Scram!

by Harry Benson

  For most of us, Port Stanley, the Falklands capital, had acquired almost mythical status. Nobody quite knew what it looked like. But we were all extremely keen for our first aerial view of the place. It was after all the goal, our ultimate destination. A few had already had a brief look from the air. Pete Manley and Arthur Balls had fired their missiles at distant lights four days earlier. The visibility may have been limited but their view was at least officially sanctioned. Two days after that, Jack Lomas, Oily Knight and Smudge Smyth had a rather better view, albeit an unofficial one.

  Yankee Bravo was bringing Gurkhas up to their holding position just behind Goat Ridge. It was early evening on 12 June, at about the same time Jerry Spence and I were shifting bergens for 42 and 45 Commando. The hills in front of them, Two Sisters and Harriet, were in British hands. The Gurkhas were digging in as shells were coming over the ridge. After a couple of trips to bring in more troops, Knight turned to Lomas and said: ‘We’re here now, Jack, shall we go and have a look at Stanley?’ Lomas was quick to agree to the idea.

  Occasional shells were exploding, but not near enough to threaten them. After the last of the troops had disembarked, Lomas lifted Yankee Bravo away from the drop-off point and hover-taxied up the hill onto the ridgeline. They passed a huddle of soldiers: probably a headquarters group having a briefing. They seemed none too impressed to see a Wessex tip-toeing noisily past them.

  Yankee Bravo edged forward over a lip of rock near the summit of the ridge. Suddenly a few miles out in the distance, there it was, Port Stanley. It wasn’t as if they were expecting skyscrapers, but the ramshackle collection of red and green corrugated-iron roofs stretching out towards the airport was a bit of an anti-climax.

  There was an empty pause. ‘God that’s disappointing,’ said Lomas.

  The moment was shattered by the blast of a shell landing in front of them. ‘We’d better get the hell out of here.’

  My first view of Port Stanley on the day after the surrender. We weren’t exactly expecting skyscrapers but, having built up the capital of the Falklands in our minds, the reality was still pretty disappointing.

  Dawn on Monday 14 June, Wessex Yankee Charlie was refuelling at Fitzroy. In the right seat sat Mike Booth; in the left was Paul McIntosh, flying as co-pilot. A runner signalled to approach the Wessex under the rotor disc and handed a briefing note up to Booth in the cockpit. His face went white as he read it. A company of Welsh Guardsmen and Royal Marines were trapped in a minefield. Casualties had already been reported. They needed to be moved forward to a new position urgently.

  The Welsh Guards again, thought Booth. He could only imagine the hell they had been through. First Sir Galahad. Now this.

  He passed the note across to his co-pilot. ‘Check the grid ref, Mac. We’re going to need help for this.’ He then squeezed the radio transmit button on the cyclic stick. ‘All callsigns, this is Yankee Charlie, report availability for urgent task.’

  With the disaster at nearby Port Pleasant still very much on aircrew minds, it didn’t take much to generate an immediate response to the call for help. Within a couple of minutes, Booth had acquired an impromptu flight of six or seven aircraft, mostly Wessex and at least one Sea King. Normally, a mission briefing would take place on the ground, either face to face or by a MAOT charging from aircraft to aircraft and plugging into the intercom. For obvious reasons, tactical information such as grid references couldn’t be passed over the radio. But because of the need to brief en route whilst airborne, the radio was the only way to conduct a brief. It was a rare occasion where the junglie crews had to remember how to use the day’s crypto code to encode and decode the pick-up and drop-off points.

  The pick-up location was easy to see. Clusters of men huddled next to one another on the frozen bog. An Army Scout helicopter was already on site, presumably to collect two of the wounded Guardsmen. As Booth led the formation of Wessex and Sea King into a line-astern approach, he told his crewman to step away from the door: ‘If they’re anti-personnel mines, they shouldn’t do much more than take the tyres off and damage the oleos.’ He landed the big Wessex gingerly, just feet away from the first huddle of very frightened soldiers.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, on the north side of Tumbledown, several Wessex were moving mortar troops forward in support of the Gurkha advance through Mount William. Moving a mortar troop forward usually took three loads. The first lift was the heavy mortar baseplate and two or three of the crew. The second lift was the rest of the crew and equipment. The final lift was an underslung load of ammunition.

  Puffs of smoke from Argentine artillery shells dotted the landscape as the Wessex moved the mortar crews forward. But now that British troops held the last major high ground around Stanley, Argentine troops were in full retreat. The Gurkhas were increasingly frustrated. No sooner had the crew set up their position ready to fire than they were told to move forward again as the target was now out of range.

  Jack Lomas had just dropped his second load when the troop leader ran in saying: ‘They’re running too fast. Can you take me another mile further.’

  This was now uncharted territory, beyond the front line of even an hour earlier. Again on the second load, the troop leader said: ‘I’m still out of range. Take me forward again. This time, don’t bother about getting the rest of the boys, just bring my ammunition.’

  Lomas went all the way back to the original position for the underslung load of ammunition. The firing position was now within range of the outskirts of Stanley.

  As some of the Welsh Guards piled gratefully into the back of Yankee Charlie from the minefield, McIntosh looked to where he was supposed to take them. He pointed at the map. ‘This grid reference doesn’t look right,’ he said to Booth. It was much too close to the summit of Sapper Hill. They would be well within firing range of Argentine troops dug in on the summit.

  ‘Best we land a few clicks short then, on the track here, just to make sure.’

  The likelihood was that 5 Brigade command had given them a grid reference for the start line for the troops. The start line was the worst possible place to insert a group of large commando helicopters, in range of the enemy and in full view. It wasn’t the first time that such an oversight had been made, as I’d learnt myself two days earlier.

  Booth gave enough time for the other helicopters to load before calling ‘Lifting, follow me’. The drop-off point was just a few miles to the east along the track. It was an easy transit at low level, flying just a few feet above the terrain. The loose formation of aircraft passed to the south of Mount William. It would have been an impressive sight to the Gurkhas above them, who had taken the hill unopposed. Just after a small quarry, Booth raised the nose of the Wessex slightly to bleed off speed and bring the helicopter smoothly down onto the track. The new grid reference was well short of Sapper Hill.

  The crews of all the helicopters had noticed that this was not the expected drop-off point. But since the boss was in charge, most followed as they thought he must know what he was doing. In any case, the new landing point was safe from enemy view. It wouldn’t take much to overshoot and end up crossing enemy lines. Although the other Wessex followed Yankee Charlie in to land on the track, an 825 Sea King decided that the original grid reference was correct and raced on ahead.

  In the back of the Sea King were Royal Marines of 9 Troop 40 Commando. As the big aircraft flared just short of the summit, Argentine troops opened fire with machine guns and mortars. The aircraft shook from damage to the port side as the wheels hit the ground. The noise from the aircraft and fire was deafening as the troops spilled out, not entirely clear where they were but well aware that they were in contact with the enemy. In seconds, the Sea King lifted away and cleared to the south.

  The ensuing firefight lasted just ten minutes before it became clear to the Marines that the Argentine defences had withdrawn. It was to be the final action of the Falklands war. Even if completely accidental, 825 Squadron’s ‘ridge too far’ was also the onl
y opposed heli-borne assault of the war. By good fortune, the action probably accelerated the decision by the Argentine command to surrender. If the British were willing to push on through like this right on the edge of Stanley, they thought, they weren’t likely to stop once they entered the capital.

  After my day on casevac duty at San Carlos, I was back up on the front line again flying out of FOB Teal, this time in X-Ray Delta with Norman Lees and Jock McKie. We were carrying a load of ammunition up towards 3 Brigade Headquarters at Estancia House when we heard the news: ‘All stations. White flags are flying over Stanley. Do not fire unless fired upon.’

  Lees and I looked at each other. It was over.

  I knew I should have felt a surge of relief, but that just wasn’t my immediate reaction. After setting off late from the UK, enduring the excruciatingly slow plod 8,000 miles through the North and South Atlantic on Engadine, and arriving late in the war, I felt I’d just got started. I hadn’t had enough. My first reaction was disappointment, even if I knew that it was fabulous news for everyone else.

  For the vast majority who had definitely had quite enough, there was an overwhelming sense of both victory and relief. Paras and Marines scrambled for the honour of reaching Stanley first. Streaming in from Moody Brook, the Paras claimed the glory.

  Back in the command tent at San Carlos, Lieutenant Commander Bill Pollock was asked to supply a helicopter to fly Major General Jeremy Moore into Stanley. With fading light and snowstorms, it could have been done in a junglie Sea King with night goggles. But it made so much more sense to offer the job to one of the radar-fitted Sea Kings. Pollock was very aware that the squadron had already lost two aircrew. All of the rest of his guys were still alive. He wanted to keep it that way. ‘But you’ll miss the credit,’ commented a staff officer.

  ‘Of killing the General and my crew? No thanks,’ replied Pollock.

  The job fell to an anti-submarine Sea King of 820 Squadron which had been detached to San Carlos from the carrier HMS Invincible. Flown by Lieutenant Commander Keith Dudley, the Sea King landed safely in Port Stanley. The formal surrender itself took place well after dark between Moore and the Argentine General Mario Menéndez.

  Even with victory in the bag, huge practical hurdles remained. There were still over 10,000 Argentine soldiers to repatriate. Meanwhile, thousands of British soldiers lay in the hills surrounding Port Stanley, exposed to freezing snow showers.

  For the junglie helicopter crews, Monday 14 and Tuesday 15 June saw the highest number of flying hours during the entire deployment. On these two days, my own contribution was over sixteen hours in the cockpit. On the last day of the war, my squadron’s Wessex crews alone flew fourteen sorties averaging six hours and forty minutes each.

  Up in the hills it was a race to reunite soldiers with their equipment or get them off the exposed hillsides altogether. Rob Flexman had been involved with the final push with the Welsh Guards. Although, like me, he hadn’t wanted to miss out on the action, he was delighted by the news of the Argentine surrender. ‘We’ve done it. It’s over,’ he told his crewman.

  But his delight turned to concern as the expectations of the soldiers on the ground began to exceed the capabilities of the aircrew. Troops who had spent long weeks out in the field were understandably keen to get extracted now that the war was over. Royal Marines were very familiar with helicopter operations and knew what could and could not be achieved. Army units were less familiar. From the ground, it all looked pretty easy. Fly in. Load up. Fly out. The evening gloom made it extremely taxing.

  Having already taken several loads of troops off the hills, Flexman returned to collect what would necessarily be his final load of the day. Daylight was fading and the situation was becoming dangerous with half a dozen helicopters groping around in the darkness. As the troops were clambering into the cabin, an Army major climbed up the side of the aircraft. He leaned into the cockpit, shouting to make himself heard above the noise of the hot exhaust below and whirling gearbox above: ‘I need thirty more men out of here.’

  ‘I’ll take what I can, but this will have to be my last trip,’ Flexman shouted back at him.

  It was not what the frustrated and exhausted major wanted to hear. ‘I demand that you get us all out of here,’ he replied testily.

  ‘I’ll do what I can.’

  It was simply not safe to come back for another load. Most of the thirty men would have to spend another night out in the open. As Flexman lifted off into the half-light, over the radio came the unmistakeable voice of Jack Lomas. ‘This isn’t in the script.’

  A couple of miles to their west, his namesake Aircrewman Jan Lomas was on the ground hauling what seemed like an endless pile of bergens up into the cabin of Yankee Bravo. Above him in the cockpit, Hector Heathcote could hear the breathlessness in his voice through the distortion of the throat mike: ‘Bloody hell, there are dozens of these things. I’m sweating like a pig.’ They were both well aware of the importance of their task, of reuniting kit, equipment and men. Soldiers who had survived the war might easily not survive another freezing night out in the hills. Getting their sleeping bags to them was vital.

  The Wessex had a spare lift capacity of some 3,000 pounds. The urgency of the task meant that Lomas crammed in far more than he should. He had counted seventy-eight bergens into the cabin weighing around 5,000 pounds. The Wessex was now horribly overweight. Even if they could achieve enough power to get off the ground, the gearbox might quite simply crack up under the excess load. ‘Oh well,’ thought Heathcote, ‘let’s suck it and see.’

  Amazingly, with full power applied, the Wessex rose gingerly upwards and wallowed uncomfortably off the edge of the mountainside, helped by the cold air and light breeze. The helicopter felt unstable and vulnerable. Heathcote hung onto the cyclic stick with an unnecessarily strong grip, as if letting go would cause the aircraft to topple over. He could just about see where he needed to go, having already completed several runs to the drop-off point in daylight. But it was now almost pitch black. He still had to get the aircraft down safely in one piece. With such an overweight aircraft, there was not enough power for an overshoot if they got it wrong. Once the aircraft was in the descent and slowing down, that was it. They would have one shot.

  The landing, as it turned out, was fine. But Heathcote and Lomas both knew they had seriously overstepped their own and their aircraft’s capabilities. ‘That was frightening,’ said Heathcote.

  ‘Too right,’ echoed Lomas. ‘Best we go home. I’ve had enough now, thank you very much.’

  For the first time since leaving Yeovilton ten weeks earlier, the decision about whether to use navigation lights was an easy one. With all their lights flashing, Yankee Bravo headed back to find FOB Fitzroy. ‘Mountain flying in an overweight Wessex,’ a very relieved Heathcote said as they shut down. ‘That was ridiculously, stupidly dangerous.’

  It was still dark on Tuesday 15 June, the first morning after the surrender, when Ric Fox flashed up X-Ray Yankee at FOB Teal. His brief was to get himself back to Port San Carlos as soon as possible and report to the ops tent. Half an hour later he was at his second briefing of the morning. He was to go with Dave Greet, a handful of Royal Marines and medics, and take the Argentine surrender at Pebble Island.

  Fox and Greet grinned nervously at one another, hiding their apprehension. It was an extraordinary responsibility for a young sub-lieutenant. The war was over. But would the Argentine troops out on West Falkland know?

  The thirty-mile transit across Falkland Sound towards Pebble Island seemed painfully slow because of a stiff breeze blowing in from the west. The settlement houses were clearly visible from a long way off. A few miles short of the houses two Argentine soldiers stood by a parked Mercedes jeep.

  ‘Let’s get those guys first,’ said Greet. ‘We’re quite a target.’

  As Fox began his approach towards them, the two soldiers dropped to their knees behind the Mercedes.

  ‘Shit they don’t know about the surrender
,’ warned Fox.

  It felt like a Mexican stand-off. Fox brought the big helicopter into a hover fifty yards away, with the nose skewed off to the left so that Greet could train his cabin machine gun on to the soldiers. The Argentines remained hidden, crouching down behind the vehicle. After a couple of very tense minutes, one of them stood up with his hands in the air. ‘Phew,’ said a relieved Fox, side-slipping the Wessex closer in to pick up the Argentines.

  The Marines escorted the two soldiers on board. Soon afterwards, Greet casually told Fox what they had been doing: ‘We’d better not hang around here. They were picking up mines.’

  Fox needed no further encouragement to get airborne with the two prisoners. Quickly covering the short distance at low level, he put the aircraft down on the ground within the settlement itself. The grassy Pebble Island airstrip, scene of the SAS raid just a month earlier, lay beyond them beneath a skyline of rocky hills. Damaged Argentine aircraft, mostly Mentors and Pucaras, were dotted around the strip with their cockpits open, exposed to the recent snow flurries.

  ‘Shit,’ said Fox again as he shut the aircraft down. From the cockpit of X-Ray Bravo, his attention was drawn back from the aircraft to a huge number of soldiers. It was quite a sight: the eight Royal Marines and medics were hugely outnumbered as they walked forward to take the surrender of over a hundred Argentines.

  The Argentines had imprisoned the islanders since occupying Pebble Island in April. Now their roles were reversed. East and West Falkland were back in British hands.

  Epilogue

  OVER THE NEXT few days, the Sea King crews returned home to the UK as squadrons on aircraft carriers and the larger ships. My Wessex colleagues of 845 Squadron returned in dribs and drabs, with some flights sailing back on supply ships and others flying back via Ascension Island in a C-130 Hercules.