With 3 Para to the Falklands by Graham Colbeck

Author:Graham Colbeck [Colbeck, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Latin America, South America
ISBN: 9781526713650
Google: bdtgDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
Published: 2017-11-30T00:35:07+00:00

8. DELAY

... what have we acquired? What, but a bleak and gloomy solitude, an island thrown aside from human use, stormy in winter, and barren in summer; an island which not the southern savages have dignified with habitation; where a garrison must be kept in a state that contemplates with envy the exiles of Siberia . . .

Samuel Johnson, ‘Thoughts on the late Transaction respecting Falkland’s Islands’, 1771

After stand-to on the morning of 4 June, we moved out of the barn and erected shelters along the fences and gorse hedgerows to the east of the farmhouse. At this time the length of our stay at Estancia was uncertain, and it was possible, we hoped, that the offensive would be quickly resumed; but rumours to the contrary soon circulated.

Estancia House was the home of Tony and Ailsa Heathman, who lived there with their baby daughter. Ailsa’s parents had been arrested by the Argentines and taken to Fox Bay. The property consisted of the house itself plus four or five outbuildings that were all put to good use by various elements of 3 Para. Major Dennison and his Support Company Headquarters occupied a shed by the mouth of a stream that ran into the waters of the Inlet. I used a wire fence next to a row of gorse bushes to support one side of my poncho and then secured the other side to the ground. This provided me with reasonable shelter but I was fed up with lying on the bare, damp earth so I went in search of suitable material for a bed. Finding some wooden fence poles I laid them in my shelter to form a solid wooden floor that gave me some insulation from the ground. My new home gave good protection from the elements but not, of course, from attack, although it was away from the buildings that were likely to attract any fire from either ground or air. I did not want to start digging another trench while we were likely to have to move.

I took advantage of the presence of armoured vehicles at Estancia to heat up my feet; I climbed on to a Scorpion light tank and sat on the turret next to its 76mm gun with my feet on the hot engine covers, and before long my feet were burning and my leather boots were thoroughly dry for the first time in two weeks. I then took some grease from a can carried by the vehicle crew and smeared it all over my boots and gaiters, afterwards feeling very pleased with myself. The cavalrymen invariably kept warm in their heated vehicles and had the ability to boil water in electric ‘boiling vessels’. They had a rather quaint and appropriate nickname for us footsloggers, calling us, ‘Puddle-Jumpers’. Not long after my warming on the Scorpion, the Blues and Royals Troop left us to join 5 Infantry Brigade who were landing on the coast to the south.

Chris Howard came down the hill in the afternoon

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