LITMIR.BIZ

      Contents

      Title Page

      Dedication

      INTRODUCTION

      PART 1 FRIENDS AND FOES

      PART 2 WALKING, WAITING, SUFFERING

      PART 3 INTO HELL

      PART 4 AFTER THE BATTLE

      AFTERWORD

      APPENDIX

      Copyright

       Introduction

      THIS BOOK began life between April and June 1982, when I and thousands of other ordinary soldiers, British and Argentinian, met on the battlefields of the Falkland Islands. War is something we British have been used to for centuries. By contrast, Argentina is a relatively young nation and in its much shorter history it has fought few wars, suffering more from internal conflict than external.

      The Falklands war, by comparison with the two world wars and many much smaller conflicts, was a small-scale affair, but it was a war nevertheless. What is significant is that it was an undeclared war, the politicians preferring to use the word ‘campaign’. Calling it this does not alter the fact that hundreds of soldiers lost their lives and hundreds were wounded. And, as at the end of most much larger wars, a political regime collapsed – the military junta of General Galtieri.

      Some years ago I asked myself who the real winners of the war were. Was it the Falkland Islanders? They have their freedom again, but their life is hardly the same as it was before 1982. Or was it the British government? The Conservative Party undoubtedly won a second term in power largely through Britain’s military success, after which a wave of patriotism and a renewed sense of national unity temporarily swept aside the country’s economic troubles.

      Or were the victorious soldiers the winners? The soldier receives a medal and returns, often with difficulty, to peacetime life. He also has the sense of having done the job he is paid to do: to fight. But I believe that, in addition, he has the knowledge that he has served democracy, and in my view it is justified to fight in its defence as we did. Therefore it is ironic that, during a war waged against the suppression of democratic freedoms, those freedoms should be abused at home. The Falklands war was a heavily censored war – and a war that was heavily stage-managed through the media. Not only did faceless bureaucrats in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) monitor very carefully the British press coverage, but, as I noticed as soon as I returned home, the war was publicized in such a way as to appear completely clear-cut.

      At the time I could easily imagine the ordinary man or woman thinking: ah well, this business down in the Falklands doesn’t seem to have been too bad. And yet, with the perspective of time, it seems that the public weren’t totally hoodwinked by MoD censorship. For they donated millions of pounds to the relatives of the dead and injured. And that is what makes me feel proud to be IBritish. For me, winning the war is secondary to that feeling.

      But while the public cared, the government clearly did not, as is evident from the stories of some of the soldiers interviewed for this book. The nearest the ordinary citizen can hope to get to knowing the truth is to be related to a soldier who served in the Falklands, or perhaps even over a pint in a pub, with a veteran who chooses to reveal what the MoD wished to conceal.

      For a number of years now I have studied military history, and this interest brings me to the question of who writes the history of our wars. Usually it is either a professional historian, a politician, a journalist cashing in as soon as possible after a conflict, or a general writing his memoirs, in which he explains how he won the war. They will not have been in the thick of the battle. But if any of them has, by all means let him tell you the facts.

      The result of this ‘expertise’ is that the reader is left not much wiser about what soldiers are like or what actually happens in battle. The book you are about to read will, I hope, dispel some of this mystery, and present more than a few hard facts. The public lack of understanding of soldiering is something I see even more clearly now that I am back in civilian life. I am not saying that all the blame lies on the public’s side, for as often as not when a civilian meets a career soldier there is mutual misunderstanding.

      We have looked at how history is presented to us, and that is one of the main reasons for public ignorance of military matters. But the soldier himself is steeped in a culture that blinkers him to life outside the forces. He will talk with a sparkle in his eyes of the comradeship and deep friendship he finds in the Army, and of the structure the regiment gives to everything he does. A soldier fights not for Queen and country but for those friends he loves and respects, and secondly for himself.

      By this time the civilian is thinking to himself that this guy must be from Mars, or that he has been totally brainwashed. I can tell you that brainwashed he is not. What is talking is comradeship and a sense of discipline that is instilled in him from the day he becomes a soldier. Now, discipline is something that both sides should agree on, given its ever-faster erosion by a tide of crime and lack of respect for person and property.

      What form does military discipline take and what are its results? The British Army is famous throughout the world for its discipline. The civilian knows that much, but what is less well known is that an important element that sustains it is elitismelitism. Not the elitismelitism of the officer class, but the pride that regiments take in their own superiority. Each member of a body of fighting men is disciplined to preserve that sense of superiority – not, of course just to brag about it, but to demonstrate it by actions within the commonly agreed code of conduct.

      One of the great strengths of the Army is its cap-badge rivalry, its inter-unit competition. In the Parachute Regiment we refer to other regiments as ‘craphats’. The Royal Marines, although part of the Royal Navy, are also craphats, or ‘cabbageheads’, both names coming from the colour of their headgear. In general, anyone not in a red beret is a ‘hat’. Senior officers at the MoD are ‘heavy hats’.

      It is rivalry – nothing more, nothing less. Other units have names for us which I couldn’t possibly dignify by repeating here. However, I believe, like many of my comrades, that far too much emphasis was placed on cap-badge rivalry during the Falklands war. The blame for that lies firmly in the lap of certain senior figures who should have known better. As one of my former comrades says: ‘There are good hats. And there are very brave hats. The Parachute Regiment would not exist or be capable of carrying out all its tasks if it was not for the hats in support.’

      In fact the main obstacle in the path of today’s Parachute Regiment is senior members of the Army and the Ministry of Defence. They have never liked the elitism of units like the Paras, particularly in peacetime, and this attack on constructive rivalry affects many parts of the military machine. But when a war breaks out the faceless officials of the MoD suddenly start begging for military success and they want elitism without delay if it means securing their own jobs.

      In the present, probably short, period of peace these same mandarins are striking in another way at the very heart of professional fighting units like the Parachute Regiment. They have dreamed up a redundancy programme under which excellent soldiers are leaving a dwindling band of their comrades to fight a welter of red tape. The result is that the morale of those in the ranks is being sapped. But it is more serious still when we remember that it were not many decades ago that a British prime minister stepped off a plane bearing a piece of paper and spoke of ‘peace in our time’. The sad thing is that those officials in grey suits argue more passionately about

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