Hugh McManners - Falklands Commando

There is a very sophisticated Russian AGI trawler, bristling with radio antennae, spying on us and monitoring our frequencies. I wonder what Ivan made of all that?”

The last of the Commanders Major Jonathan Thomson, the Officer Commanding the Special Boat Squadron, had now come aboard and was sharing the bridge-wing Portacabin with SAS Commanding Officer Lt Colonel Mike Rose. Whilst waiting in the heat of Ascension for Fearless to arrive, Jonathan had acquired a tan and become bored. He’d cut-down his lightweight camouflage trousers into shorts, and instead of desert ‘wellies’ wore open-toed sandals, and was rather envied by the rest of us.

Jonathan was quiet and apparently grave, and a careful listener. A stranger might accuse him of a lack of sense of humour – probably because they had without realising it, become the object of the gentle sarcasm with which Jonathan prods people. He’d been a member of the British National Orienteering team and although now out of serious training, was very capable of taking good runners to the cleaners in rough woodland, as he had done to me on several occasions. FO1 was soon to be under his command.

On 7 May, FO1 along with Dennis Marshall-Hasdell with his Tactical Forward Air Control party, transferred from Fearless to her sister ship HMS Intrepid , like HMS Hermes rescued from the scrap yard. Most of the key war ships had either been sold to someone else or promised to the breakers, yet here they all were at sea in another hemisphere, to sort out a group of Argentine scrap metal merchants.

Being much less crowded, Intrepid was altogether better than Fearless . Dennis and I shared a cabin just along from the wardroom and were able to enjoy food and drink unheard of (or run out of) in Fearless . Intrepid was old, and had been out of service for a radical refurbishment. But in just ten days she’d been refitted and put to sea – a process that normally takes a year or more.

Intrepid’s layout was ostensibly the same as Fearless, but with a few very confusing differences. Bare wires hung down from light fittings not yet connected in the rush to put to sea. All her crew were drafted to other ships or shore-based jobs, and so to get the ship seaworthy in such record time the Navy had simply asked them to return. The wardroom CPO had actually left the navy after completing his 22 years, but had rejoined and was marvellous at keeping the wardroom ‘homely’ in spite of the nightmare that was soon to begin.

On our third night on board, a signal ordered that Intrepid be converted as an emergency operating theatre and field hospital. While we watched a strange film The Omega Man, about the one surviving human after an atomic war who is not tainted with the terrible mutating disease, Intrepid’s engineers started the conversion in the Midshipmans’ Gunroom Mess next door.

When the Navy is at war, things happen very quickly. First they wheeled in oxy-acetylene cylinders to slice twenty square feet from the steel bulkhead for a door wide enough for stretchers. We could barely see the screen for smoke and fumes. Next they removed the sink from under our bar counter, and re-plumbed it next door. By the time the film was over, the room was ready for the installation of specialised bits of medical kit to complete the transformation. The oxygen cylinders and cases of instruments had been stored in the bowels of the ship as part of its basic equipment, waiting for this very day, along with the instructions followed by the ship’s engineers.

But the next morning, some terribly senior naval medical officers in crisp tropical whites with gold braid, arrived to survey the wreckage of our wardroom.

“It’s simply too small,” they observed loudly in fruity voices, their skinny legs looking ridiculously anaemic.

“The access is too restricted, and clearly”, they added, “It would be absolutely impossible to use Intrepid as a hospital ship.”

We finally sailed from Ascension Island to join the rest of the Task Force, who were waiting just north east of the Total Exclusion Zone (TEZ). Even now, we still thought in terms not of landing or fighting, but bobbing about waiting in the South Atlantic. I was concerned with the threat of the Argentine Air Force and the effect of bombs hitting one of our troop-carrying liners, or how a landing would fare if the enemy jets were able to bomb our troops on the ground. But at least now we’d left Ascension, and were on our way south.

The geo-political aspect of the situation was disturbing when seen from our worm’s eye level. There was the possibility of escalation to involve other Organisation of American States (OAS) countries and Cuba, and possibly the use against us of Cuban troops operating as a Soviet proxy force. I saw the bombing of mainland Argentine airfields as a sensible military pre-condition to our landing, but I did not think that we could actually do this for political reasons.

And so it seemed we were on our own.

The next nine days were full of uncertainty as we ploughed south through seas that got steadily colder and rougher. The various assault drills were practised daily, carefully revised and refined to cut down the times taken still further. There were no problems over the realism of these exercises. My diary continued:

Sunday 9 May : The usual 0700 shake followed by a shower and breakfast. The Beeb is being sporadically jammed by Spanish voices and music so I’ve not heard the complete news today. An Observer reporter was commenting on the situation and said confidently that we were destined to fight. Cheers, pal.

We had a church service and hymn singing in the senior rates (Senior NCO’s) dining room in the memory of the 20 officers and men killed aboard the HMS Sheffield and the three Harrier pilots who have died. I had to go for a quiet walk on the flight deck afterwards. Several others did too. We carry our respirators, anti-flash gloves and hood, lifejackets and bright orange ‘once only suits’ (immersion suits) with us everywhere we go.

Tuesday 11 May: another day much as yesterday. The excitement started after lunch with two Russian BEAR high level reconnaissance aircraft flying low and slow over the fleet giving it a very thorough going over. As they took our photos, we took theirs and eventually they flew off.

Then, as I was waiting for a helicopter to take me to Fearless for a conference, the alarms went off and we all ran to action stations pulling on anti-flash. A periscope had been seen off our port bow so we went through the routine of securing for action, lashing the wardroom furniture to walls and supporting pillars, putting the freshly-laid afternoon tea back in the galley, then waiting. I fell asleep on the wardroom carpet. The fleet turned away from the position of the sighting, the ASD (anti-submarine duties) helicopters were launched and the frigates Ardent and Argonaut were sent to investigate. There seemed to be two submarines, both of them Russian, and a school of whales behind which the boats were hiding. This was the High Seas, so all three parties had a perfect right to be there, but it did seem an affront to the whales.

We’ve just heard the Harriers from Atlantic Conveyer were scrambled to intercept and shoot down the Argie Boeing surveillance plane (as Maggie threatened if it comes snooping any more). However this radar contact turned out to be an RAF Victor tanker aircraft waiting to refuel the SHAR (Sea Harrier) when doing CAP (Combat Air Patrol). These pilots must be doing many, many hours in the air, flying out to us all the way from Ascension.

Wednesday, 12 May: I’ve been across to Fearless to get briefed. We are to land (in the Falklands) sometime soonish – after 18 May – and in a change of plan, I’m to start off with 45 Commando, landing by LCU (Landing Craft Utility) with the CO in the assault landing, and after that in a forward OP (Observation Post) to the south of the landing area (San Carlos) overlooking Darwin.