John Smith’s wife Ileen and their daughter Anya were trying to make a trifle without success when, at 8.15 local time, the evening’s programming on FIBS, the Falkland Islands Broadcasting Service, was interrupted. The Governor had an important announcement to make. Unaware of what was coming, the Canadian announcer Mike Smallwood didn’t quite strike the right tone: ‘Get your ears tuned in for the Governor, folks.’
‘Good evening,’ Hunt began, before explaining the situation in detail. ‘There is mounting evidence that the Argentine armed forces are preparing to invade the Falkland Islands.’ He asked people to stay calm, stay off the streets and keep listening to FIBS. The British government, he told them, was seeking an immediate meeting of the UN Security Council, but if that failed to halt the Argentinians, ‘I expect to have to declare a state of emergency, perhaps before dawn tomorrow.’ But there was never any possibility of reprieve at this stage. The Argentine junta, faced with riots on the streets of Buenos Aires, had already played their joker, announcing that ‘by tomorrow, Las Malvinas will be ours’. There was no pulling back from such a statement.
Despite the mood of the last few weeks, Smith greeted the news with disbelief. People never really thought they’d be crazy enough to do it. John and Ileen’s sons, Jeremy and Martyn – both members of FIDF – changed into combat gear and left for the drill hall. The trifle was forgotten.
Across town, Stanley residents made what preparations they could. Joe King hid the ammunition for his rifle under the public jetty. He’d always kept the old gun as a souvenir of his target-shooting days, but it too had to go. On Davis Street in the east of town, Elizabeth Goss, a 23-year-old mother of two, went round the house gathering up photos of her children, Karina and Roger, and put them in a little bag. She didn’t know what lay ahead, but if she had to leave, the one material possession she wanted to hold on to was her collection of family photos.
Jeremy and Martyn Smith returned home to Sparrowhawk House to pick up sandwiches and tea to keep them going through the night. The second farewell to the boys, while quick, hit harder. They were going off to fight alongside the Royal Marines. Once they’d gone, their parents prayed for them.
‘Oi! What do you think you’re doing?’ At 2.30 a.m., Joe King sneaked out of his house to check one last time on his aunt who lived down the road. He’d offered to look after her in his own home, but she wasn’t having any of it. ‘I’m not leaving my house,’ she’d told him, not open to debate. Now he’d been rumbled. As he crept along the grass verge he was spotted by the police. They’d been told to enforce Sir Rex Hunt’s request that people stay inside.
‘If you’re not careful, we’ll arrest you and you’ll spend the night in gaol!’ they threatened.
King knew them both, explained what he was up to and their tone softened.
‘There don’t seem to be any lights on, so I expect she’s all right. You’d better get yourself under cover.’
With that King scuttled back.
As he was welcomed home by his wife, ninety-two Argentine Marines of the Amphibious Commando Company had already been ashore for three hours. They’d split into two groups and were making slow progress towards the Royal Marines’ Moody Brook barracks at the far west of Stanley harbour. And towards Government House.
Chapter 7
Claudette Mozley was on her porch on Friday morning when a Royal Marine crawled out of the undergrowth in her garden. These were the same Marines who would play Santa for the children at Christmas time. They were friendly, familiar faces.
‘Is that you Figgy?’ she asked. ‘Would you like some coffee?’
‘Get on the bloody floor, you silly bitch!’ came the urgent reply. ‘There’s an invasion on.’
At a quarter to six, the firing had started. As dawn broke, John Smith picked out the threatening shape of the Argentine Type 42 destroyer Santisima Trinidad steaming off the Cape Pembroke lighthouse. As the gunfire intensified, he and Ileen worried terribly about their two sons.
In Port William, outside the harbour, the Argentine landing ship Cabo San Antonio disgorged her cargo of twenty Amtrac amphibious APCs – armoured personnel carriers. By 6.30 the first of them was driving up the beach. They quickly secured the undefended airfield and a vanguard unit of three continued into the capital.
On the outskirts of Stanley, a hundred yards or so back from the waterfront, Government House watched over the harbour. Surrounded by more than its fair share of Stanley’s few trees, it was a tangle of extensions and conservatories covered with an olive green corrugated roof. On the eastern side of the Falkland Islands’ grandest property was a flagpole, supported by cables against the strong winds. Inside, alongside the Governor’s family and staff, were thirty-one Royal Marines and eleven sailors from Endurance. At 6.15, the Argentine attack began. At first, the assault from the ridge behind the building appeared to be a shot across the bows, designed to coerce, not to kill and destroy. But that changed when six Argentine Commandos came over the back wall and tried to reach the house. Three of them were cut down by semi-automatic fire from defending Royal Marines. The other three took cover in the maids’ quarters. For the next fifteen minutes there were fierce but inconclusive exchanges of fire. Sunrise was still an hour away and the British Commandos had difficulty in picking out the Argentine muzzle flashes. Then, just before seven o’clock, the shooting stopped. Instead, the Argentinians called for Governor Hunt to surrender. Hunt let the Marines speak on his behalf: Fuck off, you spic bastards.
But the unsuccessful end to the initial Argentine efforts to capture the British residence could only delay the inevitable.
On Davis Street, the only road connecting Stanley to the airport, Elizabeth Goss heard a horrendous rumbling sound. The brutal-looking Argentine Amtracs were going to have to come right past her house. Each APC had three forward hatches manned by the commander, its driver and a gunner. Along their sides there were long horizontal hatches through which the vehicle’s occupants could fire their weapons. She looked out of the window to see a column of them grinding along, their guns pointing straight at her.
Goss grabbed Karina and Roger. If she could take them into town to her in-laws on Ross Road, they’d be safer there. Not so exposed. At the moment she put her hand on the door handle, gunshots rang out close by. She and the kids were going nowhere. Bullets were sniping around the house from all directions. She took Karina and Roger back into the bedroom, where she pulled the mattresses off the bed and piled them up against the wall. Then they huddled there in the corner. At five years old, Karina didn’t really understand what was going on, but at least she could be reasoned with. The toddler, Roger, just sixteen months old, was more of a handful. He was into everything. Liz gave him her little alarm clock, which he pulled to bits, keeping him distracted until the firing stopped.
That took just over an hour. At 8.30, with Argentine reinforcements rolling into town, Major Norman, the British officer commanding the defence of Government House, advised the Governor that their position was untenable. By 10.30 Governor Hunt had ordered his outgunned, outnumbered Marines to surrender and the Union Jack over Government House had been replaced by the sky blue and white of Argentina. The Royal Marines had always had an impossible task on their hands. But the spirit of their resistance to the invasion provided an indication of the British reaction to it. They’d sunk a landing craft, destroyed an Amtrac APC and killed as many as five Argentine soldiers in the defence of Government House.