Forward into Hell

by Vince Bramley

  ‘Ha, Corporal B, how are you?’ asked the RSM.

  ‘Fine, sir. You?’

  ‘OK. So is your pal Connick, so don’t worry.’

  They both smiled and walked off. This news of Denzil made us all happy. They had made the gesture for reasons of morale as well.

  Water supplies and more rations reached us. In our mess tins Johnny and I cooked the biggest, most disgusting pile of food ever thought of.

  ‘What does it matter what it tastes like? The next shell might have our names on it,’ said Johnny.

  I grinned at this. As I took a mouthful of food, I noticed four black dots coming towards us from the north. My wooden spoon was half in my mouth as I murmured, ‘Johnny, what the fuck is …’ My words were cut short as four Argentinean jets screamed right over our heads, faster than sound.

  My sighting of them and their passing had taken two or three seconds. The roar and crack as they went by was a shock. ‘Jesus, those bastards are still trying it on,’ screamed Johnny, as they flew over beyond Mount Longdon towards Tumbledown and further.

  ‘Got to hand it to them: they really don’t know when to give in, those pilots. Pity the troops don’t behave the same way,’ laughed Johnny.

  We had seen the underwing colours of Argentina clearly. The pilot in one jet had seemed to be looking straight at us, he was so low. I wondered if he really had seen us. It never ceased to amaze me how their pilots managed to hit and run as they did.

  Tommo came running up the slope. ‘Quickly, get to your positions, the Argies are going to counter-attack,’ he shouted.

  ‘What?’ shouted Johnny.

  ‘OC said Intelligence has seen choppers being loaded with troops and taking off in this direction.’

  We left our slopes and our mess tins and grabbed our rifles. I slid in beside the machine-gun. Bob came running up to join me. We quickly loaded an extension on the existing belt of ammo. All over the mountain, the Paras got firmly into the crags, weapons pointing north again. We were expecting them to land in the open ground, Christ knows why; to me, it still seems suicidal, particularly in daylight. We waited and waited. About half an hour passed before the shout came through our positions that the enemy had decided to reinforce an area rather than counter-attack.

  Mixed feelings had run through me while waiting. My frustration wanted to fight, but my fear said, ‘Not again, please.’ The incident passed quickly. The battalion went about its routine defence and the jets went on to attack brigade HQ. It seems they knew exactly where to aim, for they bombed it in a series of runs. It was only luck that no one was killed. The pilots managed to hit the command tent. By a miracle, no one was occupying it at the time of the strike.

  As last light faded, I did whatever I could to stop thinking about the coming night’s battle. I wasn’t involved in the Wireless Ridge operation to the extent that I would be with a big target. I was, with all the others, part of the support teams to be used only if needed.

  We gathered round the OC in the last flickers of light. It seemed a far cry from the last gathering we had had, around the model of Longdon, back at Estancia. Cammed up, wrapped up, weapons oiled, hundreds of rounds of ammo wrapped around our bodies, we stood feeling the weight of something we had become used to.

  19

  PARA SUPPORT

  The OC and CSM stood side by side, waiting, as we pushed into a small semicircle.

  ‘Gents,’ said the OC, ‘I cannot take too long on this, due to the shelling. You know what we’re doing tonight from your recces this afternoon. Now all I’ve got to say is, we will not fire on to the Ridge’s flank unless 2 Para ask us. They are also fully aware that we will be in a very, very vulnerable spot. From where we will set up our support lines, we will be in the open in every meaning of the word. I have no doubts about this whatsoever, but, if we do open up, well I’m afraid a lot of us will not be coming back to this position after 2 Para’s attack. That is how vulnerable we will be. Two Para has assured me that if they are in need then we will come into use, OK?’

  ‘Sir, I would hope 2 Para do use us if needed – it’s only right,’ said a sergeant from the Milan team.

  ‘Glad to see we know the score,’ grinned the OC.

  We all grinned. The OC’s words didn’t worry me at all. I agreed with the sergeant as well. We all felt 2 Para had done a great deal since arriving. This was their second battle. We all felt jealous that we couldn’t mount a joint attack.

  The OC went on. ‘Now for the biggest crunch.’

  We all looked at him, wondering what was in store.

  ‘C Company is at this moment getting orders for the attack on Moody Brook and on the pumphouse, finally ending on the racecourse, where eventually a series of assaults and pushes from both brigades will start the big push into Stanley itself.’

  All went quiet. I remember thinking, If we end up in Stanley doing FIBUA then that is the time to worry, not tonight.

  ‘Gents, we will support C Company as a fire-based team tomorrow night if this has to be, but let’s see what the enemy does after tonight and worry about tomorrow when it comes. It’ll be bloody all the way if they don’t give in by tomorrow.’

  As night drew in, we watched 2 Para moving across our arc. The long, thin line spread out, loaded down with ammo. Through my binos, I could see the Mortars setting up 2 and 3 Para’s Mortar Platoons. The cold set in. It was an incredibly cold night on top of everything else.

  At approximately 1700 hours, we formed up and set off for the positions for the Wireless Ridge attack. Moving through the crags in the dark brought me memories of two nights earlier. The dark, sinister mountain reminded me of something from a creepy movie, where the bogeyman could jump out at any moment. The weight of all my ammo and equipment brought me out in a sweat within the first hundred metres of the small trek.

  We had gone only thirty metres when the OC tripped and nearly fell over an enemy corpse. The body lay on the grass as if it was a sleeping soldier. We all stepped over it as if stepping over litter in the street. Nobody took any notice, except TP, who murmured, ‘I wonder if he’s been looted?’ This brought a grin to everyone’s face. Greed for the spoils of war had begun to creep into all of us.

  As our party fought its way through the crags, artillery shells came in and landed in small salvoes. The barrage didn’t even bring us to a halt. It seemed normal now.

  Bob and Sas struggled behind me with the tripod and the GPMG. We each carried approximately three thousand rounds. The weight dug into my shoulders. We moved into A Company’s position. The sentry challenged us hesitantly. His sergeant stood beside him, pointing a direction for us to follow through his position.

  ‘Keep moving, lads, we know you’re coming through.’

  In the shadows, the lads from A Company stood or leaned against rocks, watching us pass through. No one spoke. Heads nodded at friends occasionally. A barrage of illumination lights went up from the Argentinean gun. They exploded with a burst, like fireworks, then descended to earth, floating harmlessly down on their parachutes to the ground. We were near our position now, in danger of skylining ourselves. Hitting the ground, I watched the flares falling with one eye. The area lit up as if it was daylight, yet everything was still. The enemy artillery fired at the mountain, now in our hands, and again a few shells fell on Longdon.

  Darkness and stillness enveloped us again. In whispers, we passed the word back along our party to move out. I reached my feet again and saw the heads and shoulders of the others as we moved off Longdon and beyond the ‘full back’ of Longdon, ‘full back’ being a term in the CO’s orders, as if the mountain was a rugby formation. We left A Company behind and their dark figures watched us go. Our party of twenty-plus men moved on a further twenty-five metres, where we left the Milan team and one gun team as our reserve and defence, only to be used to cover us if we had to do a quick fighting withdrawal.

  We stopped and dropped to our knees. The OC crawled forward and returned some fifteen minutes later. The whispered
message was passed back along the lines, ‘Close up and get ready to crawl the last fifty to seventy metres.’

  We closed up and started to half-crawl, half-drag ourselves and our weapons and equipment through the grass, down the slope leading towards Wireless Ridge.

  A few flares went up from the Ridge. We lay flat, hugging the ground. No one moved, or dared speak. The enemy positions lay in front of us about five hundred metres away, but the night air always carries noises much further than daylight air. When the lights had faded we crawled the remaining few metres, but caught sight of the OC and PC pushing their hands out in a signal to us to spread out and line up. We formed up into our gun groups. It was now 2400 hours UK time. It had taken us some three hours to reach this point. The dark, the flares, the crags and many other small problems had made the thousand-metre journey long and arduous.

  Very quietly and slowly, Bob, Sas and I mounted the GPMG on the tripod. The ammo was placed in one long belt of approximately three thousand rounds. The machine-gun was loaded and cocked slowly. I felt as if the whole world must be listening to it clunk and click into place. All down our fire-based team line, the thumbs-up came back to the OC. All was set, all was in place: twenty guys were ready and waiting with a deadly fire support. Five SMGs and five Milan rockets lined on to the target and the Ridge. All that was needed was the finger pressure to let off this firepower. We waited and waited. Flares exploded, flickered and drifted to the ground.

  With minutes to go to 2115 hours local time, time seemed to freeze. I looked to my right and left at times to see the gun crew’s heads looking at the Ridge. Every mind was feeling and thinking the same: Come on, let’s do it.

  I felt for 2 Para. I had so many friends in our sister battalion that it was as if we were one.

  The cold crept into our bodies from the ground. Breathing produced a mist from our mouths and noses. The frost crept in with a vengeance. In the last minutes before the battle started, the area was totally calm and so quiet you could have heard a pin drop. Dark clouds drifted harmlessly across the sky. The cold bit into us and the ground.

  At 2115 hours, the whole open space in front of us erupted into a massive fireworks display. Two Para’s machine-gunners fired from their positions, a steady stream of tracer rounds burst in front of us. The red flare bullets whacked into the bunkers and the ground around them, the ricochets from direct hits spinning in different directions. The artillery shells booming from behind us now showed the strength of our own firepower. The shells crashed into the peat ground, exploding with fury; the killer shrapnel splitting into a million pieces flew in all directions. Both 2 and 3 Para’s Mortar Platoons fired on the registered targets, their fire missions striving for the effects that took place immediately. The whole area in front of us was a massive display of bullets, shrapnel and illumination lighting, all raining down on the Ridge.

  After about twenty minutes during which fire of all types poured down on the Argentineans, the Scorpions and Scimitars belonging to the Blues and the Royals came in to fire their heavy cannon. Their support at this time coincided with 2 Para’s D Company moving off their start line into the first stage of their attack. Small arms were soon to be heard faintly, up to our left, as A and B Companies moved into the second phase. The shouting could be heard only when the massive fire support ceased. Shelling and machine-gunning continued until the last moment it was needed. Then the shelling and support fire from machine-guns, Scorpions and Scimitars was elevated above 2 Para’s heads, to targets further up the Ridge.

  This spectacular display had been going on some two or three hours when we were faced with a different survival task: a battle against the increasingly unbearable cold. The weather had turned so cold now that the lads in our support line were trying not to move any more than they had to. Two Para still weren’t in need of us, but hadn’t moved into a firm enough position to dispense with us altogether, so another good reason to keep still was that movement might have caused the Argentineans to mistake us for the main attack. We were all conscious that the enemy was still watching our direction. It might have appeared to them at this time that 2 Para’s attack was only a diversionary one and that Mount Longdon was the real front stage.

  Lying on our stomachs, we took to raising our feet and banging them together behind us in an attempt to restore circulation. I looked down the line at a familiar pattern. Bob looked at me through a small slit in a scarf wrapped around his face. Eye-talk had become a second language to us all. We wanted to help 2 Para, with fire or rockets – anything rather than sit and watch with frustration building up intolerably within us.

  The CSM leaned against a rock, watching through the NOD again. He would whisper down to us a report on what was happening and the message would then be passed quickly down the line.

  ‘The Argentines are running to rear positions, firing a few rounds and withdrawing again. Each bunker is getting more and more Argies in every fall-back.’

  I rolled over on to my back, quickly slipping on my waterproof clothing, not because it was raining but simply to get an extra layer of clothing on. Bob and Sas followed suit.

  ‘Get that fucking idiot down,’ shouted the CSM as low as he could.

  I turned to see Sas, standing, trying to get into his waterproof trousers. Bob kicked his legs from under him and the idiot landed on his back. I rolled over to him and trapped him before he could move again.

  ‘Listen, you dickhead, not tonight, you hear me? Be still, be quiet and don’t even think about farting.’

  I rolled off him and moved back to my position. I had moved too far already as far as I was concerned, but nobody wanted to be six feet under because of him. I felt embarrassed by him. Twice he had acted like a week-one recruit. Things were never to be the same between us.

  Moments later, a shell whistled over our heads from the left, followed shortly by another. These were the first of some twenty-six rocket shells that flew over us. The whistle after whistle seemed so close together that it was as if the shells were chasing each other. In fact, what was happening was that the artillery was still far behind us and we were witnessing the naval gun-support ships firing well out to sea, several kilometres away. They were firing in support of the attack on Tumbledown. That battle was well on its way but we hadn’t even noticed it, so involved were we in watching our fronts.

  The shells came over in steady waves, all capable of landing in a small area of about fifty by fifty metres. We turned our heads and watched them crash into the side of Tumbledown, explosion after explosion hitting the rocks and enemy positions. I recall thinking, Brilliant, if the Guards are getting that type of support they surely must win.

  Tumbledown was a tough nut for the Guards to crack, and like us they encountered not just conscripts but also regular and special forces. Their battle, like ours, was to last till daylight.

  The cold was now so bad that I and many others were in agony. The frost had set into the ground, our weapons and our equipment, and a thin layer covered the bodies of the lads lying around me, so that their backs looked like part of the terrain itself. The battle raged in front of us, supportive fire bursting out across the open ground. Both battles had been going for four or five hours now. Still we lay waiting. I was desperate to help, irrespective of the danger. It seemed the only way out of the agony of the cold and the frustration of watching.

  ‘Keep quiet, lads, shush,’ whispered the CSM.

  The changed tone of his voice told us that a different phase was beginning. My ears strained to a new pitch, to feel the air for information. In the distance, Bob and I heard English voices shouting orders, making decisions. Stage Three of the attack on Wireless Ridge was taking place.

  D Company, 2 Para, was moving through its objectives up on to the higher part of the Ridge. From the sound of their voices, they couldn’t have been more than two hundred or even a hundred metres away. This may seem quite a distance, but at night and in the open it was very close. A blue-on-blue contact could take place very easil
y.

  We kept still. Disturbing D Company might not only destroy their flow and control of the battle but might also be much worse if their commander wasn’t aware of our position. We kept perfectly still for about half an hour, while they moved into formation to attack. Once they moved off, a slight wave of relief went through us. The CSM nodded to us with a slight smile: the all-clear. He turned his head back to the NOD to watch the battle.

  ‘The Argies are doing a quick fighting withdrawal. They are moving from bunker to bunker. Get in there.’ His voice rose a bit. ‘Go on.’

  What he was witnessing and whispering to us about was the hand-to-hand fighting with the fleeing enemy. He continued to read us the Argentinean withdrawal as if we were listening to a story from a book. How I wanted to see for myself.

  ‘What the fuck?’ he whispered.

  We turned to see a shell exploding in the area of D Company. ‘That must be the Argies bringing down fire on a DF.’

  The shell had been our own and had fallen short. Luckily, mistakes like that were rare.

  The Argentineans withdrew, fighting all the way. They were very efficient at DF-ing their own positions every time they fell back, because they had good radio communications. Every time 2 Para secured a bunker position, the shells fell around it. The sheer determination of 2 Para was beating the enemy, with light casualties to themselves. The lesson of massive support fire that they had learned at Goose Green was being put to good effect.

  At about 0500 hours, we received a radio message that our support was not needed. We began to pack up and move after some nine hours lying on the frozen ground. My body ached like it had died. I was totally numb all over. My fingers didn’t exist. My feet hurt as I stood up.

  The battle had slowed to the odd burst of fire. Three Para’s support teams moved off, back into our own lines, without even firing a shot. Flares, green, yellow and white, exploded and fizzled down to earth to signal the capture of different areas. Odd shelling crashed into the areas secured. On our left now, as we headed back, was Tumbledown, from which bursts of fire could still be heard. The route back was slow and tiresome. My only thoughts now were of sleep. I was so physically tired that I knew if we stopped I would collapse into a lump.