming in to land with a full load of men and equipment, the C-130s – not the quickest of planes at the best of times – would have been slow and lumbering, sitting duck targets for the anti-aircraft guns. The Argentinian troops may not have been of the same calibre as the four divisions of SS Panzers surrounding Arnhem, but they were well armed, with plenty of reserve ammunition, and they were dug in.
At the end of the briefing, the Head Shed had asked a stunned B Squadron for any questions. Give me a blindfolded tightrope walk in a Force 10 gale any time, I thought. I decided to take the bull by the horns and give them the solution. ‘Put a conventional warhead on a Polaris missile, and send it onto the Argentinian mainland airbases that are servicing the Mirage III and the Super Etendards,’ I offered. The Head Shed were not amused, although Colonel Mike Rose conceded it might be an option.
To make matters worse, as a parting gesture prior to embarking on the coach taking us to Brize Norton, an Army Pay Corps sergeant, hovering like a death clerk, had been on hand to issue life insurance to anyone who didn’t have it. ‘Come on lads, this is your last chance. Sign on the dotted line.’ Valdez, that tower of Fijian strength – along with Laba and Tak one of the original three Fijians I’d met at Otterburn in 1971, who were to inspire in me a lasting affection and respect for that friendly South Pacific people – proved the only light at the end of the tunnel. As we settled into our seats on the coach, squadron morale soared when he fished out of his battered Barbour jacket pocket a faded copy of Rules for War, written in the early 1950s. A mischievous grin cracked his dark features as his index finger traced Rule 762: SAS troops are not suicide troops. As he replaced Rules for War in his pocket, I kept my fingers crossed he wouldn’t bring out a Ouija board to pass the time on the journey. I wasn’t superstitious, but the Ouija board and the death clerk would have made an ominous combination.
That had been the morning of 19 May. By 20 May we had arrived on Ascension Island and were about to receive the worst Regimental news since the Second World War: a chopper had gone down, killing twenty of the lads from D and G Squadron. Crocker read out the list of dead – fine soldiers all of them, and irreplaceable in terms of experience and expertise. A total of twenty-one soldiers – senior NCOs, junior NCOs, troopers and signallers – had been killed when the Sea King they were travelling in had crashed into the sea off the stern of the assault ship Intrepid. In a small regiment like the SAS, one death in the family causes ripples. To lose so many was a major disaster.
The sound of the riotous assembly brought me back to the present with a jolt. The REMFs had finally gone over the top and were in fine vocal form as they offered a grand finale to the snake pit: a cannibalized version of ‘Summer Holiday’:
As the singing reached a crescendo, I decided it was time to leave. Most of the troop had thinned out anyway.
‘Cos there ain’t no fucking trees,’ screamed the REMFs as I levered myself into the upright position, pushed the table to one side and picked my way through the smoke-filled bar. Cliff Richard would be proud of us, I thought, pushing through the exit door into the warm night air.
‘Come on boys, get your kit together. The trucks are outside. We’re going for it.’ The urgent voice cut through the alcohol-induced dream. I prised my eyelids open and attempted to focus on the blurred figure of the SSM.
My head thumped round like the centre hub of a helicopter’s rotor blade. I now knew why I had done selection and had been tested to destruction. I felt as if I was back on Sickener 1. My body ached and my mouth tasted like a gorilla’s armpit. The suicide mission had begun.
‘Get all the weapons and ammunition onto the trucks. We’re moving out immediately,’ repeated the SSM. The room burst into life as the squadron began rushing around packing their personal kit and getting ready to load the Bedfords. The short, sharp, shock – it’s one way of curing your hangover, I thought, as I glanced at my watch. It was just after 0500 hours.
We began checking weapons, priming grenades, breaking open liners of GPMG link, removing the M202s from their cardboard transit boxes. The thought of the 202 cheered me up – four 66mm incendiary rockets, box-mounted, operating from one trigger mechanism. We were anxious, raring to go, eager to get the job done. We applied green and black camouflage cream to our faces and pulled on our fighting order, heavy belt kits weighed down with 5.56mm ammunition and 40mm high-explosive bombs for the XM203. This was an Armalite with a single-shot, breech-loaded, pump-action grenade-launcher attached to the underside of the stock – hence the nickname ‘under and over’. ‘Thank Christ we’ve got these; now I don’t have to stand up to throw a grenade,’ I thought as I checked the quadrant sight, then depressed the barrel-locking latch and slid the barrel forward to check that the launcher was clear. Happy with the safety-check. I snapped the barrel backwards, the tube latch locking the barrel and receiver together.
I joined the line of squadron members moving purposefully towards the Bedfords parked on the road outside the basha. The REMFs singing ‘We’re all going on a summer holiday’ turned around my brain like a pig on a spit, but I wasn’t in the mood to burst into song. We pulled ourselves onto the Bedfords already jam-packed with kit and weapons, and made ourselves as comfortable as possible amid liners of 7.62mm link, bergens, cases of M202s and GPMGs. A famous First World War general once said that the machine gun is a much-overrated toy, but experience in the Dhofar war had taught us how vital it was. We made sure we took every GPMG we could lay our hands on. No wonder there was no room to move.
The convoy was now ready. It was just a matter of driving across the airfield and loading the waiting C-130s. The squadron fell silent, each man left to his own thoughts. This was the biggest operation the Regiment had been committed to since the Second World War. If B Squadron pulled this off, we could name our own medals. We were anxious for the success of the operation itself. Would we manage to land on the airfield at Stanley or would we be blown out of the sky by surface-to-air missiles? And if we did indeed land, would we be annihilated on the runway by the radar-controlled 35mm anti-aircraft guns used in the ground role?