Forward into Hell

by Vince Bramley

  This book is dedicated to the soldiers of 3 Para, whose comradeship and determination throughout the campaign make the author proud to have served with them. So that those members of 3 Para who never returned are not forgotten, their names and ages at death in action are listed below.

  Private Richard Absolon, Military Medal 19

  Private Gerald Bull 18

  Private Jason Burt 17

  Private John Crow 21

  Private Mark Dodsworth 24

  Private Anthony Greenwood 22

  Private Neil Grose 18

  Private Peter Hedicker 22

  Lance-Corporal Peter Higgs 23

  Corporal Stephen Hope 27

  Private Timothy Jenkins 19

  Private Craig Jones 20

  Private Stewart Laing 20

  Lance-Corporal Christopher Lovett 24

  Corporal Keith McCarthy 27

  Sergeant Ian McKay, Victoria Cross 29

  Corporal Stewart McLaughlin 27

  Lance-Corporal James Murdoch 25

  Lance-Corporal David Scott 24

  Private Ian Scrivens 17

  Corporal Alex Shaw 25

  Private Phillip West 19

  PREFACE

  My grandfather fought in the Second World War, although the family know little of what he went through, for he remained silent about his war. Perhaps he was right to forget and carry on. But I have always been saddened when history dies with a soldier.

  One veteran did share his memories with me and I was always intrigued by his reminiscences of the 1914–18 war. Mr Smith told me when I was seventeen that I would make a soldier and later, after his death, I became one. His stories have remained with me and inspired me to write an account of my own war as a soldier of junior rank. I have described what I saw and felt, not what an officer or tactician experiences, nor for that matter what any other ordinary soldier goes through, for every soldier sees war differently and has his own tale to tell.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Preface

  1 ‘On the bus, off the bus’

  2 Everybody Loves a Soldier

  3 Talk about War

  4 The Green Light

  5 Welcome to San Carlos

  6 Aerial Overture

  7 Donkeys

  8 ‘Knocking on the door’

  9 Sore Feet

  10 A Waiting Game

  11 ‘Gents, this is it’

  12 Exchange of Fire

  13 On Longdon

  14 Nothing Personal

  15 Forward into Hell

  16 The Quality of Mercy

  17 Personal Losses

  18 ‘Don’t get bitter’

  19 Para Support

  20 First into Stanley

  21 Spoils of War

  22 Remembering the Dead

  23 A Friendly Riot

  24 A Different Kind of War

  25 Postscript

  26 Afterword: Nightmares

  Glossary

  Plates

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  1

  ‘ON THE BUS, OFF THE BUS’

  March 1982. Our battalion was on twenty-four-hour standby ‘Spearhead’, ready for emergency action. Early that morning, I was seated with other members of Support Company in the Intelligence lecture room at our barracks in Tidworth. The Intelligence officer stood in front of the squad.

  ‘Well, lads, the picture is as normal every time we get lumbered with Spearhead. The only possibility at the moment is that the situation in Northern Ireland may require our assistance. The Gulf situation is really well out of our hands.’

  After a half-hour brief, we were packing away our notebooks when he suddenly said, ‘Oh, yeah, this little island near the South Pole has been getting some bad vibes from the Argentines, but it’s really very little. As far as the latest report is concerned, we can, and must, concentrate on the Ireland problem.’

  ‘What’s the island called?’ shouted a lad from the back.

  ‘Ireland,’ came the reply, everyone turning to face the lad who had asked the question.

  ‘No, sir, I meant the one down south.’

  The Intelligence officer looked more closely at the map on the wall and turned around, still smiling at his little joke.

  ‘It’s called the Falkland Islands.’

  Skip and myself had just arrived in Aldershot for a three-week course with 9 Squadron. We were on Pioneer Procedures, which would include one week on explosives – the main reason the thirty members of our battalion had grabbed the opportunity to come, the other being that we all wanted to go on the town in Aldershot and get away from battalion bullshit for a while. Once we had finished the course, we would straight away go on Easter leave.

  At the end of the first week, riding back to camp in a four-tonne lorry, Dennis O’Kane said to me, ‘The news of the day is that some island down south has had some Argies raise a flag on it and the island is British, stupid fuckers. Anyway, are you staying in town, or heading home?’

  ‘Home, I reckon,’ I said.

  The second week of that course saw me go down with the worst bout of flu I have ever had. To this day, I have never been as ill as I was that week. Dennis, who was in charge of the party, told me, ‘Go home tonight and forget the homework.’

  My body was shaking and sweating with fever. I sat at my in-laws’ house and Holly, my mother-in-law, gave me hot whisky to help me sleep.

  Next day, feeling very weak, I tried to get to my class but this bug was unreal. For three days, it had me flat out. By the time I felt a bit better, we had finished week two of the course and were to have the afternoon off, so it must have been a Friday. We arrived back at camp and I packed my weekend kit into my grip and made my way to my in-laws’, where I watched TV with Holly.

  My wife, Karon, rang from the officers’ mess to tell me that Dennis had been trying to contact me to return to camp as soon as possible. She said it was something to do with an invasion of some sort.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, Karon, winding me up like that is the oldest one in the book.’

  ‘Well, this is what Dennis says, anyway,’ she answered. ‘Karon, you know what the lads are like. I’ll see you down here later, OK?’

  An hour after I put the phone down, it rang again.

  ‘Vince, is that you?’ It was Dennis.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, for fuck’s sake, get back up here or make your way back to Tidworth, mate. Haven’t you heard the news?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That fucking little island down south has been overrun with a full-scale invasion by Argentina.’

  ‘Dennis, is that a wind-up?’

  ‘No, gen. up.’

  ‘OK, I’ll see you at camp.’

  Dennis was doing his best to round everyone up, but the lads who hadn’t heard about the invasion laughed and said it was ‘a cracker of a rubber dick’.

  I turned the channels of the TV over and over, still thinking that it might all be a joke. Ten minutes later, a grim-faced newscaster confirmed Dennis’s story. Looking at Holly, I simply said, ‘It looks like I’ll be doing an “on the bus, off the bus” until something is decided.’

  I met Karon outside the Queen’s pub, then made a fast return to camp. When I arrived back at camp, it was calm, with only a few bodies running about. Walking into the storeroom, I found most of the platoon sitting around chatting. Tommo grinned and said, ‘Took your time.’

  ‘We will probably sit here all night until someone up top decides to tell us what’s happening,’ shouted TP from the back.

  ‘Well, can anyone tell me the score so far?’ I asked.

  ‘Argentina one, England nil,’ said Johnny Cook, laughing as usual.
His sense of humour had always been an asset to the platoon.

  As predicted, we did sit around for some four hours. Then GD, our platoon sergeant, came in with Lieutenant Oliver and told us, ‘Go home. Be back at 0900 hours tomorrow, OK?’

  Walking home with Tommo, I said, ‘Looks like a “hurry up and wait” job again, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah. As usual, it’ll fuck up our leave too.’

  When I got home, Karon was standing there with hands on hips, looking sternly at me. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I suppose you’ll be going off again, and I have to tell you this, Vince: in the six months we’ve been married, you have been away four of them.’

  ‘Karon, it’s not just a little fucking exercise this time, OK?’ I said. ‘We may go, we may not. I’ll find out tomorrow.’

  Saturday, 3 April. At 0800 hours, we arrived at the platoon storeroom to be told a briefing would be held for the whole battalion at lunchtime. Until then, we were to pack our kit and clean our weapons. So all morning we packed and unpacked kit. Young Rob Jeffries walked in just before dinner, late for the call-back. Every member of the battalion had been called back from all walks of life and throughout Britain, some even from abroad. ‘Wob’, as we called him, placed his grip on the floor and asked, ‘What’s all this crap about the Argies invading Scotland?’

  We all looked at him and laughed and threw items of kit as he retreated from the storeroom.

  At dinnertime, we paraded in the square and formed up, waiting for the CO. The RSM arrived just ahead of him and called the battalion to attention.

  ‘Gents, just to let you know the full implications and developments. We will be going to Southampton on Wednesday or Thursday to embark on a ship yet to be named. We will then sail south. There will be a lot of running about and a lot of changes between now and then, so please be patient. You will have tomorrow (Sunday) off and then, by Monday the fifth, you and I will have a better idea of the coming events. Good day.’

  We walked back to the stores, chatted for some minutes, then dispersed into our separate little worlds, saying goodbye in the face of what seemed unreal, almost a joke, to us all. I went back to Aldershot and stayed there with my parents. I could see the fuller implications of what was coming, but my family seemed more concerned about the weather. Certainly, Karon was more worried that it was another tour away than about any danger I might be in. Me? I really thought that the end might be upon me, but I waited to see if we would go the full way, or if it was just a bluff by the government.

  Steve Wake and his girlfriend Julie came back to Tidworth with us to have the last few days together. Although they were good company, I still don’t know if this was a wise idea, or whether Karon and I should have spent the time alone together.

  Monday, 5 April. After a few hours’ dry drill, we cleaned and packed away our SF machine-guns. We now had a better idea of the weather and terrain we would be working in, so our kit had to be unpacked and packed yet again. We also had the pleasant information that the battalion was to travel on the SS Canberra, at least as far as Ascension Island. As far as the MOD were concerned, this was a small island mid-way to the combat zone. It would be the staging area for the invading task force. I went home with Steve and we watched the news, seeing the Navy leave Portsmouth in a blaze of farewells.

  The next day we rearranged our kit yet again, this time moving it from the army suitcase to the sausage-bag. We then witnessed the unbelievable manoeuvres involved in unloading six hundred body bags from the column of four-tonne army lorries that had been arriving since it all started. TP and myself walked over to watch the quartermaster’s party unloading. Our sneak peep into the QM’s stores was enough for us to realise that the government meant business. The platoon gathered around us as we ran through the list of kit that had arrived, which included Arctic clothing, Clansmen radios and socks. In fact, everything the battalion had asked for we now had in our grasp, all within hours. As Johnny said, ‘Makes you wonder how long that fucking stuff has been on some twat’s shelf.’

  That afternoon, we all piled up to Perrum Down ranges and zeroed our weapons. As I lay down to zero my SLR, looking at the figure-twelve target, I scarcely imagined that less than a month later I would be aiming at a live target of Argentinean soldiers.

  On Wednesday, we got the green light to go the next day. The day was slow and uneventful because we were stood down early. The whole battalion had received all the latest intelligence and were packed and ready for the last time.

  That last night at home, sad as it may sound, I wanted to go, as Karon hadn’t stopped complaining. The tension was to blame for most of it, though the frustration of not knowing what would happen made it all seem unreal still.

  After dinner on Thursday, 8 April, we climbed on to the fleet of coaches for the two-and-a-half-hour journey to Southampton. The last goodbyes were short and sad and the lads just sat for the first few minutes of the journey, deep in their own thoughts.

  The arrival at the docks was a sight, even though we were the main reason for the massive activity. Standing in a huge hangar, we listened to the regimental band playing over the shouting and screaming of the hundred people all wanting to be in charge. Sitting on his kit, Johnny said, ‘This is just to get us on the bloody boat. Christ knows what it’ll be like if we reach the Argies.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I can see it now: “Bramley, Cook, go kill that Argie, please, he’s spoiling my view.”’

  We were still grinning as we received the order to follow a long line of troops and members of 3 Para on to the gangway. As I picked up my kit, I caught sight of Jez Hemming, a bandsman from our battalion and also a very good friend. We stood looking square into each other’s eyes. We never had time to say goodbye properly. The activity around me broke our stare and the quick ‘I’ll see you around, you wanker’ from me was said as I climbed the plank on to the ship.

  The SS Canberra, or the ‘Great White Whale’ as she became nicknamed, was no doubt having the most attention paid to her since her maiden voyage. The dockers did us proud; working flat out like a chain-gang, loading the ship. The whole dockyard was like a beehive with loading, shouting and movement of troops.

  Amid weapons, kit and bodies pushing and shoving, our platoon, moaning and swearing, found the small corridor with the cabins allotted to us. Mark Rawlings (‘Rawley’) and I were in the same cabin. We had shared before in many corners of the world and we were both happy with this arrangement. For the first few hours, we sat around unpacking the basic items we would need and watched the activity outside, through the porthole.

  That first night, we sat in the bar and watched the news, all wondering very much the same as we did on day one: ‘Who do you believe?’

  Friday, 9 April. All morning, the SNCOs were coming down on the lads like it was going out of fashion: ‘Do this, do that.’ Around dinnertime, I managed to slip away to ring home. My conversation with Karon was brief. I mainly wanted to know: ‘Are you coming down to see the ship off?’

  ‘No, I can’t, really. I’ll get lost in the car.’

  As I put the phone down, I felt rather angry. I rang my parents. The same thing happened. ‘Vince, you’ll be home shortly, plus we have visitors here.’

  They meant Peg and Stan, family friends for years. Feeling somewhat niggled after Karon’s answer, I said, ‘Yeah, you’re right. I’m just overreacting as usual.’

  I walked to the front of the ship to watch the crowds of families gathering. My good friends Paul Reid and Johnny were there and we took some photos or ‘catch me naturals’ as we called them. After tea, we hung around awaiting the order to line the decks for the big send-off.

  There were now some two and a half thousand troops on board, elite units put together to form 3 Commando Brigade: 3 Para and attachments and 45 and 42 Royal Marine Commandos. Mixing with the Marines was not our idea of pleasure. We had hated each other for years, and the atmosphere of rivalry was very apparent. The cold stares we gave each other at first caused some concern amo
ng the high brass, but we came together in a united front as we watched the families and listened to the bands playing below. We were all now quiet and self-absorbed.

  I could not help thinking that my family were really planning to come. However, as we lined the decks, the reality was upon us all, whether we had family below or not. The ship slid quietly away from the dock, to cheering and frantic calls from girlfriends, wives and mothers below. Marines and Paras alike forgot the war and even the silly hate between us, and waved and shouted back. The TV crews on the decks with us tried to capture this personal moment, but they did more harm than good, because we all just wanted to be left to our own thoughts.

  The lights of Southampton, with its night-time activity, flickered from the coast. I watched from the deck and an almost eerie silence took over as we moved away from the dock. The only noise now was the rushing of water as the great liner cut a path through the Channel. Gone was the sound of cheering families and friends. Almost gone, too, was the sight of England. Would I see her again? Would we really go in, or was all this just a game for the politicians? I didn’t feel, nor have I ever felt to this day, that our actions were wrong – nor did any member of that task force I spoke to then, or since. The unknown was our only pain.

  As the coastline disappeared, my trance was broken by singing from below. Walking from the deck, I noticed that it was filled with Marines and Paras, all leaning over the side, gazing into the darkness. One Marine turned at the same time as me and said, ‘Looks like something from a film, don’t it, mate?’

  ‘Yeah. Perhaps we’ll be cannon fodder – not that I’m worried about it as yet,’ I replied.

  ‘I was on Naval Party 8910 last year. Same of the lads who were down there when the fuckers invaded say they blew the fuck out of Moody Brook, our old barracks.’

  ‘We were told that they didn’t touch it,’ I said.

  ‘Ah, you’ll see. Over the next few weeks, we’ll hear bullshit after bullshit.’

  When we went for a drink, we found that the powers that be had separated the Paras from the Marines, so that each now had their own bar. The Marines all sat in theirs around a TV set flickering with the last news bulletin. Standing on chairs to see the screen, the Marine and I watched the docks and the SS Canberra sailing from England with all pomp and circumstance. The picture flickered once more and then was gone forever.