In Stanley itself, the danger would be even more immediate. Here, the Argies had played really dirty. Grenades on one-second fuses, with their pins out, had been found hidden everywhere: under inverted teacups, jammed between bales of wool – just waiting for someone to lift the cup, to part the bales.
We moved on past the unmistakable signs of defeat scattered on either side of the road: 7.62mm FN automatic rifles, .45 American submachine guns, .50-calibre Browning HMGs and Argentinianmade GPMGs, all piled in great heaps; hundreds of combat helmets lying where their owners had abandoned them; vast quantities of boxed ammunition awaiting disposal; abandoned artillery positions – Italian-built 105mm howitzers that could throw a 95lb shell thirteen and a half miles – carefully concealed in their turf and peat bunkers; a land-based Exocet missile, complete with launcher and generator, parked on wasteland. And all along the windswept route, groups of unarmed Argentinian prisoners could be seen huddling like refugees around burning piles of rubbish or toiling slowly along at the side of the road.
Port Stanley. This small, neat town had, in the short space of time since the surrender, developed a massive traffic problem. Hundreds of vehicles were crammed into small streets. Land Rovers, trucks and Mercedes jeeps churned up a sea of mud. We turned right into Philomel Street and headed towards a line of brand-new French-built Panhard armoured cars. Clothes and loose ammunition lay strewn across the road. The detritus of war was visible everywhere. So was the damage of war. The demoralized Argentinians, avalanching towards defeat, had succeeded in turning the town into a disaster area. Houses had been broken into and looted, rooms left smeared with human excrement, fences chopped down for firewood. In Port Stanley West, where a seaplane hangar had been used as an Argentinian medical dressing station, amputated limbs had been tossed onto the roof of a shed inside the hangar and left to rot. Continuing on along Philomel Street, we passed shattered houses with gaping holes in their roofs, and the still-smouldering ruins of the Globe store, set on fire by rioting prisoners. We turned left into Ross Road, ignoring the large white direction arrows painted on the road – an attempt by the Argentinians to impose a drive-on-the-right policy upon the Falkland Islanders. We drove along the seafront, past houses with large red crosses on their roofs masquerading as hospital dressing stations, which had been used to stockpile ammunition.
We pulled up outside the post office. The Falklands are famous for their stamp issues. Philatelic sales account for about 14 per cent of the islands’ income. Every year they produce four or five attractively designed high-quality sets, which become much sought-after by collectors. Tommy, ever the wise old bird, had heard that a philatelic war between Argentina and Great Britain had been raging since 1936; and that on 5 April 1982, when the Argie postal staff took over the Port Stanley post office, they had taken the opportunity to give all waiting mail the Malvinas treatment. Stamps had been crossed through and envelopes marked with the special legend ‘9409 Islas Malvinas’. Tommy reckoned that if he could acquire some of these specially marked stamps they would be worth a fortune in years to come. A group of Gurkhas, well wrapped up against the cold, passed the jeep as Tommy jumped out of the vehicle into the mud of the street and disappeared into the post office. I watched the Gurkhas make their way down Ross Road to Government House, looking to see if I could recognize any of them from my training days in Hong Kong.
When Tommy re-emerged from the post office, he didn’t look too happy. He glanced quickly up the street, as if looking for an escaping intruder, before wrenching the jeep door open and jumping into the passenger seat.
‘Get what you were looking for, Tommy?’
‘No chance! The Ruperts were there before me. All I could get was the standard first-day issues. Come on, let’s get down to the Upland Goose.’
As we strode confidently into the Upland Goose, Des King the proprietor, a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown, looked up briefly from his defensive position behind the bar. His look blackened when he saw our green duvet jackets and ski-march boots. We ignored his verbal broadside and headed for the restaurant. Alastair McQueen, a reporter with the Daily Mirror and our host for the evening, had acquired the corner table commanding a good view of the whole restaurant, now full of Paras and Marines in camouflage clothing. Alastair was already seated with Big Fred the Fijian, Crocker, Stonker and Gary. We pushed past the drunken hacks at the bar, took our seats and awaited developments.
Alastair was the perfect host, regaling us with stories of his days on the Mirror, while quietly emptying the wine cellar of its stocks of champagne. We troughed our way noisily through a three-course meal, reminiscing about the events of the past three months.
Throughout the festivities, Gary remained quiet, even morose. Just as a second Drambuie arrived, he decided he had had enough of it all and curled up on the floor for a quick kip in front of the amazed hacks. Dave Norris of the Daily Mail, well tanked up by this stage and making a spectacular effort to stagger out of the restaurant, paused for a moment and gazed down on the snoring figure. ‘If there’s one thing I can’t abide,’ he hiccupped, ‘it’s drunks,’ and he delivered a swift kick into the backside of the sleeping Gary.
All round the room, knives and forks were quietly laid down. All conversation stopped. ‘Fucking hell, Norris, you’d better leg it!’ suggested Alastair helpfully to his fellow reporter.
The advice had come too late, Gary, as a testament to his training, sprang to his feet like a coiled spring and, scowling straight at Fleet Street’s finest, advanced menacingly. ‘Norris didn’t mean it,’ pleaded Alastair, ‘he’s drunk.’
‘Forget it, Gary,’ I shouted through the growing tension, ‘he’s just not worth getting upset over.’
Gary, awake and alert, his clenched fists relaxing slightly, glanced quickly around the silent bar. ‘Serves me right for kipping in a nest of vipers.’ And with that he walked calmly through the door of the restaurant and past the horrified Des King – who was by now definitely having a nervous breakdown – and disappeared into the darkness of Ross Road.
The conversation picked up again, just a murmur at first as people slowly digested the incident that had just taken place, then building into an excited babble, louder than before, as the onlookers began to work off the rush of adrenaline the scene had precipitated. But just as the festivities were getting into full swing again, I suddenly no longer felt part of the celebrations. I seemed to have stepped back from it all, as if I were in the room next door listening to the party through the walls. Twenty men lost! Twenty of the lads from D Squadron had been killed in one brief moment. It seemed so stupid and senseless – they hadn’t even come under enemy fire. Engine failure? A seagull sucked into the rotor blades? What did it matter? The result was still the same. Good friends had perished. I had played rugby with Taff Jones and Paddy O’Connor; I had served in Dhofar with Sid Davidson; I had worked in Northern Ireland with Phil Curass. The sadness was rising higher and higher. I needed another drink, and quick!
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