Authors: Patrick Robinson
Admiral Moreno planned to go on launching his air attacks from Rio Grande all day, if necessary, with Skyhawk and Dagger bombers, and Super-Etendard guided-missile aircraft. All day, until the British flew the white flag. As he knew they must, sooner or later.
On the beaches, the troops tried to dig in, tried to find cover, manned their machine guns, strived to get Rapier batteries into position to fire out over the sea. But time was short. Indeed, time was running out.
One hundred miles offshore, the aircraft carrier had sunk. Captain Mike Fawkes, now effectively an acting Admiral, assessed the carnage
inflicted upon the fleet, assessed the weapons with which he could still fight, and the inevitability of the Argentine bombing attacks, against which he had no defense.
At 0800 on that Saturday morning, after just two hours of ferocious battle, Captain Fawkes, with tears of sorrow and anger streaming down his face, sent the following signal to Britain’s Joint Force Command Headquarters in Northwood, to the West of London:
160800APR11. From Captain Mike Fawkes, HMS
Kent
. Flagship
Ark Royal
hit and sunk. Type-45 destroyers
Daring
and
Dauntless
hit and sunk. HMS
Gloucester
burning and abandoned. The frigates
Grafton
,
St. Albans
and
Iron Duke
all destroyed. More than 900 men believed to be dead in
Ark Royal
, 250 in the other ships. Medical facilities now nonexistent. We are defenseless against Argentine bombing. The land forces ashore are without protection. None of us can survive another two hours. Can see no alternative but to surrender.
Captain Fawkes copied his Northwood signal to the Marine Brigade Commander on the beach at Lafonia, where his HQ had just been established. Things were bad: five fully fueled Apache helicopters were on fire and forty-seven men had been killed in the rocket and strafing attacks.
The scale of the damage to the assault ships
Albion
and
Largs Bay
was as yet unclear. But there were two huge plumes of black smoke rising to the south, and Brigadier Viv Brogden was uncertain whether the
Ocean
could possibly now survive another attack from the Argentine bombing force.
The signal from Captain Fawkes added another, near-impossible dimension to the myriad of problems. With the Navy out of action, the fact was, the British landing force was now effectively stranded, 8,000 miles from home with no cover from the air or even the sea. Evacuation was out of the question, and their fate was effectively sealed—surrender, or perish under Argentine bombing, here on this godforsaken beach, essentially fighting for what?
Never, in a long and distinguished career, had Brigadier Brogden, a decorated Iraq War veteran, faced such an insoluble conundrum. It was plain the remainder of his 10,000-strong force, currently marooned in the cruise liner
Adelaide
, could not possibly make a landing. Not without naval escort or air cover. The Army Commanders would never permit that, and the
Adelaide
had no defenses of her own.
Brigadier Brogden ordered his satellite communication team to open the line for transmission. His signal, also to Joint Force Command, Northwood, read:
160816APR11, Brigadier V. Brogden RM. Lafonia, Falkland Islands. Helicopter attack force destroyed. Forty-seven
dead. Fifty wounded. Believe two assault ships also hit and burning six miles south. Like Captain Fawkes, we have no defense against bomb and rocket attacks. Landed force of 2,700 men now faces unacceptable losses. Agree with Captain Fawkes. Surrender our only option.
The signals from the South Atlantic landed within fifteen minutes of each other in the headquarters of the Joint Force Command. General Sir Robin Brenchley, Chief of the Defense Staff, was in the war room when the duty officer brought in the first signal and handed it to the C-in-C Fleet, Admiral Palmer. He read it, and passed it to General Brenchley, who stared at it with undisguised horror. He had, in his soldier’s soul, expected something like this would occur in the next three or four days. However, he had not expected anything quite so stunning as recommendations for total surrender after just two hours of battle.
He looked up and said quietly, “Gentlemen, you are about to bear witness to possibly the most humiliating surrender in the history of the British armed services, certainly since General Cornwallis asked for terms from the Americans at Yorktown in October 1781. General Cornwallis, however, had the excuse of running out of appropriate ammunition and artillery. I am afraid we never had either, even before we went.”
He passed the signal back to Admiral Mark Palmer, who stared again at the sheet of paper that heralded the destruction of his beloved Royal Navy. “My God!” he kept saying, over and over, “This is beyond my comprehension.”
General Brenchley, part of whose job was to keep the Minister of Defense, Peter Caulfield, informed, seemed to be transfixed by the signal. He just stared at it, knowing the words had somehow made him a prophet, but nonetheless hating the experience, knowing he must now inform the Defense Secretary that all was lost.
“Anyone know the correct procedures here?” asked General Brenchley. “No one ever really taught me what to do in the event of a national surrender of our deployed forces.”
“Well,” said Admiral Palmer. “I suppose we inform first the Ministry, and then the Prime Minister. I think he must be told of the necessity of informing the Argentine government that Great Britain is no longer able to pursue the war, and would like to sue for peace and a swift cessation of hostilities.”
At that moment, the duty officer returned with the signal, just in, from Brigadier Brogden on the beaches in Lafonia. He once more handed it to Admiral Palmer, who just stared, and passed it to the General.
“Good God!” he breathed. “There’s no braver chap than Brogden, but the damned landing force is marooned with no air cover and no sea cover. They’ll be bombed to hell. Someone better get this on a fast track. We could lose two thousand men in the next two hours.”
He picked up the nearest telephone and looked around the room, growling, “You deal with the Ministry, I’ll talk to the PM…” And then to the operator, “Downing Street, fast.”
Twenty seconds later, everyone heard him say, “Operator, this is General Brenchley, Chief of the Defense Staff. Please connect me to the Prime Minister immediately, whatever he may be doing.”
It took four minutes, which seemed a lot longer in the operations room in Northwood. Finally the Prime Minister came on the line and said calmly, “General Brenchley?”
“Prime Minister,” he replied, “it is my unhappy duty to inform you that the Royal Navy has been badly defeated in the South Atlantic. Also the land forces that landed on East Falkland early this morning are now stranded, and taking quite heavy casualties. Both battle commanders are defenseless against the bombing, and are recommending an immediate surrender.”
“A what!?”
exclaimed the PM. “What do you mean surrender?”
“Sir,” said the General, patronizingly, “it is the course of action battle commanders usually take when victory is out of the question, and casualties are becoming totally unacceptable. It applies mostly to forces that are not actually carrying out a defense of their own country. That of course requires a different mind-set.”
“But surely, General, our casualties cannot be that unacceptable. I mean, my God! Do you have any idea what the media would do to my government if we suddenly ordered our forces to surrender?”
“Yessir. I imagine they would probably crucify the lot of you. And for that they would receive the inordinate thanks of every single man who has been obliged to fight this war for you—all of them were improperly equipped, insufficiently armed, and inadequately protected.”
“General, for the moment I will ignore your insolence, and remind you that I have been elected by the people of this country to look after their interests. I am the elected head of government, and I imagine the final decision on any surrender will be mine alone?”
“Absolutely, Prime Minister,” replied the General, “but if you do not, you will have the resignations of all your Chiefs of Staff on your desk in a matter of hours. Which would make us free to explain to the media precisely why we had done so.
“My advice is thus to signal to the Argentinians, formally, that the armed forces of Great Britain no longer wish to pursue the war.”
The Prime Minister gulped. Before him he saw his worst ever nightmare—driven from office by the public, and the military, for failing in his duty to protect the country. Disgrace piled upon disgrace.
Nonetheless he elected to remain on the attack. “After all, General,” he said, “professional soldiers and sailors are paid to run these risks, and possibly face death. Are you quite certain they have done their absolute best? I mean, it must be centuries since a British Prime Minister was obliged to report the surrender of our armed forces to any enemy.”
“Would you care to know the state of the battle down there?” asked the General.
“Most certainly, I would,” replied the PM, a tad pompously. “Tell me how it is, as we speak. And I warn you, I may judge the situation rather more harshly than you do. These men owe a debt of honor and duty to the country they serve.”
General Brenchley wasted no time. “The Navy’s flagship, the aircraft carrier
Ark Royal
, has been hit, burned, and sunk—no survivors among their thousand-strong crew. All three of our picket line destroyers are on fire, two of them sinking.
“The frigates
Grafton
,
St. Albans
, and
Iron Duke
have been bombed and destroyed. Admiral Holbrook and Captain Reader perished in the carrier. Altogether the Navy estimates twelve hundred fifty dead and possibly two hundred more wounded, many of them badly burned, many of them dying in the water. That’s as we speak, by the way.”
The Prime Minister of Great Britain, the color literally draining from his face, put down the telephone, rushed from the room, and somewhat spectacularly threw up in the sink of the second-floor staff
washroom, leaning there for fully five minutes, trembling with fear at what he now faced.
Back in Northwood, General Brenchley said, “Something’s happened. The line’s gone dead.”
“Fucking little creep’s probably fainted,” murmured Admiral Jeffries, not realizing how astonishingly close to the truth he was.
General Brenchley demanded to be reconnected, and when the Downing Street operator came on the line, he just said, “General Brenchley here. Please put me back to the Prime Minister, will you?”
It took five minutes to locate the PM, who was now using the other washroom sink to wash his mouth out and his face down. And three minutes later, he once more picked up the telephone. “I apologize, General,” he said. “Been having trouble with these phones all morning.”
“Of course,” replied Brenchley. “Now, let me inform you about the first-wave assault troop landing. In the hours of darkness we put twenty-seven hundred troops ashore, plus helicopters, vehicles, and a couple of JCBs.
“The Argentine bombers came in shortly after dawn and hit two of the big landing ships. We have no casualty reports yet, but both ships are burning. Right afterward the Arg fighter-bombers hit the beachhead with bombs and machine-gun fire, killing forty-seven men, injuring another fifty, and wiping out five of our six attack helicopters.
“We have no defense against their bombs. And if we continue to fight, I suspect there will be no survivors on that beach within two or three hours. They have no naval support, no air support, no possibility of reinforcements, and no means of evacuating a fortified island on which they are outnumbered by around seven to one.
“Prime Minister, we’re looking at a massacre, and I will have no part of it. I’m a soldier, not a butcher. I am suggesting you contact the Argentinian government and request terms for the surrender of the British armed forces in the South Atlantic. And I suggest you do so in the next ten minutes.”
“But what about Caulfield? What does he have to say about it? What about my ministers? I must have a Cabinet meeting.”
“Very well, Prime Minister. You have thirty minutes. But, if by then we have taken significantly more casualties, we shall again advise most
strongly that you contact Buenos Aires, and sue for peace on behalf of my troops, who should be ordered to raise the white flag. Any other course of action on your part will cause me to offer, publicly, my resignation. And perhaps you can talk your way out of that.”
“Don’t do that, General. I implore you. Think of the government…think of the national disgrace…”
“Prime Minister, at this precise moment my thoughts are entirely with burned and dying seamen in the ice-cold Atlantic, and with mortally wounded young men dying on the beaches of Lafonia. I am afraid that at this time, I have no room in my heart for anything else.”
“I understand, General, I understand. But right here we’re talking about the total humiliation of the government of Great Britain. And I must remind you of your troops’ debt of honor to the nation, and of the courage our armed services have shown in conflicts of the past.”
“Prime Minister, I wonder how your beloved tabloids will treat those fifteen hundred heartbroken, devastated families, up and down the country, whose sons, fathers, husbands, and uncles were killed in the South Atlantic because we sent them to fight with inadequate air cover? Good afternoon, Prime Minister.”
In fact, the PM thought he might throw up all over again, right in the middle of the vast Cabinet table. But he braced himself and asked to be connected to the Ministry of Defense.
Back in Northwood, his eyes suffused with tears, General Sir Robin Brenchley put down the telephone and turned away from his colleagues, wiping his sleeve across his eyes. Everyone saw it and no one cared. He was by no means the only man in the war room so personally and overwhelmingly affected by this morning’s events in the South Atlantic.
There was more information beginning to trickle through now from HMS
Kent
, the acting flagship for the remnants of the fleet. It seemed the warships’ missile directors had downed six Skyhawks and two Daggers. But war of this type is about attrition. Argentina’s big land-based air assault force, both Navy and Air Force, could afford the loss of eight fighter aircraft and their pilots.
It looked now as if Great Britain had lost its entire flight of GR9s,
two ditched in the Atlantic and nineteen lost in the carrier; her two best destroyers, the Type-45s, were gone, plus the
Gloucester
; three guided-missile frigates were destroyed; two 20,000-ton assault ships, one of them brand-new, were ablaze; almost every attack helicopter was either on fire or lost in the assault ships; and the flagship,
Ark Royal
, which represented the only British airfield for 4,000 miles, was sunk in six hundred fathoms. Total casualties: 1,300 and rising by the hour. Great Britain could not afford that.