Timeline 102762 Malvinas 01 La Argentina by James Philip

Author:James Philip [Philip, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Alternative History
ISBN: 9781659254440
Google: bJNSzQEACAAJ
Amazon: 1659254442
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: 2020-01-14T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

Friday 3rd April, 1964

Leith, South Georgia

Both of the cruiser’s forward turrets erupted in the dark of the pre-dawn twilight, blinding the night vision of anybody looking in the wrong direction. The six one-hundred-and-twelve pound common HE shells traversed the quarter-of-a-mile to the shore and their unseen targets, within the abandoned whaling station, in a heartbeat and…missed everything except the side of the mountains beyond.

“Fucking amateurs,” Colour Sergeant ‘Birdie’ Finch remarked, with idle disdain. Then, without turning murmured: “Down one!” As he watched the water beginning to froth under the transom of La Argentina through his binoculars.

That hit on the roof of B turret had spooked her captain!

He was going to open the range…

Either he had ordered the destroyers – two old Fletchers – to hold their position or he had forgotten all about them in his hurry to get out of the firing line.

“Down one!”

The veteran Marine dropped his right arm and the next bomb was snapped down the tube of the Mark II LR ML 3-inch mortar sited in a shallow gully nearly three hundred feet up on the western slope of the precipitous slopes overlooking Leith Harbour.

What were the odds? He asked himself.

That they would have the Mark II in place on high ground, already zeroed-in, and with enough round to had to make it worthwhile when half the fucking Argie navy turns up intent on rogering the life out of what was left of the British Empire?

And then sails, very slowly, right into the Mark II’s killing zone?

Thank you, God!

Still, it only went to prove Birdie’s old instructor was right; HE really was on the side of the Royal Marines!

The veteran commando would have held his fire until the idiots had put their head, well and truly, into the noose, regardless of what he guessed were the applicable rules of engagement. Once the beggars started making preparations to put assault troops ashore, without a by your leave or any of the normal courtesies, that was that.

Anything goes!

Still, the fact that he and his boys were half-way up a hill sitting in a perfect, natural firing sangar and in the best possible position to do an awful lot of damage, was…beyond lucky.

He had only suggested lugging the bloody mortar up ‘the hill’ to sharpen up the boys’ attitudes after three weeks surveying and playing Arctic war games on the nearby glaciers. The whole detachment, even Second Lieutenant Rawlings, whom the boss – Major Cummings – had asked him to ‘mentor’ on this trip, had donkeyed rounds, all thirty-six they had brought from Moody Brook, up the side of the mountain.

Rawlings was a good kid, bright enough to know that on this trip he was not ‘IT’; that he was along for the ride to listen, watch and to learn. Some Royal Marines were born; most were made and their skills honed by the Corps. A man had to earn his green beret and its sacred badge.

Birdie had been a Royal Marine – a Commando – since 1942

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