The Exit Club: Book 5: Old Comrades Read online

  Still, with the arrival of the eighteen replacements, the diversionary raid against Darwin went ahead as planned, as did similar raids being created that night to distract the enemy’s attention from the main landings on the opposite coast, far to the north of Darwin.

  That evening, Marty was one of the sixty men of D Squadron to be inserted by Sea King helo near Goose Green, not far from Darwin. For this particular operation, the men were armed with GPMGs, a MILAN anti-tank weapon with SACLOS semi-automatic guidance system, an American Stinger surface-to-air (SAM) missile system, 81mm mortars, and the usual collection of automatic and semi-automatic rifles, favouring the Heckler & Koch G3, the SLR, and the always popular M16.

  Once inserted, the squadron embarked on a twentyfour-hour forced march south, across rolling fields of marshy peat and tussock grass whipped relentlessly by freezing wind and sleet. They yomped throughout the night, rested up before first light, gulped down a cold breakfast of high-calorie rations and water, then moved on again, into the day’s equally filthy weather.

  Twenty-four hours later, most of them exhausted but still prepared for the fight, they arrived at the Argentinian garrison, which was, to their surprise, brightly illuminated, its defensive slit trenches clearly visible in the lights beaming out of the many wooden huts raised behind them.

  The diversionary raid was deliberately mounted in a manner that drew as much attention to the SAS as possible, while making them appear to be much greater in numbers than they were.

  This was accomplished by dividing the men into three groups, spreading the first group out over as wide an arc as could be managed and then having the men attack the unwary Argentinians with everything at their disposal. Even as the Argentinians were being pummelled by the combined might of the SAS weaponry, including the GPMGs and the MILAN antitank weapon, the big guns of the Ardent, out at sea, were laying down a devastating support barrage and turning the Argentinian slit trenches into hell on earth. Finally, when the battle was fully engaged, the squadron commander, Major Piers Hudson, contacted the other two groups by radio and ordered them to change positions repeatedly, moving even farther apart, to convince the enemy that the line of attack was much wider and involved at least a full battalion.

  Between the barrage from the Ardent’s big guns, the shells from the mortars, the anti-tank missiles from the MILAN, the two hundred rounds per minute being fired by the GPMGs and the increasingly broad arc of fire from the personal weapons of the SAS, the Argentinians were indeed convinced that they were being attacked by a full battalion and refused to be drawn out of their trenches.

  Pleased, Major Hudson made radio contact with HQ on HMS Hermes and was informed that the invasion of the Falklands had commenced.

  At that very moment, Fearless and Intrepid were anchored off Jersey Point on West Falkland, with the troops already disembarking from the LCAs and advancing inland. Brilliant, Canberra, Norland, Fort Austin and Plymouth were anchored in the Falkland Straits. TheAntrim’s guns were shelling Fanning Head in support of the landings there. More ships were steaming into San Carlos Water. And Port Stanley was under constant air bombardment.

  Exultant, Major Hudson passed the word down through Captain Peters and Marty that the men were to spread out even more and continue the mock assault on the Goose Green defences. When they did so, the arc of fire seemed to be about two kilometres long.

  The attack continued, with the three groups advancing and spreading out until they were forming an immense semicircle around the burning, smoking enemy defences. About an hour before first light, Hudson learned from radio communication with the fleet that twelve British ships were now in the Falkland Straits, another five warships were patrolling just outside the Straits, and the landing troops, including 40 Commando and 2 Para, were occupying Port San Carlos and Ajax Bay.

  Hearing this, Hudson told his men to keep firing until dawn, then circle around the Argentinian positions, advance under cover of the morning’s remaining darkness, and meet up at the RV north of Darwin. When they did so, they learned that the diversionary raids had worked, the landings on the opposite coast had been a great success, and the battle for the Falklands was well underway.

  Approximately two weeks later, looking down on Port Stanley from the crest of the hill, Marty saw that it was covered in smoke from the exploding shells of the naval gunline bombarding the airport, the racecourse and Sapper Hill. The port had not yet been taken, so the sky was filled with British and Argentinian aircraft, the former bombing Port Stanley and inland, the latter attacking the fleet anchored out at sea. Helicopters, all British, were landing and taking off in a race to transport the growing numbers of wounded to the Forward Dressing Stations of Teal and Fitzroy or the Main Dressing Station at Ajax, farther away on San Carlos Water.

  Gazing down on that awesome picture of modern warfare, knowing that it would soon result in defeat for the Argentinians, Marty realized that although he had personally enjoyed the fight, the cost of getting this far had been high.

  Following the success at Goose Green and knowing that the invasion had commenced, Major Hudson broke his men up into sixteen groups of five and ordered them to head north, but with each covering a different area, and gradually make their way to Port Stanley, harassing the enemy in whatever reached the port. He disorientation and confusion, outside the normal chain of command, all the way to Port Stanley.

  As usual, Marty made sure that he was in a group with Taff, TT and Alan Pearson, under the command of Captain Peters, who was relatively young but had proved himself to be trustworthy.

  Once they had received their individual grid reference, they moved off, heading north, and soon lost sight of the other groups in the wide, mist-wreathed fields and hills. Alone in that vast, frozen landscape, whipped constantly by wind and rain, they marched in single file formation, with Marty out on point, Captain Peters second in line as PC, Alan Pearson third as signaller, TT fourth in line and heavily burdened with his GPMG, and Taff bringing up the rear as Tail-end Charlie, though with a formidable American Stinger SAM system strapped to his Bergen.

  At nine in the morning they learned through Pearson’s radio that the landing at San Carlos Water way they could until they wanted hit-and-run raids, had been successful, with the loss of only three Royal Marines air crew, forced down when fired upon. They also learned that Port Stanley and the enemy positions around it were being attacked relentlessly by Sea Harriers dropping air-burst shells and 450-kilogram bombs, as well as by Vulcans firing American Shrike radiation-homing missiles.

  Indeed, the sound of distant bombing was clear even from where they were hiking, smoke was darkening the horizon in the direction of Port Stanley, and the sky directly above them was filled with Argentinian aircraft, including Skyhawks, Daggers and Pucaras, flying from the mainland and Port Stanley, to the sea and back, obviously attacking the fleet and landing force.

  Four hours later, when they had stopped for a cold lunch of high-calorie rations and water, they took turns at studying the southern landscape through binoculars and saw the troops of 2 Para advancing across the high ground south of San Carlos Water, on the road to capture Darwin. Seeing this, they knew that the advance would not be stopped now.

  This was confirmed when, much farther north, where the flights of enemy aircraft to and from the sea had increased dramatically, they heard over the radio that in San Carlos Water, dubbed ‘Bomb Alley’, the British force, having gained a foothold on the Falklands, was poised to break out and advance on Port Stanley.

  Their first contact with the enemy came when they arrived at an isolated farmhouse in a windblown valley between Bluff Cover and Fitzroy, with the sea of Port Pleasant Bay visible beyond the edge of the distant cliff.

  Lying belly down on the ground and examining the farmhouse through binoculars, they saw that smoke was rising from its chimney and an Argentinian troop truck was parked in front of it. Armed Argentinian soldiers were wandering casually in and out of the front door, some drinking from mugs. Abou
t halfway between the farmhouse and the SAS group, though certainly well away from the farmhouse, an Argie soldier was on guard, though in a distinctly careless manner: sitting on a bucket, smoking a cigarette, and distractedly studying his own booted feet.

  Noting that an antenna had been attached to the roof of the farmhouse, Captain Peters assumed that the Argie soldiers comprised a mobile radio patrol and were using the place as an OP, making daily trips around the area and reporting back what they had learned about British troop movements.

  Deciding to put a stop to their activities, Peters sent his best ‘silent killing’ man, Taff Hughes, forward to dispatch the sentry.

  Lowering his Bergen and Stinger SAM system to the ground, holding his commando fighting knife firmly in his right hand, Taff advanced at the half-crouch, with the stealth of a cat, dropping low and rising again and running at the half-crouch again, until he was coming around, then behind, the unsuspecting guard. As silent as a ghost, he rose up behind the guard, pressed one hand over his mouth, blocking off all sound, then slashed his jugular vein with the knife. The guard quivered like a bowstring and kicked one leg spasmodically, but Taff dragged him off the bucket and lowered him to the ground until both of them had disappeared into the tall grass. Within seconds, Taff came back into view and waved the watching men forward.

  When the patrol had taken up positions by the dead Argie guard, TT fixed his GPMG to its tripod and Alan Pearson clipped his M203 grenade-launcher to the barrel of his M16 rifle.

  One of the Argentinian soldiers looked across the field, directly at Pearson, just as the latter took the firing position, squinted along the pop-up sight of his rifle, braced himself by spreading his legs, and then fired. The Argentinian shouted a warning just before the M16 roared, the backblast rocked Pearson, and the grenade smashed through a window of the farmhouse, sending shards of glass flying out in all directions. Exploding, it blew the other windows out, producing screams of pain and panicked bawling from within. At the same time, TT’s GPMG roared into action, peppering the farmhouse at the rate of two hundred rounds per minute, smashing more glass, causing stone and dust to explode from the front walls, and cutting down some of the Argentinian soldiers before they could manage to dive for cover. Other soldiers were picked off by the combined firepower of the SLRs fired by Marty, Taff and Captain Peters.

  When Pearson fired his M16 grenade-launcher again, the grenade exploded inside the house, igniting some form of gas, causing searing yellow flames to curl out through the smashed windows. The front door burst open and some soldiers rushed out, screaming and slapping at their burning uniforms, then either collapsed of their own accord, rendered unconscious by pain, or were cut down by the semi-automatic fire of the SLRs.

  As those unfortunates were dying, TT was continuing to rake the farmhouse and the ground in front of it with his GPMG, making the walls spit lumps of stone and cement dust while the men out front tried to crawl back indoors, writhing and shuddering in clouds of exploding soil, their screams drowned out by the roaring of many guns.

  Eventually, Captain Peters signalled the advance and the men did so carefully, stepping over the dead and the dying to cautiously enter the farmhouse. It was a mess. The fragmentation grenades from Pearson’s M16 launcher had torn the place to shreds – walls scorched, floorboards splintered, furniture smashed to pieces – and the Argentinians, all dead, were peppered with shrapnel. Their radio equipment, also damaged in the explosions, was spitting sparks and smoking.

  Searching through the debris of the ruined building, Captain Peters found official documents giving precise details of the Argentinian defences. Excited, he made radio contact with HQ on HMS Hermes and relayed the information he had found. Pleased with himself, he then decided to use the Argentinian truck to take him and his troopers to Port Stanley.

  Piling into it, with Marty driving and Peters beside him, they soon left the smouldering farmhouse and dead Argentinians far behind and found themselves rolling across open country, heading towards that thickening pall of smoke on the distant horizon.

  By first light the next day they were well on the road to Port Stanley. Stopping for another cold breakfast, they heard over the radio that the enemy garrisons at Goose Green and Darwin, psychologically defeated by the SAS diversionary raid, had fallen to 2 Para, with 1,300 Argentinians taken prisoner. Since then, 42 Commando had yomped eastward, from Ajax Bay on San Carlos Water to Teal Inlet, about fifteen kilometres north-west of Port Stanley, which they had secured with the aid of SBS teams inserted the previous night.

  Exhilarated, they drove on, now more keen to reach Port Stanley, but were attacked soon after by a British Sea Harrier flying in from the west. Momentarily forgetting that he was driving an Argentinian Army truck, Marty accelerated automatically, then slammed on the brakes as the Harrier swept in low to rake the ‘enemy’ truck with its guns. Careening across the road, the truck ploughed into soft earth, letting the men jump out and run as far away as possible before the Harrier, completing a great circle above the Atlantic, returned for another attack. It swept in with all guns roaring, their bullets creating lines of spitting soil that raced in jig-jagging lines across the field, peppered the truck, then punctured the fuel tank and made it explode.

  Marty was just throwing himself to the ground beside the others when the truck’s doors were blown off, its tyres burst into flames and started melting, and its canvas top became a vivid bonfire under an umbrella of oily smoke. The Harrier had already ascended and disappeared in the distance when the truck, already a blackened shell wreathed in flame and smoke, hiccupped with internal convulsions and collapsed onto wheels devoid of tyres, the melted rubber still smouldering.

  ‘Our own bloody fault,’ Marty said pragmatical ly. ‘We should have remembered we were in an enemy troop truck.’

  ‘No point in crying over spilt milk,’ Captain Peters told him. ‘Okay, men, let’s yomp it.’

  Marching in single file, eventually they reached the broad, rolling fields between Sapper Hill and Bluff Cove, where the sounds of battle from Port Stanley were much louder and the sky was filled with British and Argentinian aircraft.

  Later that afternoon, they were attacked by an Argentinian Pucara that appeared out of nowhere and roared down upon them, guns firing. Even as the bullets were stitching the ground near his feet, Taff unslung the Stinger SAM system from his Bergen, inserted a missile canister armed with a three-kilogram high-explosive fragmentation warhead, and fired it at the Pucara. Armed with an infrared seeker and sensors that could track its target by the heat of its exhausts, the Stinger’s surface-to-air missile streaked upwards and hit the Pucara as it was levelling out to ascend again. The plane exploded into a spectacular ball of searing flame and boiling smoke, with its debris thrown far and wide, raining down on the field a good distance away.

  ‘Nice one,’ TT said, slapping Taff between his shoulder blades as the rest of them picked themselves off the ground to continue the march.

  Just before last light, realizing that the closer they came to Port Stanley, the more exposed they would be to Argentinian patrols, Captain Peters decided that they should hole up in an OP and spend the next few days roaming the surrounding countryside and engaging in hit-and-run raids against the enemy. Before dusk, a camouflaged rectangular OP had been constructed and the men had settled in for the duration. The wind blew. The snow fell.

  The snow was falling even now as Marty stood beside Taff on the hillside and looked down on Port Stanley. Though the port itself had not yet been taken, the British forces were moving in on all sides, fighting their way down the hills, clearing out the Argentinian bunkers en route and gradually closing in on the smokewreathed town.

  Feeling guilty because he had actually enjoyed the war, helplessly viewing it as his last fling, a farewell to his days of active service, Marty glanced sideways at Taff, whose blond hair was filthy, whose blue eyes were weary, and realized that he and Paddy were now virtually the only friends he had left.

  It
was hard to accept that the others were gone, but they surely were. They were gone and they would not be returning and their graves would be unmarked. They had, in SAS vernacular, failed to beat the clock. And like most events in war, their deaths had come unexpectedly.

  After spending ten days in the OP, roaming out under cover of darkness to engage in hit-and-run raids, the SAS team had heard over the radio that the attack on Port Stanley was about to begin, with night attacks against the major mountains of East Falkland, Longdon, Two Sisters and Harriet. Realizing from this that they had done all they could from the OP, Captain Peters decided that it was time to pack up and move on, hopefully to help in the forthcoming liberation of Port Stanley.

  After dismantling and filling in the OP, they moved out again, yomping all night, sticking close to the coastline, whipped constantly by sleet, snow and freezing winds, intending to come in south of Port Stanley. It was not a dull night. A short distance to the north, the attacks on Mount Harriet, Tumbledown and Mount William were being undertaken by 4 and 7 Infantry Regiments, supported by 5 Marine Battalion, so the nocturnal sky was criss-crossed with dazzling white phosphorous tracers, coloured crimson, blue and yellow by fire, stained black by smoke. Also, for most of the march they could hear the Argentinian artillery, the return fire of the big guns of the fleet, howitzers, anti-tank rockets, exploding mortar shells, chattering machine guns and whining, growling aircraft, most of them British. All in all, it was a night of sound and spectacle.