Death Before Dishonour - True Stories of The Special Forces Heroes Who Fight Global Terror

by Nicholas Davies

  The following morning the Marine on guard duty reported to Lieutenant Mills that he had seen another ship approaching South Georgia but had not yet been able to identify whether it was friend or foe. Mills flashed a message to Major Norman, the Royal Marine Commanding Officer on the Falklands, saying that he would keep him informed of developments. Norman learnt during that wireless communication that the Argentines had landed that morning not far from Port Stanley and the small force of Marines guarding the Falkland Islands was under serious attack from a large force of Argentine infantry.

  As the unidentified ship approached the Guerrico, however, the Argentine frigate made no move and the Marines were certain that the ship steaming towards them must be another Argentine naval vessel. They were right. Within a couple of hours the Guerrico had been joined by an Argentine landing ship, the Bahia Paraiso. It was obvious that the Argentines meant business.

  Through their binoculars the Marines could see that the newly arrived ship was crammed with Argentine infantry. They were aware that the Argentines had first-class Special Forces of their own. One of their crack units was the Buzo Táctico, a Commando-trained assault company of the Argentine Navy with a formidable reputation as an elite fighting force. The Marines were fully aware that if the Buzo Táctico were to take part in a landing on South Georgia they would have their work cut out to defend the place.

  Indeed all the Argentine services – army, navy, air force and the coastguards – include Special Force units, which come under the umbrella of an organisation called Halcyon Eight. These units were trained in the 1970s by US Special Forces instructors and Israeli commandos to prepare for the counter-terrorism which Argentina feared so much because left-wing terrorist activity was taking place in many other Central American countries at that time.

  Shortly after the Bahia Paraiso had drawn near to the Guerrico a military helicopter took off and flew straight towards the Marines’ position. It was the opportunity Mills had been waiting for, as it allowed him to demonstrate to the senior Argentine naval officers on board the two ships that the Marines were in no mood to roll over and surrender. His men held their fire, enticing the helicopter to come ever closer to their position so that the crew could get a better view of the defences and maybe get an idea of the number of British troops defending the island. When the helicopter flew almost overhead Mills gave the order to fire and his men opened up with everything – rifles, light machine guns and their 66mm rockets – hitting it and bringing it down in the sea. There was tremendous jubilation among the Marines, but shock and horror among the watching Argentines.

  Yet Mills and his men were under no illusion that their tiny force could defend the island for long against such overwhelmingly superior forces and firepower, and he reported the situation back to headquarters at Port Stanley. The decision was taken that there was no point in sacrificing the lives of twenty-two Marines and risking the lives of the British men, women and children on South Georgia, who would also be dragged into the fighting. He was ordered to surrender.

  Meanwhile the desperate battle to defend Port Stanley continued. The Argentines had taken no chances. They had sent in some six hundred men of the 25th Infantry Regiment, plus the Buzo Táctico assault force. They had come ashore during the night of April 1–2 near Port Stanley in amphibious tanks, which were well equipped to cope with the medium machine guns which were the principal weapons the Marines had for defending the Falkland Islands.

  But the Royal Marines at Port Stanley were waiting as the Buzo Táctico launched its first ground attack, aiming to seize control of their barracks. As the Argentine Special Forces soldiers raced towards the barracks, throwing grenades and firing light machine guns, they were met by devastating fire from the Royal Marines’ medium machine guns in their defensive positions. The Buzo Táctico realised its battle plan had been too ambitious and withdrew to safe ground.

  The Argentines’ next plan was to capture the Governor-General and force him to surrender the island and order the British troops to lay down their arms or, if he refused, take him back to Buenos Aires. But the six Royal Marines who had been dispatched to protect the Governor-General and his family were in position as the Argentine snatch squad ran towards Government House. Highly disciplined, they waited until the snatch squad was in the open, running through the garden of Government House towards the residence, before opening fire, killing three of the attackers in the first burst. The other members of the snatch squad ran for cover and withdrew after a further gun battle in which no one appeared to have been injured or killed.

  When the attack began the Marines had some sixty men to guard Port Stanley against the Argentines’ six hundred infantry soldiers and the Buzo Táctico. At daylight they could see that landing craft filled with infantrymen were being ferried from Argentine ships standing at the entrance to the harbour towards the beaches around Port Stanley. The Marines had set up 66mm rocket-launchers to defend the harbour and these were constantly rocketing the landing craft in an effort to make them head back towards the Argentine ships.

  The Argentine forces were firing light machine guns and sub-machine guns as they made their way from the beaches towards the town. They were also hurling grenades left, right and centre, frightening the inhabitants, who had never experienced such an attack in the sleepy life they had always led.

  The Marines were now having to pull back to better defensive positions or risk being killed or captured. But they all realised that against such an overwhelming force they had little chance of victory once the Argentines had succeeded in securing one or two beachheads. Within hours of the original assault Major Norman knew that he would be forced to surrender or quit Port Stanley with his forces and make a stand in the rocky hinterland of one of the Falkland Islands.

  Norman discussed the position with the Governor-General, telling him that defending Government House to the last man would risk the lives of everyone in the building as well as putting at risk the lives of other Falkland Islanders. He was keen to withdraw his sixty men inland so that he might find a good defensive position which could then act as a beachhead for a future British force trying to wrest back the islands from Argentine control.

  The Marines were now fighting at a massive disadvantage, for the Argentines had something like twenty-to-one superiority over the small British force. Then, three hours after the surprise attack, the Governor-General ordered them to cease fire as he surrendered the island to the Argentine invaders.

  Back in London, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher viewed the Argentine invasion as a direct affront to the British people, the Falkland residents and the authority of the British government. She decided to take action despite the fact that since World War Two the British Foreign Office had quietly been suggesting through diplomatic channels that the Falkland Islands could one day be returned to Argentina. It had been further suggested that if Argentina did in fact move forces into the Falklands they would have to do so with the minimum of force and ensure that no casualties whatsoever would occur among the islanders. And that is what had happened, for no British soldier or islander was killed or wounded during the Argentine invasion. Indeed three months before the invasion the British military attaché in Buenos Aires had reported to the Foreign Office in London that the Argentine President, General Leopoldo Galtieri, intended to invade the Falklands, remove the small British force and reclaim the islands for Argentina. The diplomat even gave the exact date of the invasion. No one in London had taken the slightest notice of the warning.

  Margaret Thatcher, however, had not been privy to the reports flowing into the Foreign Office, nor to the Foreign Office’s diplomacy. She wanted the Falklands returned to British sovereignty immediately and for Argentina to withdraw all its troops and hand back authority to the Governor-General. The Argentine government refused and Thatcher decided that Britain would retake the islands by force.

  Initially, the military advice given to the Prime Minister by senior British military and naval commanders was decidedly
downbeat. They pointed out that the Falklands were thousands of miles from Britain in the middle of the South Atlantic, with no friendly countries or bases where British planes could refuel. They also pointed out the logistical nightmare of, firstly, moving sufficient numbers of assault troops to the islands quickly enough and, secondly, re-supplying and reinforcing them if these measures should prove necessary. It didn’t help that the Tory government had mothballed five Royal Navy frigates because, as they themselves explained, there wasn’t enough cash in the defence budget to pay the oil bills! Nor did the senior military officers believe that the Argentine Army would be a pushover.

  But Thatcher would hear none of it and resolved to press on with her decision to recapture the Falklands. To many it seemed that she was taking an incredible political risk, for failure would more than likely end in her being forced to resign as leader of the Conservative Party. Many were also of the belief that she was trying to emulate, in some small way, the achievements of her great hero, Sir Winston Churchill. In 1982 she had not yet stamped her authority on her own party, the House of Commons or the British electorate. That would come much later and it would be given a great push by the fact that she had had the courage to risk all to retake the Falklands Islands against considerable odds.

  But Thatcher was lucky that in the British armed forces, and in the Special Forces in particular, she had men of great calibre, ability and courage. She put her future in the hands of those men and they did not let her down, though there were times when she must have wondered whether she had made the right decision.

  The senior British commanders told her bluntly that there was no chance of a successful outcome to the suggested military operation without help from the United States. She talked to her new-found friend, President Ronald Reagan, who had only been in office some fifteen months, and initially he showed little enthusiasm for the idea. His State Department reported to him that Britain’s Foreign Office had for years been trying to find an amicable way of getting rid of the Falklands and permitting the Argentines to take over the place.

  At first Reagan tried to persuade Thatcher to drop the idea, but she would have none of it. Britain needed assistance in two vital areas to give the plan any chance of success. It had little knowledge of the current political nuances in South America, for since World War Two the Americans had taken the continent as its sphere of influence. And it had virtually no MI6 contacts in Argentina or its neighbours and would need to rely on America’s CIA for such assistance and information.

  More importantly, Britain would require military help from the United States. It would need air-to-air refuelling aircraft so that British warplanes could fly to Ascension Island, a British base in the Atlantic, refuel and then head for the Falklands. The British bombers had enough fuel for the flight south but not for the return. The only nation with sufficient refuelling aircraft was the United States.

  Britain also needed America’s help to ascertain the Argentine positions and defences on the Falklands – information which could only be provided by US spy planes. Britain had none. Without such aerial photographs, the naval and military planners would be at a severe disadvantage.

  Eventually, after much persuasion, Reagan agreed to help but insisted that if the British naval or military forces ran into trouble or faced defeat the United States would not come to their rescue. The buck would have to stop at 10 Downing Street.

  The British public were given little or no information about the extraordinary behind-the-scenes efforts that were being made by the civil service, the Ministry of Defence and the armed services to put the entire operation on the road as speedily as possible. The Special Forces demonstrated their state of readiness and speed of action faster than any other branch of the services. Within three days of Argentina’s invasion of the Falklands, 3 Commando Brigade, Royal Marines, had sailed from Portsmouth with the first elements of the Task Force.

  But it would fall to the Special Boat Service to take many of the honours in the first phase of the action. Twenty-four hours after the first reports of Argentine forces invading South Georgia, 42 Commando, SBS, who had just returned to Poole, in Dorset, from three months’ winter training in Norway, were put on standby and immediately moved to RAF Lyneham, in Wiltshire, where they boarded a flight to Ascension Island. Shortly after arriving there they were joined by SAS D Squadron, making a total force of some fifty men. Later they would be joined by M Company of 42 Royal Marines. Their objective – to reclaim South Georgia.

  In stormy weather and blizzard conditions three Wessex 5 helicopters, with forty SBS and SAS special forces on board, headed for Possession Bay. But as they reached the island they hit a wall of snow. Visibility dropped to zero and the three choppers had to return to the destroyer HMS Antrim. Three hours later they set off again and, after landing precariously on a glacier, the men managed to struggle out of the choppers with their three pre-loaded sleds.

  They managed to stay alive during that night but conditions had become intolerable, as they were suffering hypothermia and their sub-machine guns didn’t work in the intense cold. The Antrim sent helicopters to the rescue. However, shortly after picking up the frozen men the lead chopper hit a white-out and crash-landed at about forty miles per hour on the glacier. Everyone on board was thrown around, but no one was killed or even injured. The smashed Wessex was a write-off. Having ditched most of their equipment, the troops clambered on board the other chopper and set off once more. Again a white-out descended and the helicopter crash-landed on the ice at some seventy miles per hour, ending up as a tangled mass of metal. Incredibly, the troops crammed together inside, some thirty-two men, survived, though some suffered injuries.

  That night the men on South Georgia had to stay huddled close together in freezing conditions as the snow and ice closed in around them. They had hard rations, but by the morning some of the men were all but frozen. The other chopper waited for a break in the weather and then flew to South Georgia, landing near the smoke marker the men had sent up. The men clambered on board, leaving all their equipment behind. They made it back to the Antrim and somehow the chopper and the men survived yet another crash-landing on the deck. After three days of frustrating work in horrendous conditions, nothing whatsoever had been achieved.

  It was decided to abandon attempts to chopper troops on to the storm-lashed island from a distance. The ice-patrol vessel HMS Endurance, which had been operating in the South Atlantic for some months, sailed into Hound Bay before the SBS were airlifted in small Wasp helicopters on to the ice. Other SBS men took to the water in their small inflatable craft, fitted with powerful outboard engines, with the necessary stores, equipment and ammunition. Some hours later they made contact with each other and finally set off on their mission to find the Argentine troops, recce the place and report back to headquarters on board the Antrim.

  Their target was King Edward Point, where the Argentines were believed to be putting ashore more troops and supplies, but to reach that area would mean travelling some fifteen miles across glaciers and taking an eight-mile boat ride across Cumberland East Bay. And all this in horrendous winter conditions of blinding snow storms, white-outs, freezing temperatures and howling winds. When they arrived at the edge of the Bay they found the sea frozen over. The SBS team radioed the Antrim to no avail. They tried other radio frequencies in a bid to contact other Royal Navy ships in the area, but there was no reply. It was only later that the SBS learnt that all British ships around South Georgia had been ordered out of the area after British Intelligence discovered that the Argentine attack submarine Santa Fe was patrolling those seas. Unbelievably, no one had informed the SBS what was happening. Two days later it was decided to abort the SBS mission and the troops were airlifted off by the Wasp helicopters and returned to the Antrim.

  On April 25 it was decided that another SBS unit should make a further attempt to land on South Georgia with the same intention of getting as close as possible to the Argentine headquarters and relaying to the Antrim as
much information as possible.

  Having put the last SBS men on to South Georgia, the Wasp pilot Lieutenant Ian Stanley spotted the Santa Fe on the surface near Cumberland East Bay. He swooped on the submarine and dropped his six depth charges around the vessel. It seems they must have done sufficient damage to prevent the submarine diving beneath the waters. Wasps from HMS Endurance and a Lynx chopper from the frigate HMS Brilliant were scrambled and blasted the Santa Fe with missiles and machine-gun fire. The stricken submarine limped away.

  Of course, this assault meant that the planned element of surprise had been sacrificed, so the decision was taken to mount an attack as speedily as possible, before the Argentines had time to organise proper defences. All British Special Forces on the ships then around South Georgia were called together and ordered to carry out an attack a.s.a.p on the Argentine headquarters at King Edward Point. There were just seventy-five men, about one-third of the number of Argentines defending the HQ.

  During a break in the hellish weather, the British Special Forces contingent, bristling for a fight, were choppered on to South Georgia and made for Grytviken. When the small, elite band finally arrived on a mountain ridge overlooking the town they were stunned to see Argentine troops laying out white bedsheets, which would have been clearly visible from the air.

  In battle formation, the British soldiers set off for the town with their weapons at the ready, just in case they were walking into a trap. When they arrived they saw some two hundred Argentine soldiers formed up beside their national flag, as though on parade, and an officer stepped forward and formally surrendered. But the Brits were taking nothing for granted. The Argentine forces were ordered to lay down their weapons and these were collected by the British troops and taken to one side while the Argentine forces remained at attention. The British officers knew that they were still outnumbered and needed reinforcements to be airlifted in as quickly as possible. Those on board the Antrim and the other Royal Navy ships in the area were staggered that the small band of Special Forces men had accomplished their mission so quickly. More troops were immediately dispatched to Grytviken and news of the victory was flashed to London and passed on to 10 Downing Street. ‘South George Recaptured’, screamed the newspaper headlines.