by Stuart Slade
One regret Rafa did have was that his unit didn’t have any heavy weapons with it. A small detachment, they had left their 60mm mortars back with the main body of the unit in Grytviken. Those mortars would have been invaluable against the opposition they now faced. Still, even if they had wanted to bring them, the rough ground between their base and this position had precluded the option. This would have to be done the old way.
“How many are there, Sergeant?”
“Ten, perhaps fifteen?” Mateo Marcelo sounded confident, but he really had no idea of what the unit was up against. He wasn’t that interested in finding out either. He was much more in favor of gathering intelligence when he and his men were the only armed people around and he’d seen how surgically accurate the gunfire that had taken down one of his men had been. He didn’t really want to chance that.
Rafa had a shrewd idea that his Sergeant was more interested in saving his skin than carrying out the mission assigned to this patrol. That was an issue he would address later. At the moment, he had a more pressing concern. That was driving in the defenses of this observation post. First job would be to expand the front sideways and try to envelop the defenses ahead of them. “Marcelo, take three men and move off to the left. Find the edge of the British position and move around it.” And try, for once at least, to act like a soldier. “Everybody else, lay down grazing fire against the rocks up ahead. Pin the British down.”
SBS Unit, Penguin River, South Georgia
Sergeant “Dusty” Miller had an interesting problem on his mind. Would the Argies move left or right? After Stroud had taken down one of their men, they’d try and pull a flanker. He was sure of that. The question was, which flank? Right would take them to the camp more quickly; left would take them through easier terrain. Only, they weren’t sure that the camp was there, or if it was, exactly where it was located. Also, these were swimmer-commandos, not infantrymen. They weren’t used to fighting a killing match in bad ground. They are more used to raids on hide-outs and that, Miller guessed, is what they think they are doing here. He paused for a second, weighed up the balance and made his decision. Left. They’ll extend to their left. Straight into my loving arms.
His thought train was interrupted by a blast of gunfire from the Argentine positions. The sounds told him a lot. He could count two light machine guns and at least six rifles. That meant, what, ten men holding the baseline to the front. Plus their officer and the man Stroud had killed. So, four men or six pulling the flanker. Either way, it wasn’t good. Miller was the only man positioned to block them. That underlined a simple fact. There just weren’t enough SBS men to defend this position properly.
Movement in the rocks caught his eye and he looked carefully through the optical sight on his rifle. Four men. The magnification of the eyepiece showed him one of them shouting at the others. Fair enough. He took a deep breath, steadied himself and fired a short burst at the shouting man. Miller saw him start to go down but he was already rolling away from his firing position and moving to an alternate. Ironically, that one would put him in a slightly better position. He heard bullets hit the rocks around his old post, then he was nicely set up in the new niche. In front of him, the man who had been shouting was down right enough, but he was trying to drag to the cover of some rocks. Miller guessed the burst had hit him in the legs. Shooting slightly downhill was always complicated and he’d probably over-compensated. The three other men were hidden in the rocks, firing wildly at the area he’d been in a few moments before. One of them was only partly in cover; his head and chest were shielded by the rocks. What he didn’t realize was that Miller’s change in position had left his lower back exposed.
Miller took careful aim and fired another short burst. He wouldn’t be able to kill his target from this angle, but the shots would shatter the man’s spine and leave him pinned down. Better still, with two wounded men on their hands, the ability of the Argies to move and fire against him would be seriously reduced. So far, so good. Curled up in the rock field, he patted his rifle and started to shift to a third position. There was one thing troubling him. Every time he and his men moved, they were falling back on the base camp and that was not the way the battle had to develop.
Across the Rockfield that led to the sea beyond the Penguin River, Private Keith “Jocko” Gillespie had worked his way into a comfortable firing position. From his vantage point he could take the likely lines of approach under what the manuals called ‘a brisk enfilading fire.’ To do so, he had the light machine gun version of the L1A2 rifle. The L3A2 had a longer, heavier barrel, a bipod and a much more powerful optical sight than the L1. It still had the 20-round magazine though. Many older soldiers still preferred the Bren Gun with its larger, top-mounted magazine. Some Army units actually had them but the SBS hadn’t had time to ‘acquire’ any. In any case, Gillespie wasn’t one of those who hankered after the weapons of the past. He liked his L3 and appreciated its virtues.
In front of him, he could see that the Argentine advance was stalling. It hadn’t taken much. They’d lost one man certainly dead and two wounded, but few of the swimmer-commandos seemed keen to mix it with professional Marines. They’d laid down a lot of fire on the center of the presumed British line. That had probably forced the other two members of the unit, Harding and Meriwether, back. Stroud and Miller had also dropped back after they’d drawn blood. That left Gillespie as the only one in their original positions. It also meant that it would be his torn. With that thought, another movement in the icy rocks caught his eye. It was the shape of a man moving forward, probably trying to probe the British positions. Gillespie took careful aim and squeezed out a ten-round burst. The figure lurched and was still.
It was the extra size of his weapon and the length of the burst that killed Gillespie. They delayed his move from his firing position by a fraction of a second. That brief pause was enough to expose him to the counter-fire from the Argentine unit. The 7.65mm bullets raked his position, ricocheting of the rocks around him and sending splinters of rock and ice through the air. One of the ricochets hit Gillespie just above his right temple and exited through the nape of his neck. The tumbling and distorted bullet killed him instantly.
Field Exploration Camp, Penguin River, South Georgia
Georgina Harcourt gasped at the explosion of gunfire. It was one thing to go through the motions of handling a rifle and learning how to use it, quite another to hear the crackle of gunfire and know that the shots she was hearing were intended to kill. She was also a quick learner and could tell the difference between the ripple of light cracks from the British rifles and the heavier, rhythmic thudding of the Argentine weapons. There was a disturbing preponderance of the latter.
“Cynthia, it’s started.”
Across the hut, her companion nodded. The hut seemed strangely empty after accommodating seven people for so long. She started to say something but was interrupted by another barrage of rifle fire. This exchange was noticeably closer than the earlier one. It ended with something new; the blast of a grenade exploding. Both women looked down at the hand grenades they had been given, suddenly understanding the lethality of the heavy metal eggs. “We’d better get out of here.”
Georgina nodded and led the way out of the hut into the rocks that lay between it and the shore. Once outside and moving north, the noise of the fighting behind them was drowned out by the clamor of the hysterical penguins.
SBS Unit, Penguin River, South Georgia
Miller cautiously looked over the edge of his new position and tried to spot where the Argies were pushing forward. Everywhere was the answer that forced itself on him. He and his men had killed at least three and left two more badly wounded but they had lost two of their own in the process. Gillespie caught by gunfire and “Happy” Meriwether killed by a grenade. Odds that had started at eighteen to five were now thirteen to three. The problem was that the situation they faced was a nightmare for units like the SBS. Normally, faced with these kind of odds, they would disengage and sli
p away. Here, there was nowhere to slip away to and they were anchored in place by the two women. That left them very few tactical options.
Another blast of fire saturated a pile of rocks off to his left. The Argies were predictable all right. They would lay down a heavy blast of covering fire, then a few of their men would try and rush forward to seize a new position. Sound basic tactics but against the tiny handful of SBS men scattered in the rocks, the covering fire served only to give notice of the impending move. Sure enough, a group of six swimmer-commandos broke cover and tried to move up to another line of rocks. Five of them actually made it but the advance cost them the sixth. He was left sprawled over the rocks, the shining white of the rock disfigured by the flow of red down its sides. The odds were now twelve to three but the Argies had seized another few yards of ground.
Swimmer-Commando Team, Penguin River, South Georgia
Almost a third of his unit was dead or wounded. That alone made Rafa believe that he was up against a much more powerful force than he had originally thought. He now seriously questioned whether it would be possible for him to clean out this observation post the way he had been ordered to. There had to be at least a dozen or so British troops in front of him, probably the survivors of the garrison at Grytviken. Thinking about the damage those troops had inflicted on the Punta Alta, a dozen was the smallest number he could expect. Rafa did the calculations quickly. Assuming twenty or so troops had been in the small port, six had been killed there and probably two more here. That made a dozen sound right. It also meant that he was, at best, now equal to the defenders in numbers and might well be outnumbered by them.
It was time for another push forward. His remaining sergeant had picked out the most likely point for the British defenders to occupy. The blast of fire from the two machine guns sent tracers scouring into the rocks. A group of his men sprinted forward under its cover. As soon as they were in the open, the volume of fire from the guns suddenly slackened. That appeared to encourage the British. The rifle fire that greeted the assault team was much more intense than the isolated bursts that had been experienced to date. Rafa instinctively made the estimate. There were at least three machine guns firing this time and their effect was obvious. Four of the six men went down. Two obviously dead; two more still moving. The other pair scuttled back to cover.
Furious, Rafa wormed his way through the rocks to the position held by his men. That latest push might have been decisive if one of the machine guns hadn’t ceased fire he told himself. In the forward position held by his men, Rafa was met by his surviving sergeant. “Sir, you had better look at this.”
‘This’ was one of his machine gun crews. Both men were dead, neatly shot through the head by bullets that had penetrated their helmets. Rafa had seen damage and injuries like that many times before. They were the result of armor-piercing 7.65mm rounds. The steel-cored bullets had sliced through the protection afforded by the men’s helmets but it was the sheer precision of the shots that was impressive. Rafa looked at the bodies, imagining how they had been positioned while they had been firing on the British in front. That made it very obvious. The bullets had come from behind the Argentine positions.
The sergeant had come to the same conclusion. “Sir, they were killed by our own people. We have traitors amongst us.”
Rafa nodded. It was possible some of the Argentine Marines had followed the Swimmer-Commando unit and decided to take the opportunity of eliminating some of the hated commandos. That was more palateable for him than the possibility some of the men in this unit had turned their coats. He wasn’t able to take that line of thought much further since the air was filled with a curious whistling roar. He looked up as the two Rotodynes started a strafing pass. Observation point or not, it was time to leave.
SBS Unit, Penguin River, South Georgia
Miller looked up. Two Junglie rotodynes swept overhead. Their under-nose gun turrets sprayed fire into the rocks in front of them. Talk about the cavalry arriving at the last possible minute he thought. The last Argentine assault had been pushed back, but Harding had been badly hit by the rifle fire. There was a good chance he wouldn’t make it out. The Junglies had arrived in just the nick of time. They passed swiftly over the area and were now circling around, clear of the battle area. A rotodyne was about as fast as a Second World War fighter when the pilot was suitably nervous. They didn’t hang around over hostile ground. One of the rotodynes swept in again, firing its underwing rockets. The other one headed for the location of the camp hut.
Wearily, Miller squirmed backwards through the rocks, meeting Stroud on the way. “Harding?”
The question was terse. Stroud’s response equally so. “Gone.”
The two surviving SBS men made their way back to the camp and the Rotodyne that had landed near it. A group of Royal Marines were already spreading out to secure the perimeter. Conscious that he and Stroud were being covered by half a dozen rifles, Miller sought out their commander, carefully avoiding any suggestion the person he was speaking to was an officer. “You made it just in time. Things were getting pretty sticky out there.”
“We were heading inland but got a radio message to divert here.” The Marine officer looked at the two SBS men with a tinge of awe. They may have been dirty and distinctly malodorous, but they’d secured British sovereignty here on South Georgia for weeks.
“A radio message. Must have been the girls.” Stroud looked around for the two women. To his relief he saw them coming in, escorted by a pair of Marines.
“What happened to the others?” Cynthia asked the question, although she and Georgina must have known the answer. At any rate, they didn’t wait for the answer before starting to cry.
Miller shook his head sadly. “They’re out in the rocks. We’d all be there if you hadn’t got that radio message out.”
Georgina snuffled, then frowned. “Radio? We didn’t get a message out. We just hid in the rocks like you told us to.”
“Women doing as they are told? You got these two well-trained.” The Marine officer faked incredulity then yelped as Cynthia kicked his ankle. Miller shook his head then looked around at the hills. Somehow, they seemed oddly friendly.
HMS Lion, Flagship, Cruiser Squadron, Off South Georgia
It was a sight that had not been seen on the world’s oceans for more than sixty years. A formation of ships had formed line of battle and were about to open fire on the enemy. There had been naval battles since the First World War of course, but they had been wild scrambles between diffuse formations of ships. They had lacked the stately majesty of the sight Admiral Timothy Tyrrell Chupe saw. The three cruisers lined up astern of his flagship was a sight to be viewed with something like quiet satisfaction. The cruiser squadron had only formed up a few days before. Now it was tasked with supporting the South Georgia landings. HMS Panther had come in from China Station, although the long high-speed run from Singapore had strained her old engines. Tiger had been hustled out of a remarkably accelerated refit while Leopard had come in from Mediterranean Station. At first, they had been assigned to screen the two carriers but they had been relieved of nursemaid detail so they could take part in Operation Parakeet.
“Any word from the booties?” Chupe’s question seemed aimed at vacant space but nobody was under any illusions who would have to answer. Chupe ran a taut ship and his officers knew their trade. They also knew how he liked his bridge to run. The key word there was ‘smoothly’.
“The Rotodynes relieved the observation point on the Penguin River Sir.” The communications officer didn’t need to consult his notes. “They rescued the survivors of the SBS team and the two civilians. The SBS were under attack at the time. The Rotodynes gave them fire support but they lost three men out of five. The Marines have the observation point now and are on the radio, prepared to direct fire. One of the Rotodynes is heading over to Argus to deliver the survivors, the other inland to pick up the other SBS group and the Antarctic Survey Group survivors.”
It was a neat,
concise report that earned the communications officer an approving nod. Chupe turned around and looked at the three cruisers following him again. “Order all ships to commence firing on my signal. One salvo, then wait for range and bearing corrections.” His attention was still riveted on his four cruisers. He had no intention of missing the historic sight. Chupe paused and took a deep breath. “Signal, open fire.”
The sixteen six-inch guns on the four cruisers fired simultaneously, crashing out a single, deafening statement of intent. It was as impressive a sight as Chupe had ever seen.
For a moment, he felt a twinge of nostalgia that the days of line of battle and broadsides had gone.
“We have a fire correction, Sir.” The communications officer spoke quickly. “Drop range two hundred yards, bearing change plus one degree.”
The firing corrections were transmitted to the fire control stations on the four cruisers. The twin turrets on the cruisers shifted slightly. Then the guns crashed again.
“On target, Sir. That lot landed dead center of Grytviken. Spotter says fire for effect.”
“Does he indeed? Order all ships; set rate of fire for 20 rounds per minute. One minute barrage.”
The orders went out. Chupe waited for a moment then gave the signal for the bombardment to start. Eighty six inch shells arriving in a minute would, he hoped, have the desired effect on the Argentine garrison unfortunate enough to be in Grytviken.