Hugh McManners - Falklands Commando

That night we decided to drink the beer the matelots on Antelope had so generously donated. Some of our huge stash of cans, carried like swag in a blanket, was brought up from the meat store then wrapped in a nest of further blankets to keep cool. The strategic place to hold what was going to be a most civilised piss-up was the deck immediately outside the wardroom, facing Ascension and the dying sun, conveniently close to the nearest heads (loo).

The best knees-ups start very slowly, almost by accident, and evolve with gentle sipping and the reflective broaching of crisp, fresh cans, with that most satisfactory sound as the ring is pulled. We leaned over the rail and watched the sun go down, chatting quietly. People passed by, were offered a can, then stayed, adding to the conversation and going into the wardroom to buy a round of cold cans in return.

Leaning over the rail in the dark, staring down into the phosphorescent water, we reflected on what the future might have in store. We had no idea, but that night I decided to resist any further attempts by the hierarchy to rearrange the composition of my Forward Observation team, as our Battery Commander had disingenuously suggested he might in recompense for breaking up my original team. Nick Allin and I were pleased with the way our training and preparation was going, and we, as a team, were happy with each other, which was the most important of all.

SS Canberra arrived, bringing amongst others the majority of 148 Battery. From a distance, she still looked like a luxury liner preparing to disembark tourists, but unlike us she had no boats, so none of our comrades were going anywhere. We therefore mounted a mission to investigate the reality of Canberra’s imagined delights.

This started badly, as I was the only person with clean military uniform. As we motored towards the liner’s busy-looking embarkation hatch, we were astonished to see fierce-looking duty sergeants wearing red sashes, crisply ironed shirts and maroon berets, wielding shiny pace sticks.

We were entering another world.

Captain Bob Harmes, a recent arrival in 148 Battery, having just been promoted to captain from being RSM of 7RHA the artillery’s’ parachute regiment, was horrified at our scruffiness, and attempted to discipline a couple of my team as they tied up our Gemini – until I told him to stop.

While they went off with the other 148 guys to borrow clean shirts and ironed trousers, I tried to explain, but Bob simply didn’t believe my account of conditions on Sir Percivale . He was also unhappy at my having contradicted his authority – with me being equally unhappy at his having attempted to contradict mine. I told him to concentrate on more important things, which probably didn’t help. When we were finally able to wander round Canberra, I understood the reason for Bob’s horror at our condition. (25 years later, at a reunion dinner, Bob apologised to me about this, and said several very complimentary things about FO1, which I very greatly appreciated.)

The liner was more like my fictional portrayal in the Oily Rag than I could possibly have imagined. Most of her normal crew were still on board – including the women. A group of married naval helicopter pilots (seeming more licentious than the bachelors) had ‘befriended’ and taken charge of the female members of the Purser’s admin staff, who at that stage were still allowed to mix with the military – but only the officers of course.

The first-class cocktail lounge below the bridge – the ‘Crow’s Nest Bar’, with cocktail shakers and crushed-ice machine was in normal cruise ship operation, rigorously testing the skills of the barmen. Mass cocktail creation operations ensued, until the unheard-off calamity of the more exotic drinks running out. But now after a fortnight, the novelty had worn off, even for the likes of the helicopter pilots, and now the ship had a very crisp military air about it – particularly when compared to poor old Sir Percivale .

Canberra’s recreational facilities were in full use, the quarter-mile-long promenade deck crowded with crocodiles of runners, often wearing full combat kit festooned with equipment. This military promenading was buckling the wooden planking, and metal plates were bowing from constant heavy pounding. The carpets had disappeared in Southampton, and the entire length of the ballroom stripped bare for conversion into a MASH -type surgical hospital. Piles of oxygen cylinders, cardboard boxes of dressings, sutures, tubes, blades, syringes and battlefield medical paraphernalia lay heaped around the dance floors, against the pianos and where the tombola machine stood under dust covers.

Part of this medical conversion required Canberra to become a support helicopter-operating base. The Crow’s Nest bar contained a spider’s web of scaffolding supporting the steel plates of the new helicopter flight deck above, looking like the pit-propped gallery of a mine. Metal ramps ran down from the flight deck to the ballroom, for moving the wounded in stretcher trolleys from the CASEVAC (Casualty Evacuation) helicopters. Enthusiastic use of cutting torch and large hammer in the few days before sailing had covered over the forrad swimming pool. The steel flight deck had been prefabricated ashore, the last bits assembled at sea after the ship had sailed, with the shipwrights being flown off as Canberra sailed past Gibraltar (no doubt to their relief). Their oxy-acetylene gear lay on deck where they’d abandoned it.

At Ascension further ‘robust’ marine construction work was being done, the most notable being the skipper of Atlantic Conveyer cutting off the entire front end of his ship to make a large enough flight deck to allow Harrier jump jets to take off. I hoped captaining an aircraft carrier was fulfilment of a childhood dream. As a vast amount of steel plate was dropped into the sea, this transition was achieved with astonishing rapidity. However, the first Harrier we watched landing onto this new flight deck looked alarmingly likely to end up in the sea.

Canberra’s normal luxury cruise shops were still open. The assembled soldiery could select from a full range of Pierre Cardin scarves, luxury perfumes, and souvenirs. The hair-stylist however, had completely changed his outlook on life, and now produced what must have been one of the most stylish ‘short back and sides’ ever experienced by the British Army.

There had been a few ‘incidents’ between male crew members and embarked military, the odd black eye but all was well. Rumour had it that a few crew members had quit the ship for various reasons at Ascension, but it’s very much to the credit of Canberra’s crew that there were no unredeemable problems in these extraordinarily stressful circumstances.

The contrast between conditions on Canberra and those on Sir Percivale could not have been greater. Somehow living under the far more basic conditions of the RFAs and the warships, in what for us were familiar circumstances, kept things properly in perspective. At least we on Sir Percivale could only be moved to a better ship – it could hardly get worse for us.

The148 Battery guys were relieved to be moving out of Canberra , into the RFAs that were soon to take them southwards. They were to join the small ‘Op Paraquat’ force to re-capture South Georgia.

The conditions under which battles are planned, commanded and fought can be summed up by the single cliché ‘the fog of war’ – the one confounding factor you cannot include in training exercises. Armchair strategists guided by the news, and historians with critical hindsight rarely understand this. The fog of war obscures some things and not others, suddenly lifts then just as suddenly falls again, makes you think you are going faster and then slower, or puts you into a dangerous state of false security. The only way to deal with it is to be infinitely flexible, which involves constant changes of plan. In turn this demands resignation and a sense of humour from both the troops being buggered about and from the ‘loggies’ (logisticians), who in a nightmare of eternal chaos must plan for every eventuality.