In London there was still no sense of urgency. Four days earlier, on 24 March, Lord Carrington had warned Mrs Thatcher that they might ‘face the prospect of an early confrontation with Argentina’, but the worst he imagined was that Buenos Aires might cut off services to the Falkland Islands. On 25 March the matter came up at Cabinet. Carrington said South Georgia was escalating into ‘something which may be very difficult’, but using force might provoke a rash Argentine reaction. If they threatened the Falklands, he added, ‘Britain would face an almost impossible task in seeking to defend the Islands at such long range’. The next day, the Ministry of Defence presented Mrs Thatcher with a hastily drafted contingency plan, envisaging sending a small fleet to deter an Argentine invasion. But it would take weeks to arrive; if the Argentines attacked in the meantime, ‘there would be no certainty that such a force would be able to retake the dependency’. ‘You can imagine’, Mrs Thatcher said later, ‘that turned a knife in my heart.’28
On Monday, Mrs Thatcher and Lord Carrington flew to Brussels for a European summit. On the plane, they decided to send a submarine to South Georgia, but still they did not believe an invasion was imminent. On the same day, The Times published its first editorial about the crisis in the South Atlantic. The ‘presence of the Argentine scrap-merchants’, it said, was clearly meant as a ‘direct challenge to British sovereignty’. But the bigger issue was obviously the Falklands. ‘The Falklands Islanders’, the paper said, ‘have to face the unpleasant fact that Britain is no longer a world power and that the rest of the world is unlikely to come to their rescue. If they are to stay where they are in the next century it can only be on the basis of an arrangement with their South American neighbours.’29
The next day, a storm broke over the South Atlantic. On the overcrowded Cabo San Antonio, pitching wildly in the roiling waters, the Argentine troops were violently seasick, and their commanders agreed to delay the landing for a day or so. In Westminster, Mrs Thatcher was not back from Brussels, so Willie Whitelaw deputized at Prime Minister’s Questions. Most of the questions touched on familiar themes: youth unemployment, the Scarman Report, the ‘extraordinary behaviour’ of Ken Livingstone. But one MP asked about the Endurance, and another about arms sales to Argentina. Whitelaw fielded their questions with characteristic stolidity, but now the first rumours of Argentine ship movements were beginning to seep through the fog of complacency. That afternoon, Richard Luce assured the Commons that Britain was still seeking a diplomatic solution to the South Georgia dispute, and would ‘support and defend the islanders to the best of our ability’. But he ‘knew deep down’, he said later, ‘how dangerously empty those words had become’.30
The following day was Wednesday 31 March. Late that afternoon, John Nott told Mrs Thatcher that he needed to see her urgently about the Falklands. She knew immediately that something was wrong. By about six, her Commons room was crowded with people, including Nott, Luce, the latter’s Foreign Office colleague Humphrey Atkins and a gaggle of senior civil servants. The news, Nott said quietly, was terrible. British intelligence had intercepted an Argentine signal that left no room for doubt: an enemy fleet was approaching the Falklands and would invade on Friday. There was nothing they could do to stop them, and the Ministry of Defence’s view was that ‘the Falklands could not be retaken once they were seized’. It was, Mrs Thatcher said later, the worst moment of her life: ‘I could not believe it: these were our people, our islands.’ She looked around the room, but the expressions were hopeless. ‘If they are invaded, we have got to get them back,’ she said desperately. ‘We can’t,’ Nott said. ‘You’ll have to,’ she said.31
It was at this point, in a twist worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster, that the door opened and the First Sea Lord, Sir Henry Leach, strode in, dressed in his admiral’s uniform. After inspecting ships in Portsmouth, Leach had just got back to hear the news about the Falklands. Having failed to find Nott at the Ministry of Defence, he made for the House of Commons, where the ushers in the central lobby initially refused to let him through. But Leach’s blood was up. All his life he had been waiting for a moment like this. His father had been a naval officer, killed on HMS Prince of Wales during the Japanese invasion of Malaya. Leach, who worshipped his father, had joined the navy at the age of 13 and yearned to show what his fleet could do. Now, after gauging the temperature of the room, and with half an eye on the despised Nott, he seized his chance.
The obvious answer, Leach told Mrs Thatcher, was to assemble a naval task force at once. There was a shocked silence, and then she asked what that meant. Without wasting a breath, Leach listed what he would need: carriers, destroyers, assault ships and submarines, as well as a large force of Royal Marines supported by the army. ‘How long will it take to assemble?’ she asked. ‘Three days,’ Leach said. ‘How long to get there?’ ‘Three weeks.’ ‘Surely you mean three days,’ Mrs Thatcher said. ‘No, I don’t.’ Then came the crucial question: ‘Can we do it?’ Leach’s answer, of which there are numerous slightly different versions, has gone down in naval and political legend. ‘Yes, we can, Prime Minister,’ he said, ‘and though it is not my business to say so: yes, we must … If we do not, or if we pussyfoot in our actions and do not achieve complete success, in another few months we shall be living in a totally different country whose word will count for little.’
At that, Leach remembered, there was another long silence. Nott looked stunned. Mrs Thatcher, however, gave a very slight smile. He had told her precisely what she wanted to hear. Britain could fight; Britain could win. After that, her decision was never really in doubt. By the time the meeting broke up, Leach had the go-ahead to mobilize his task force, while she had recovered some of her composure. ‘Before this,’ she wrote:
I had been outraged and determined. Now my outrage and determination were matched by a sense of relief and confidence. Henry Leach had shown me that if it came to a fight the courage and professionalism of Britain’s armed forces would win through. It was my job as Prime Minister to see that they got the political support they needed.
All her life she had seen herself as a fighter. Now she would have a chance to prove it.32
In the South Atlantic, Thursday 1 April dawned clear and bright. The wind had dropped. Out at sea, the Argentine commanders made their final preparations. In Stanley, the townspeople were going about their daily business, blissfully ignorant of what was coming. The evening before, Governor Hunt had hosted a dinner party to mark the retirement of the islands’ senior magistrate. After dinner, with unconscious irony, he had shown his guests a video of a recent ITV film about the Falklands’ history. The title was More British Than the British. Not surprisingly, they loved it.33
At the age of 55, Rex Hunt was a bluff, jolly, stocky fellow, as if playing a British colonial governor in a Peter Sellers comedy. A career diplomat, he had knocked around the tropics for years before accepting the governorship of the Falklands in 1980. As postings go, it scarcely qualified even as a backwater. But he fancied the idea of a change, not least because he would get to do some flying, which he had loved since his days in the RAF as a young man. His superiors expected him to sell the idea of a closer relationship with Argentina. But as soon as Hunt and his wife Mavis arrived, they threw themselves wholeheartedly into Falklands life. Pottering around the islands in his official car, a red London cab, Hunt shook countless hands, judged innumerable sheepdog trials, accepted endless cups of tea and generally made himself at home. By the time Ridley visited in 1981, Hunt was so committed to the islanders’ cause that he had become one of their greatest champions. In the Foreign Office, people said he had gone native.34
Now, as the Argentine fleet steamed towards him, Hunt went about his usual routine. He spent the morning doing paperwork in his sprawling Victorian residence, Government House, before lunch with his family. There was good news: his son Tony, on holiday from boarding school, seemed ‘at long last to be getting down to serious study for his A-levels’. Then Hunt did a spot more paperwork. At 3.3
0, there came a knock at the door. His radio operator was holding a telegram. ‘We have apparently reliable evidence’, Hunt read in horror, ‘that an Argentine task force will gather off Cape Pembroke early tomorrow morning, 2 April. You will wish to make your dispositions accordingly.’ The signals man said ruefully: ‘They might have added goodbye and the best of British.’35
Hunt stayed calm. He ordered his staff to burn all classified papers, and immediately called the two senior officers in the island’s Royal Marine garrison. ‘It looks as if the buggers really mean it this time,’ he said. He asked the education superintendent to cancel school the next day, warned the chief medical officer to prepare for ‘heavy duty tomorrow’, and told Mavis and Tony to stay with friends, because the Marines would be setting up camp in Government House. Then, at 8.15 that evening, he telephoned the local radio station to break the bad news to the islanders. The Argentines were coming, but people should ‘keep calm and keep off the streets … Please, do not take the law into your own hands. Let us show our visitors that we are responsible, law-abiding and resolute citizens.’ Then he handed back to the regular presenter. ‘Well, as it says in those large, frenzied letters on the cover of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “Don’t panic!”’ the presenter said. With impeccable timing, he reached for his next record: ‘Strangers in the Night.’36
Showing remarkable sangfroid, as if determined to emulate Sir Sidney and Lady Ruff-Diamond in Carry On Up the Khyber, the Hunts had dinner before saying their goodbyes. When his wife and son were safely gone, the Governor went to get his shotgun, only to find that his faithful driver had beaten him to it. ‘I’ve left the flag up tonight, sir,’ the driver said, ‘and I’ll shoot any Argie bastard who tries to take it down.’ By his own account, Hunt was so choked with pride at this that he turned away to hide his tears, and his driver offered to fetch him a stiff drink. But Hunt preferred to keep a clear head if there was going to be shooting. A few hours later, he called the radio station again and warned that the Argentines were probably only hours away. ‘Now please don’t be inquisitive and go and see for yourselves,’ he said. ‘You’ll just get in the way.’ And then, almost unbelievably, he went to bed.37
By the time Hunt awoke, after a couple of hours’ sleep, his house had been turned into a makeshift Marine defence post, crammed with automatic weapons and ammunition boxes. Installing himself by the peat fire in the drawing room, clutching a pistol handed him by the Marines, the Governor told himself that he would use it on the ‘first Argie that came through the door’. At 3.30 in the morning, another message came in from the Foreign Office. General Galtieri, it said, had personally rejected President Reagan’s entreaties to call off the landings. So Hunt broadcast again to the islanders, declaring a state of emergency and again imploring them to stay indoors. Then he settled back down by the fire. He had had a ‘hugely enjoyable, interesting and satisfying life’, he thought. He had been too young to fight in the Second World War, and had always felt a bit ‘restless and unfulfilled’ as a result. But now ‘it was a relief to find that I could face the prospect of death with equanimity’.38
News of the first sightings of Argentine landing craft reached Government House shortly after five. Then, just under an hour later, there came a series of tremendous bangs and the sound of automatic gunfire. Hunt dived under the desk for cover. ‘The noise for a while was deafening,’ he recalled. ‘Outbursts of automatic and rifle fire interspersed the bangs … Our Royal Marines were obviously firing back at the enemy.’ Eventually he lifted his head and peered out:
It was still dark but there was the faintest glimmer of dawn. More bangs close by sent me under the desk again and then, in a lull in the firing, a weird, unearthly voice, distorted by a loudhailer, called out in a thick Spanish accent: ‘Meestair Hurnt – You are a reasonable man. Come out and surrendair.’ To which a Royal Marine responded, with commendable initiative and choice lower-deck language, ‘F … off you bloody spic!’ followed by a burst of automatic fire. The shooting then intensified on both sides …
The Marines were, however, horribly outnumbered. There were only sixty-nine of them on the entire island, facing almost ten times as many Argentines. They could not win, and they knew it. Even after they had repulsed the first attack on Government House, firing relentlessly from doorways and windows, their commanding officer was under no illusions. As he told the Governor, the enemy had artillery that could ‘knock the shit out of us and we can’t do a thing about it’.39
By now it was light, and the local radio was already fielding calls from islanders who had spotted Argentine armoured cars from their bedrooms. At Government House the battle went on, the Marines having taken three Argentines captive and fatally wounded a fourth. But deep down, Hunt knew the islands were lost. He rang the local representative of the Argentine state airline and persuaded him to act as a go-between. And eventually, after various toings and froings, the door of his office opened, and in strolled the tall figure of Rear Admiral Büsser, holding out his hand in greeting.
Later, Hunt admitted that his first reaction was an overpowering ‘desire to pull my pistol out of the drawer and empty the magazine into his chest’. Büsser dropped his hand in disappointment, and Hunt immediately felt ashamed of himself. Yet Büsser, a veteran of the Dirty War, was magnanimous in victory. He was a ‘soldier merely obeying instructions’, he said, and while he complimented the Royal Marines on their ‘bravery and professionalism’, they should lay down their weapons to avoid bloodshed. Hunt knew he was right. ‘With a heavy heart’, he turned to the Marine commander and gave the order.40
A few moments later, as Hunt was preparing to broadcast to the islanders for the last time, came the most celebrated moment of the invasion. Understandably enough, one of the Argentines’ priorities had been to seize the radio station. What they did not expect, though, was that the presenter, Patrick Watts, would keep broadcasting after they came in, so the whole island could hear what was happening:
WATTS: Well, the radio station has now been taken over. I still hope we can get His Excellency the Governor’s message to you. Sir, what do you want – do you want to speak to the people?
ARGENTINE SOLDIER: Tell the people to wait – tell them now, they are wishing us to wait some minutes; in some minutes the Chief is going to communicate to them what we want for the population –
WATTS: Just a minute – [Shouting in Spanish] – Well, just a minute. If you take the gun out of my back, I’m going to transmit this news, if you take the gun away. But I’m not speaking with a gun in my back – [More shouting in Spanish] – Well, there’s an argument going on now between the three Argentines. They’ve disappeared; they’ve left me alone in this room. They’re having an argument between themselves.
At this point, with glorious timing, the phone rang. It was Rex Hunt. ‘Sir, I’ve just been taken over by the Argentines,’ Watts said. Then, holding the phone to the microphone, he asked Hunt to go ahead.
In a tone of long-suffering exasperation, as if bringing bad news about the sheepdog trials, Hunt delivered his final message:
Hello, Kelpers and Islanders. I hope that you can hear me on the phone. The machine here doesn’t work. I’m sorry it happened like this … The Admiral came along to me and I told him that he had landed unlawfully on British sovereign territory and I ordered him to leave forthwith. He refused, claiming that he was taking back territory that belonged to Argentina … I said that it was reprehensible that Argentina should have seized the Islands by force …
I’m sorry it’s happened this way. It’s probably the last message I’ll be able to give you, but I wish you all the best of luck. And rest assured that the British will be back.
A moment later, the phone went dead. Not long afterwards, a local historian, John Smith, made an entry in his journal: ‘1017 Hours. The Argentine national anthem has been played over the radio. It now seems final. The Argentines have got us.’41
At 10.30 a.m., two helicopters landed on Stanley’s footb
all field, not far from Government House. ‘Out poured a horde of red-hatted, gold-braided gentlemen,’ Hunt drily recalled, ‘who proceeded to hug, kiss and embrace each other in typical Latin fashion.’ ‘Just look at the silly buggers,’ his driver said. ‘You’d think they’d won the World Cup.’ After a short interval, Hunt agreed to go to the Town Hall to meet the newly arrived General Osvaldo García, commander of the Argentine land forces. There Hunt was presented to a ‘sallow little man’ with a ‘fixed, sickly smile on his face’, his hand outstretched. Again he did not shake it.
‘It is very ungentlemanly of you to refuse to shake my hand,’ García said through an interpreter. ‘It is very uncivilised of you to invade my country,’ Hunt replied. ‘You have landed unlawfully on British territory and I order you to remove yourself and your troops forthwith’ – a bold thing to say, given that he was surrounded by men with automatic weapons. At that, García shouted: ‘We have taken back what is rightfully ours and we shall stay FOREVER!’ Then he told Hunt he would be flown out at four. Impossible, Hunt said. ‘You didn’t tell us you were coming. So we haven’t packed.’42
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