Shortly after 2030 hours, we began to drop off the high ground to avoid the slab-sided razor-back edges that formed the crest lines of most of the unmarked ridges of West Falkland. A slight right hook took us below the craggy crest. As we gained the lower slopes, we began to cross extensive stone runs, cursing under our breath as we scrambled across huge slabs of rock covered with wet, slippery lichen.
We reached the final rockfall that overlooked our objective at 2130 hours. It was a perfect position for a linear ambush. The high ground we were standing on was covered in quartzite blocks in all shapes and sizes, running in narrow parallel lines hundreds of metres long. The bleak hillside fell away sharply into a grass-covered valley bottom. The huge open space was ideal for a drop zone. It was also ideal for a killing ground.
After a short, silent pause for a tactical shake-out, forty heavily armed men wormed their way into ambush positions in the rock run. The only noise was the occasional clink of stone, the rustle of equipment, a stifled cough. No orders were given. We had all studied the plan. We all knew that each man was preparing his firing position, choosing his arc of fire, unsplaying grenade pins, going over the ‘ambush sprung’ signals in his mind.
We hid silently in the security of the rocks: bodies and minds alert, eyes and ears straining for the slightest sign of movement, trigger fingers resting along trigger guards, safety-catches off. Moonglow clouds scudded soundlessly across the night sky while the icy chill crept slowly through the camouflage material into our immobile limbs. The silence in the valley was intense, overpowering, as still and deep as the voiceless hush of a post-explosion shock. The long cold wait took us well past midnight, past the estimated drop time, past the point where the moonlight was at its brightest before beginning to fade. I unzipped my Gore-Tex jacket, pulled out the para-cord necklace around my neck and looked at the luminous dial of my G10 watch. It was 3.30am.
Time passed slowly through the hours of uncertainty. Gradually the moon and stars disappeared and the cold, clear darkness gave way to the grey damp of dawn. And still we waited, tense, shivering, the tiredness clinging to our limbs, like ivy entwining a dying tree. The first misty glimmer of daybreak broke into a bright, frosty morning. We lay motionless for a further hour until finally the ‘ambush scrubbed’ signal was passed down the line, Tommy, a part-time poacher, was totally in his element, lying a few feet away looking as if he was sizing up a salmon pool on the River Dee. He seemed disappointed, depressed almost, as he made a cutting motion across his throat with the index finger of his left hand. Another lemon!
Throughout the long day we remained hidden, with only our GoreTex bivvy bags as protection against the bitter cold. Above us, unidentified high-flying jets sliced through the tight blue of the sky trailing thin vapour scars, red-edged and inflamed in the rays of the low-lying winter sun. We were all conscious of how exposed, how cut off from the rest of the task force we had become. We were on hard routine: no eating, no brewing, no talking, no nothing. We went to extreme lengths to ensure that no small sound or movement would betray our presence to the enemy. Our exhausted minds lengthened the seconds into minutes, the minutes into hours. There were periods when even the turn of the globe seemed frozen still. Finally darkness came, and with it – the relief was immeasurable – the clattering sound of the Sea Kings coming to take us back to base.
We returned to the Sir Lancelot. The old tub had been hit on the morning of 24 May by Skyhawks and abandoned with two unexploded bombs aboard. The bombs had crashed straight through the steel-plate decking, leaving gaping holes, and burrowed deep into the bowels of the ship like maggots through cheese. A naval bomb-disposal team had finally removed the bombs the week before the linear ambush and it now made an excellent base for an SAS QRF. Covert teams could now move at a minute’s notice to locations on East or West Falkland.
Over the next few days we undertook several clandestine, precisely targeted operations. Like acupuncture needles stimulating the flow of energy through the body, our activities quickened the pulse of war and hastened the drive for victory. Tumbledown fell. Two Sisters fell. The Gurkhas took control of Mount William. It was during one of our secret sorties that the radio burst into life: ‘The white flag is flying over Port Stanley.’ Endgame! The Argies had surrendered.
We made our way to Stanley to take part in the celebrations. The first thing we saw at the airfield gates were the prisoners. Now that the big guns had fallen silent, a vast army of beaten, dejected but relieved men stood clustered around field kitchens waiting to be embarked on the Canberra, now anchored in Berkeley Sound. They were dazed, tired and starving. Their combat fatigues were thick with congealed mud that looked like the solidified dribbles of wax down the sides of restaurant candle bottles. Some were draped in rain-soaked blankets and ponchos as protection against the southerly gales blowing across the peninsula from the Antarctic.
Huge piles of discarded weapons and helmets lay rusting in the damp air. Only the officers had been allowed to keep their 9-milly Browning pistols – to protect themselves from their own men. They needed them. Some of the officers, besides handling the battle itself with a disastrous ineptitude that had cost many lives, had shot their own men in the legs to stop them running away when fortune had turned against them in the closing stages of the war.
I was sitting in the driving seat of an Argentinian Army four-wheeldrive Mercedes jeep on the tarmac outside Stanley airport control tower and terminal building. I had just dropped Tommy off to meet one of his contacts. Besides being a part-time poacher, Tommy, ex-Royal Engineers and a fugitive from D Squadron, was the best full-time scrounger in the Regiment. I stared through the jeep’s windscreen. A blustering wind teased fibres of rain from the dirty fleece of cloud that hung low over the desolate scene before me. Over at the air terminal, the walls of the buildings were pockmarked by hundreds of bullet holes and cannon-shell hits. The broken windows were boarded over against the bitter cold. Across the airfield the litter of war was strewn: ragged tents, burnt-out skeletons of vehicles, Pucará bombers upended and devastated by Harrier cannon fire. When I was a small boy, my father had told me of his experiences on the beaches at Dunkirk, and I imagined that this was what it must have looked like.
I was just watching a glint of metal in the sky that must have been a Harrier making a return flight to one of the task force’s aircraft carriers, when the sound of Tommy heaving himself into the passenger seat made me turn my head. ‘Get what you came for?’ I asked briefly.
‘Yep. I got the name of the ship that provides the booze.’
‘Did you get the name of the contact men?’
‘It’s all arranged. We’ll pick up the stuff tomorrow. I’m going to turn the Ross Road Guest House into the best-stocked drinking den in town.’
‘OK, are you hot to trot? We’ve got to meet Alastair in the Upland Goose in a couple of hours.’ I started the Mercedes engine and engaged first gear, and the jeep leapt into motion. We drove through the chaos and shambles and out through the main gate of the airport.
A few yards down the road, I pulled up at a huge pile of Argentinianmade 7.62mm FN rifles with folding butts. I lifted one off the pile and worked the cocking handle a few times to make sure it was clear. ‘Throw it back,’ said Tommy in his broad Scottish accent. ‘You’ll never get it past Ascension. And besides, the Argies have removed all the firing pins.’
I quickly stripped the FN, and sure enough the firing pin was missing from the breechblock. I threw the rifle and its working parts back on the pile and we continued our three-mile journey back to Port Stanley. Driving along the metal road, we were aware of the mine problem. Every approach to Stanley and the airport was crawling with incorrectly planted minefields. Although the Argentinians had kept some basic charts and records, they were not very precise, with the result that one unit had often overlaid another unit’s minefield. A few own goals had been scored in the process.