Battle for the Falklands: The Winter War by Patrick Bishop & John Witherow

Author:Patrick Bishop & John Witherow
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1982-09-15T05:00:00+00:00

4

‘Follow Me’

Looking down from the helicopter you could follow the progress of the battle from the scars on the ground below (writes Patrick Bishop). Five miles outside Goose Green the hills flattened out into a featureless plain. The Argentine shells and mortars had gouged pretty stardust patterns into the peat that grew more frequent as the settlement approached.

We flew over the blackened wreckage of a Scout helicopter shot down by a Pucara. By the time we got to the airfield every ten yards of ground was churned into shell craters. Three Pucaras stood on the ground at odd angles, their fuselages crumpled by blast and sieved by shrapnel holes. It really looked like a battlefield, the only one of the war that lived up to expectations. Inside the settlement the sheepsheds were full of sleeping prisoners. The walls and roofs had already been painted with ‘PoW’ and its Spanish equivalent ‘PG’ to discourage the Argentinian pilots. Outside, sullen captives wandered through the mud carrying their weapons to the dumps. There were piles of ammunition and ordnance lying everywhere. A stack of brand-new Browning .5 heavy machine guns had not been taken out of their boxes.

The ground was littered with sodden clothing, helmets, sleeping bags and good luck cards from Argentinian school children exhorting the soldiers to fight to the death for the Malvinas. They were similar to the drawings sent to British troops, the kind of drawings found on noticeboards in primary schools or above the desks of proud parents.

Rifles stuck in the ground with helmets on top marked where men had died. Bodies were being collected by Argentine prisoners, hauled out by the legs and thrown into a tractor trailer where they were taken to a mass grave. A brief service on a blustery, wet day was conducted jointly by an English and Argentinian padre but as the water rose from the peat the bodies wrapped in drab green ponchos began to float. Only the boots sticking out from the burial shrouds showed that these pathetic bundles had once been human.

The scene at Goose Green was in total contrast to the spirit of caution that had ruled the Task Force’s first week ashore. The air raids of D Day rattled the commanders and made them revise their opinion of the Argentinians’ will and fighting ability. By D Day plus one there was a palpable air of restraint at Brigade Headquarters.

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