Beyond Endurance: An Epic of Whitehall and the South Atlantic

by Nicholas Barker

  Then a Puma from the Bahia Paraiso attempted to land on the foreshore. It was supported by a volley of covering fire aimed at Keith’s position from an Argentine machine gun mounted at the opposite side of the bay. Keith gave the order to open fire. Around 500 rounds were pumped into the Puma which remained in the air only through the efforts of an excellent pilot. It covered the 400 metres or so to the other side of the cove, trailing smoke, and made a very heavy landing. No one was seen to climb out. Two months later the Puma still lay where it had landed. So far as Keith could determine, the occupants were all dead.

  It was an Alouette that came next, intent on making further marine insertions on the opposite side of the cove. This was also fired on by our marines, causing it to drop out of the air immediately. It was severely damaged.

  It was then that the corvette returned to the scene, blazing away with her 40 mm gun from the after-end. An immediate landing was anticipated, but, to the marines’ surprise, she steamed on her slow relentless course to within about 300 yards from the base. Our marines let rip with a Carl Gustav (anti-tank) round which fell into the water about 10 yards short of the ship. At first there was nothing, but then came the explosion. The round had hit the starboard quarter below the water line.

  The Royal Marines maintained the pressure. Their next success was with 66 mm heavy machine-gun fire which rattled the superstructure. The corvette turned out towards the safety of the bay. Our marines were determined to mark her departure with a further acknowledgement of their presence. They found their target again when anti-tank rockets bored into her Exocet launcher. The Argentines later disclosed that 1,275 hits were scored on the Guerrico. The ship’s detachment had knocked down two helicopters, killed an entire landing party and crew, and pretty much put a corvette out of action – not bad for one platoon. From a safe range of about 3,000 yards the corvette turned again and began shelling our positions.

  By this time the Argentine marines ashore had moved round the cove through the whaling station and cut off our marines’ withdrawal route. We had also suffered our first casualty. Corporal Peters had been shot twice in the left arm.

  Keith properly decided this was enough. The point had been made and his position was now hopeless. A coat was turned into a makeshift flag and held aloft. The shooting stopped immediately. The two Commanding Officers met to negotiate the surrender. The twenty-two British Royal Marines were to become prisoners of war with the promise of good treatment. The civilian scientists were released from their refuge and all were put on board the Bahia Paraiso. Eleven days later they were disembarked at Puerto Belgrano and housed at a swimming pool on the base.

  The Royal Marines were returned to England on 22 April via Montevideo. For his brave defence of South Georgia against a force of 100 Argentine marines, three helicopters and two ships, Keith Mills was awarded the DSC His second-in-command, Sergeant Peter Leach, was awarded the DSM.

  It was to our huge regret that all this happened while we were heading east round the southern tip of South Georgia. I had every intention of bringing helicopter support to our marines by mid-afternoon. We were too late.

  When the ship was at extreme range for a recce flight WASP 434, now fully camouflaged, was launched and landed in the cover of the mountains. Lieutenant-Commander Tony Ellerbeck and his observer, Lieutenant David Wells, climbed to a high point, leaving the WASP obscured by the high hills. They watched one oddly calm sequel to the battle, Guerrico moving away at Zimmer speed. Bahia Paraiso was hidden from view supporting her personnel landing craft, but her position could be guessed at by the flight pattern of a helicopter heading for the shore. There was no sign of any of our men. We had to assume they were now being held in one of the ships. Any thought of an AS 12 rocket attack was therefore stillborn.

  It was my belief that the Argentine force consisted of the Guerrico and her sister ship Granville, supported by two ex-US destroyers and possibly a submarine. The outcome of a battle against such naval power, while hopefully causing some damage to the Argentine ships, would inevitably have led to the destruction of Endurance and the death of most of her men in freezing water. I later learned that the Argentines knew Endurance had arrived back in the area.

  * * *

  Command at sea can be a lonely business at any time. Command of the only British ship in the southern hemisphere when there are trigger-happy Argentines in the area is the closest thing I have experienced to complete isolation. To make things worse my very good friend and second-in-command, Mike Green, had been taken ashore with appendicitis and by that time had returned to England. I was perhaps irrationally upset about that. It was hardly Mike’s fault and this was not something I could blame either on incompetent diplomats, bloody-minded mandarins or lying Argentines. In my darkest hours it just seemed another example of Barker’s luck. But, in an odd sort of way, now that we were fighting for our lives, apportioning blame for the situation seemed irrelevant. If we survived that could be dealt with later. If we survived …

  I knew intuitively that the time had come to channel all that anger positively. We were, after all, quite literally in the same boat. I took stock of what I did have. The Endurance was not a warship in the conventional sense, but she was armed to an extent that the enemy could not have expected. She also had one of the most sophisticated listening systems fitted to anything afloat and could go places that the conventional warship could not, or dare not, go.

  I also had considerable human assets. First amongst these was Commander Francis Ponsonby, the nuclear submariner, who had come on board with the film team. Francis had every right to ask how he had fallen into such misfortune. To his great credit he never did. He had already proved to be a more than capable Chief of Staff and exactly the right sort of sounding board for ideas and help to rationalize our options. We both recognized that the equation of war is simple enough. We were determined to go and sink Argentines if we could: the cost was all too likely to be the end of Endurance and all who sailed in her. But this was the job. It was time for UK Ltd to get a return on the considerable investment they had made in our training.

  Uppermost in my mind was avoiding an early bath in South Atlantic waters. That meant evading the enemy until we encountered him on something like our own terms. Our belt and braces strategy was to hug the inshore areas of South Georgia. If we came to grief on the rocks, or were caught by an Exocet missile, there was at least a change of beaching the ship, or pushing her up on a rock so we might have a short swim for the shore. The chances of many surviving hypothermia with nobody to rescue us were not good, but at least there was a chance.

  My experience of commanding Arrow, the first Exocet-fitted frigate, was invaluable. I knew exactly what sort of tactical advantage the Guerrico or the Granville had to get to fire a successful shot at the Plum. This meant we were to spend a lot of time in the fjord – hiding behind a rock by day and emerging like Dracula after dark. Again the idea was to look like an iceberg. That was not easy for a red-painted ship during the day.

  One worry was that we had little idea of the extent of the submarine threat. I knew only that their submarines had sailed and that underwater Endurance sounded like Big Ben. We had no capability for dimming the noise of the generators or the main diesel engines. In submarine terms this made us an almost ridiculously obvious target.

  We turned the Main Signal Office (the MSO) into an operations room. This is where we conducted our strategy meetings. I had another excellent ally in Bill Hurst, a mariner of my own vintage who for some extraordinary reason had not been promoted to full Commander. He certainly proved his worth in Endurance, not only as a particularly efficient Navigating Officer but as a highly resourceful and valued confidant.

  Tony Ellerbeck was a different sort. There is invariably someone like him in every ship. He could be erratic, but he was also hugely resilient and had an enormous store of initiative and courage. On the day South Georgia was invaded I dispatched him, armed with a machine gun to do a covert recce. This was a high-risk
operation; if he had carried the AS 12 missiles he would not have had the range to reach Cumberland Bay before nightfall. It was like going into the lion’s den with a peashooter. For this, and later for flying operations during the recapture of South Georgia for the most part in the sort of weather in which you wouldn’t even let a domestic cat out of the house, he thoroughly deserved his DSC.

  There were many problems as we approached the battle area. Tony’s recce lasted from 15.00 to 17.00 when the Wasp returned and reported that the Guerrico was underway from Grytviken but damaged, and that Paraiso looked relatively normal. We could only guess at the damage wrought upon the Guerrico by our marines. The report indicated that she was limping about in the harbour with at least some smoke coming from the superstructure. This was mightily cheering news. At least it was one blow against the Argies.

  Nobody was sighted at the base and we presumed they had all been taken prisoner. Again, though it was pure supposition, we thought it was likely they were embarked in the Bahia Paraiso.

  Our discussions now turned to a missile attack on the Guerrico, but this was not to be. I was instructed firmly from Whitehall that preservation was the name of the game. We were to hole up as much as we could during the day and observe what we could of the Argentine ship movements. It was back to the waiting game while the Task Force steamed down from Ascension. We knew that was likely to take several days. But at least we could begin to plan the next phase. Every Barker brainwave was discussed with the Command Team, refined and honed. I think this had much to do with our survival.

  On 4 April I sent the helicopters on another covert recce to St Andrew’s Bay and beyond. There was no sign of the Guerrico or the Paraiso. Our assumption now was that they were at Leith. Was the Guerrico still licking her wounds? We thought, wishfully, that it was likely. Later the Wasp overflew Cumberland Bay and confirmed that neither of the ships were in the Bay area.

  Our choice of hidey hole was less easy. There were plenty of options but none with which we were completely comfortable. But it was a decision that had to be made quickly. I opted for Larsen Harbour and hoped that this uncharted creek did not present any unforeseen dangers.

  My old friend Captain Freddy Fox, then Chief Staff Officer Operations at Northwood, telephoned to ask about the possibility of evacuating the remaining personnel, including the one field team who had not been captured – Trevor Edwards, Damian Sanderson, Campbell Gemmil and Ian Barker – who were still up country in the survey hut at Lyell Glacier. We were of course also deeply concerned about Cindy and Annie, particularly as we now knew that Argentine troops were soon to be put ashore to garrison Leith and Grytviken. By that stage Peter Stark had been joined by two other BAS personnel, Tony North and Miles Plant, to look after the girls.

  It could only be a matter of time before the BAS was captured. This meant that other parties, such as the group on Bird Island, would be isolated. They may escape immediate capture, but if the area was occupied by Argentina for any length of time their position could become precarious.

  In war conditions one is sometimes asked to do faintly ridiculous things. I was ordered to make voice signals, on either UHF or VHF, to an imaginary submarine. The logic of this was reasonable enough, other than the insistence that I should communicate in plain language. I do not imagine that the Argentines believed for a moment that we would be imprudent enough to hold ‘on air’ discussions in this way.

  On board Endurance we were more concerned about another kind of disinformation. How could we judge the prospects of the UK media picking up some of the more outrageous Argentine propaganda? Thus far the Endurance story had been handled responsibly, most typically along the lines of a ‘lone vigil’. But how would they respond to Argentine radio claims that all that was left of Endurance was a smouldering wreck in a South Georgia harbour? As it happened Whitehall dealt with this efficiently. The fantasy never appeared in the UK press, although it was picked up in the Falklands and many of the Islanders were concerned about our fate. Happily not much of our premature obituaries was communicated to our families.

  My main worry was the unique and special family that the ship’s company had become. They came on the bridge and aired their views as usual and, whenever possible, I would find my way below to see how they were getting on. I was invariably greeted with a smile and a joke, but knew that deep down they were all as worried as I was. I shared what information I could as soon as I could. Nothing is worse than uncertainty and second guessing.

  The men in the Senior Ratings’ Mess were an absolute tower of strength in the example they set, and they gave me support which went way beyond the call of duty. At the first hint of dissent among junior ratings, they would jump in and say, ‘Well this is what the skipper wants and this is how we’re going to do it.’ It was a measure of support that I was not sure I deserved, but it made me more determined than ever not to let them down. On reflection I have little doubt that this was the force of group psychology working on me. I was not to be given the luxury of seriously considering my own fallibility. If they believed in Nick Barker then what right had he to doubt himself? I just hoped that if the worst came to the worst, I could borrow a trick from someone with genuine messianic credentials. But then don’t ice patrolmen always walk on water?

  Some members of the film team were openly apprehensive and were determined to get ashore just as soon as possible. In their situation I may well have reacted in the same way. I could only promise to put them on board the first homeward-bound grey ship we met. But senior members of the team were more resilient. John Tippey and his sidekick, Bob Mahoney, were keen to stay with us and see out the situation. So were some of the others.

  Our orders were to remain in the area. That did little to prevent feelings of fear and isolation building inside each of us. And we were hungry too. We had missed our victualling stopover at Montevideo so it was strict rations now. We tried to vary it as much as possible but even the miracle workers of the galley could do little to disguise another round of powdered spud. As the freezers emptied the Magellan crabs were rediscovered. This Chilean contribution to the War Effort was hugely appreciated.

  Chapter 10

  RETAKING SOUTH GEORGIA

  On 4 April I was ordered to proceed immediately to Ascension. I noted in my diary that this was the third time I had been ordered to proceed somewhere forthwith. Each time without apparent good reason, each time suddenly, and each time without discussion. Perhaps, I thought, this is due to a new Staff exerting their influence, but I suspected it was knee-jerk thinking. If decisions can be so muddled over one ship I feared seriously for the fleet coming south.

  So on 5 April, after seventeen days in and out of the South Georgia area, we did our best to reassure Cindy and Annie, and the scientists left in the hinterland, that we would soon return. Given our recent progress, I was less than convinced about that. We also dropped private messages for them in empty beer cans asking them also to communicate with us as if we were still in the area, and to make the kind of noises that amounted to false trails.

  We already knew that our passage north was not in fact to Ascension, but to a rendezvous with one of the RFAs, the Fort Austin.

  For the next three days we made steady progress north. During the middle of this period, on the 7th, we were instructed to join a group which consisted of Antrim, a guided weapon destroyer, Plymouth, a frigate and the tanker Tidespring, which had a whole company of Royal Marines embarked. This was part of a forward group deployed to recapture South Georgia. We were delighted to be involved in this group, particularly as we had failed to prevent the capture of the island. It was also an opportunity to transfer my film team at our replenishment rendezvous with the Fort Austin, which was well ahead of the warships.

  We also had news of our ship’s Royal Marine Detachment. This was thanks to the BBC World Service, by far our most useful source of Intelligence during the early days of the Conflict. They were in fact already in Uruguay where they were joined by the other marines w
ho had been captured in the Falklands. They were soon to return to the UK.

  Since the news that we were to join the group the ship’s company had become decidedly more determined to give the Argentines a bloody nose. But our one and only Chinese dhobi man, Mr Yu, wanted to go home. In fact the poor chap had come to my cabin, full of tears.

  ‘My missy she say me not on ship for war. Me go on ship for laundly. Please to go home with men who make film.’

  I had to tell him I did not think this was possible. I only had clearance for the film team at this stage, and the NAAFI staff, who were also civilians, had said that they wanted to stay. He was not happy with this response and I certainly did not want any civilian on board against his will. I promised to do what I could. Eventually he got a deluxe passage in the QE2.

  By 12 April we had reached warmer waters. This, in itself was a relief to everyone. Morale was further boosted when we met the Fort Austin. I had a friendly meeting with her captain, Commodore Sam Dunlop, who was the Senior Officer of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. It was as if a terrible dark shadow was lifting. I no longer felt I was fighting this war on my own. It was also oddly encouraging to hear his complaints about not being kept in the picture. When ordered to divert, the Fort Austin had in fact been on her way home after six months in the Middle East!

  We asked for eggs, bangers, spuds and various other things, particularly meat. They couldn’t provide the first two items on our list, but we did well enough. I also remember a Wessex coming over to drop joints of meat on our flight deck. Just before she hovered over the flight deck to drop them, she developed mechanical trouble and had to jettison the load of meat straight into the sea. After the privations of recent weeks it occurred to several of us to jump overboard to ‘rescue’ what we could before it sank.