Hugh McManners - Falklands Commando

A soldier’s time is spent struggling more with the elements than with the enemy. In surviving a hostile environment you have to work out a way of living and a routine for everything, so that the uncomfortable circumstances don’t take over and leave you unable to do your job. You have to be pretty stoical, and a good, unshakeable sense of humour is by far the most important thing to possess.

Operation Brewers Arms, our next task, could easily have been specially devised as a test of these qualities.

Steve Hoyland and I returned from Fox Bay on 26 May, to Intrepid absolutely knackered. However, on arrival we were summoned to the Wardroom to see Jonathan Thomson, who had his roll of maps laid out on the long, polished, dining-room table. He outlined a plan involving us going straight out again – immediately. “Our hearts died within us” (as a Pacific island native said in one of my boyhood books after the District Officer tried to make them play cricket).

There was a theory that an Argentine Special Forces team with radios was directing the Argie air raids from somewhere in the Mount Rosalie area. Being just across Falkland Sound to the west, Mount Rosalie overlooked the entrance to San Carlos Water. We were to boat across there, land, find them (with help from our TI) and either shell them, capture them or otherwise deal with them. [10]

It was to have happened five minutes ago, and was a good example of how the Brigade Staff conceived what they thought a good idea, told us to do it, then thought no more about it except to chide us for not having done it. I realised that if we were to avoid being given impossible tasks that would sooner rather than later lead to a disaster, I was going to have to question closely everything I was told to do.

There were several problems with this particular idea, apart from my reluctance to rush off into something without proper preparation. We did not know how many enemy might be in the Mount Rosalie area, plus we did know that a long-term SAS patrol that had been there for several weeks. But they’d stopped communicating… Thus we couldn’t open fire on anybody without taking the additional risk of getting close enough to be totally sure who they were – within small arms range…. Our presence in the area would be unknown to the SAS patrol, which if they saw us first would open fire and ask questions later.

Nevertheless in record time, we were ready to stay out for a week. But after several hours getting cold and wet in the LCM taking us to Fearless , including the doubtful entertainment value of watching an air raid from the middle of San Carlos Water, it grew dark and the Mount Rosalie operation was postponed. We were left marooned on Fearless , which was grossly overcrowded, and had to sleep among the diesel fumes of the tank deck.

A little of our frustration comes through in a letter I wrote home from Intrepid at this time (two days after the Fox Bay raid), whilst waiting and worrying about Nick and Des at Port Howard.

Things are somewhat trying at present – mainly because nothing is definite and everything keeps changing all the time. It is quite a relief, in a funny sort of way, to get on with a job!

It’s hard to visualise ‘normal’ life at present, although I suspect this is a natural defence mechanism. It seems to filter out all the unpleasant bits. I’ve just had a phone call from Tim Bedford – one of my hands – who has been given a very expensive bit of night observation equipment and wants to know who should ‘sign for it’. I paused then said:

“Listen, Tim, you sign for it, and if we lose it I’ll write it off.”

He just chuckled at the other end, so I said:

“This is war you know. It doesn’t really matter.”

Some people overheard this and also burst out laughing, so did I. What a ridiculous thing to say.

But we have no real worries out here – like mortgage repayments or trades-union disputes. Our funny little world starts in the morning and ends whenever bed is once again possible. Constant and unremitting chaos presents more of an intellectual challenge than most would realise, but provided you don’t allow frustration and a sense of helplessness to get too strong a hold, you can always (a) Carry on as you see fit regardless (b) Obey the last order or (c) Do absolutely nothing. Any one of the three seems to work!

I referred to my younger brother Peter, a lieutenant in the parachute engineers, also in the Falklands.

Typical of Pete to get on to QE2 rather than the tramp ship that I came down on. I went on Canberra for a few nights at Ascension and it was really strange. They were all drinking exotic cocktails and there were stewardesses and all the normal cruise trappings, interspersed with phalanxes of troops running round the promenade decks and duty sergeants in fiercely pressed denim uniforms.

We’re just reading the detailed Army Pay Review document – I think I get £2 extra per day, £1.70 Special Forces pay, plus a massive 50p for the privilege of being here! Except they will dream up some reason to take some of it away, i.e. because we are enjoying ourselves too much or something!

Well, I hope all goes well and that our bloodthirsty press and TV are not continuing to exaggerate things as they have done so far. Some of the stuff I’ve seen in our out-of-date papers is truly horrifying. It’s not at all like that here. It really is infuriating the rubbish they write and print in order to sell copies! Don’t worry too much about us (there aren’t any cars to get run over by).

The next day, having survived a very noisy and fumy night on Fearless ’s tank-deck, we got back to Intrepid to hear that a TI-scan flight in a Wessex had shown up nothing on Mount Rosalie. There was no air raiding in San Carlos either. But the Mount Rosalie operation was still on.

At sea, Super Etendards attacked the fleet, and an Exocet destroyed Atlantic Conveyor . A second helicopter TI scan still showed no enemy on Mount Rosalie, but nevertheless we spent another day rushing around preparing to go up there to take out the mysterious forward air controller.

In all this, we still had no idea what the SAS patrol were doing. It seemed despite the more-than-religious necessity of Special Forces always making daily radio comms checks, they were not communicating at all – perhaps waiting until they had important information. But admitting that their patrol was incommunicado took some time for the SAS headquarters to do.

So I declared that until radio contact was re-established with the patrol, this was too dodgy a mission to be worth the risk, and refused to go. Losing our FO team – or the SAS patrol in a firefight – on an apparently empty mountain, wasn’t sensible. There were only five FO teams, all constantly doing operations. Of the two, we were certainly the more valuable…

Communications with the SAS team were never achieved, so the idea was finally shelved, for us at least. The Mount Rosalie op did recur a few times for others, and at one stage Chris Brown did take a patrol out. But on searching the area, whoever might have been there was long gone.

So thus ended two days of that most classic of military activities – being buggered about. It had started immediately on our return cold, wet and knackered from Fox Bay, being given just ten minutes to get completely ready for a two-day operation – which we’d achieved…

At the same time as our private adventures, there were plans afoot to dump all Special Forces ashore complete with our various mountains of equipment, in order to clear HMS Intrepid for 5 Infantry Brigade’s arrival from the UK.