Scram! (25 page)

It was the first time he'd wondered where his commanding officer might be. In fact Lieutenant Commander Roger Warden was stuck 4,000 miles north, running the resupply operation at Ascension Island. Lomas was now the senior Wessex flight commander on the Falklands. ‘You'd better get everyone to come over and join us. We're on the other side of the bay,' said Lomas.

When they arrived two days earlier, Lomas and his two Wessex had joined up with the Sea Kings at Old Creek House, some two miles north of the settlement at San Carlos. Now with five Wessex together in one place, 845 Squadron was beginning to feel a bit more like a single unit once more. Royal Navy
junglie
squadrons are accustomed to operating helicopters out in the field, living in tents, being flexible, making do, and playing at soldiers. But two and a half years on exchange with the Army Air Corps in Germany had shown Lomas that it could be done so much better. He needed somebody who could kick arse and concentrate on the military side of things, somebody who didn't have to worry about flying or aviation or engineering. That was why he had brought along Warrant Officer Tommy Sands RM. Sands had already proved his worth as an additional unofficial aircrewman on the way south. Now it was time for him to do his day job.

The threat of intruders on the ground was very real. Some of the Argentine commandos who had been driven off Fanning Head on the night of the landings had not yet been captured. They were still at large north of Port San Carlos. Just a day earlier, an Argentine marine corps officer had been picked up by a patrol in the hills just behind
the
Wessex base. It made aircrew wary of wandering too far away.

The threat of bombing from the air was also real but a lower priority threat. Had the aircraft remained on the ground for long during the day, they would have been dispersed to protect them from air attack. But as darkness fell, it made more sense to keep the aircraft fairly close together in order to keep a tight perimeter.

A whole host of security procedures needed to be implemented. Sands insisted on a general stand-to at dusk and dawn in anticipation of enemy attack. The exception was for senior engineer Chief Petty Officer Stewart Goodall, who was given leeway to continue aircraft maintenance during these times, provided his engineers kept their rifles at hand. He even interrupted a casual conversation between Jack Lomas and Mike Crabtree out in the open, giving them a stern warning that the two flight commanders needed to be separate from one another.

A sentry roster was set up to man the machine-gun posts. Nerves ran high on watch at night. Arthur Balls and Steve MacNaughton had already spent an entire four-hour watch lying shoulder-to-shoulder, staring out into the darkness without speaking a single word. Early on their first morning in the camp, Crabtree and Heathcote wandered casually back into the main part of the camp from their two-man tent. They didn't hear the sentry call out in the dark ‘Who goes there?' They did, however, hear the sound of a machine gun being cocked. It encouraged them to be a lot clearer about identifying themselves.

Nervous tension in the camp also produced its lighter moments. The communal fire used for the evening meal had somehow reignited itself during the night, providing a nice flickering target for any Argentine observers. The aircrew sleeping in the ten-man tent rushed outside,
woken
by the sentry ringing through on the field telephone. The fire was quickly extinguished with four streams of aircrew pee.

However,
junglie
pragmatism on the ground was not shared by all. On the afternoon of 26 May, they were also joined by a large visitor in the shape of Bravo November, the huge double-rotor RAF Chinook helicopter. Having lost all their support equipment on
Atlantic Conveyor
, the Chinook crew had parked up for the night on the deck of
Hermes
, along with the surviving Wessex, Yankee Delta. There was no question of despatching the RAF Chinook crew home. The huge aircraft, capable of doing the work of five Sea Kings, was desperately needed onshore. They had flown all the way in to San Carlos from out at sea and would need a home.

Jack Lomas was airborne as he heard Bravo November given instructions to join the Wessex at Old House Creek. He had a pretty good idea that his under-equipped team would end up looking after the RAF crew as well. ‘I know,' he thought to himself sardonically. ‘Camp with Lomas. He's got nothing either.'

On hearing that the Chinook was inbound, Lomas got himself down to the tents to give them a warm welcome. The only sensible option for the night was to cram the Wessex crews into the existing tents and free up space for the Chinook crew, led by Squadron Leader Dick Langworthy.

Lomas began to brief them about their allocated positions for stand-to and the arcs of fire into which they could shoot.

‘But we have RAF Regiment to do that.'

‘Do you have RAF Regiment here?' asked Lomas.

‘No'.

‘Then you're defending your aircraft and yourselves.'

‘That's very irregular.'

Although seeming put out at being asked to perform this unfamiliar role on the ground, they did as requested and mucked in as best they could with the few people they had. In the days that followed, the Chinook and its crew were to prove their worth one hundred times over. Lomas and the other Navy aircrew were unstinting in their praise for the RAF aircrew's flying of giant loads at low level in the mountains, often in appalling weather conditions. Their senior engineer and maintenance team, who arrived later without spares, performed brilliantly in keeping the Chinook flying all hours of the day and night. In the air, they were ‘bloody fantastic', said Lomas.

Another of the great success stories of the Falklands war, Bravo November was the only Chinook to survive the sinking of the
Atlantic Conveyor
and the only RAF helicopter on the islands. The crews did their service proud. The Chinook could carry huge loads. For example, four ‘bollocks' dangling underneath contained eight tons of aviation fuel, allowing our twenty-five Royal Navy Wessex to operate far more-efficiently on the front line.

* * *

As dawn broke on Thursday 27 May, 2 Para were already halfway from the Sussex Mountains to Goose Green, lying up for shelter in the abandoned house and sheds of Camilla Creek House. Back in San Carlos, the Royal Marines of 45 Commando were boarding the landing craft that would take them across the bay from Ajax Bay red beach to get to Port San Carlos green beach. They were then to set off on foot from Port San Carlos in parallel with 3 Para towards the settlement of Teal Inlet. It was the beginning of an epic twenty-five mile ‘yomp' (for the Commandos) and ‘tab' (for the Paras) across the boggy Falkland peat, carrying up to 120 pounds of unimaginably heavy bergens and weapons with them.

For the Paras at Camilla Creek House a few miles south, the day started badly. The early morning BBC World Service news had announced that British paratroops stood poised to attack the Argentine positions at Darwin and Goose Green. It was an appallingly ill-judged leak, the source of which has never been established, and an utterly irresponsible broadcast by the BBC. Two Para's Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel ‘H' Jones, turned on the BBC reporter Robert Fox and threatened to sue the Secretary of State for Defence if a single life was lost as a result.

In fact there had been several days of open speculation by the British media about such an attack. The Argentines were already reinforcing the garrison using their few remaining helicopters. They were right to do so. Three days earlier, under pressure from London, Brigadier Thompson had briefed Jones to conduct a raid on the Argentine forces at Darwin. D Squadron SAS were already being extracted from the area, where they had created the diversion for the San Carlos landings, and inserted by Nigel North and his Sea King night-flyers onto Mount
Kent
in preparation for the assault on Stanley. Two Para were reconnoitring the route to Darwin on foot when the news came through of the sinking of
Atlantic Conveyor
. Thompson cancelled the raid, to the fury of Jones. But renewed political pressure now gave the Paras the opportunity for a full-scale attack on Darwin and Goose Green.

It's improbable that the ill-advised BBC World Service broadcast caused the Argentines to change their plans for the defence of Goose Green; the capture of a senior Argentine reconnaissance officer, out on patrol in a Landrover, revealed that the Argentines were well aware the British were coming. However, it did change the plans of the Paras, who were immediately forced to leave the shelter of their buildings and dig in. The stage was set for the first set-piece battle by a British Army unit since the Korean War battle of the Imjin River in 1951, in which, in their last stand against overwhelming Chinese forces, 620 infantrymen of the 1
^st
Battalion Gloucestershire Regiment, ‘The Glorious Glosters', were killed.

Late in the morning of Thursday 27 May, two RAF Harriers ran in low towards the airfield at Goose Green to soften up the Argentine defences. One of the Harriers was hit by cannon fire during a bombing run. They were the same Argentine air defence guns that had knocked out Nick Taylor's Sea Harrier on the very first raid. The damaged jet flew on for several miles with the engine on fire before the pilot, Squadron Leader Bob Iveson, ejected. He was picked up by a British helicopter three days later.

Until the Paras and Marines of 3 Brigade had begun their break-out from the San Carlos area, Wessex and Sea King helicopters were mostly operating within the bay and surrounding hills. Long-range sorties for the special forces
by
Bill Pollock's Sea King night-flyers were the main exception to this.

Aircrew referred to the list of jobs they were given to do as ‘tasking'. Tasking for each day tended to start with a radio call to
Fearless
, whose staff gathered requests and allocated the helicopters according to priority. Some of the aircraft bases had an attached Mobile Air Operations Team (MAOT), for whom allocating jobs to aircraft was their bread and butter.

For the first few days at FOB Whale, Wessex tasking was received over the radio by one of the aircrew. Some aircraft were given a particular role for the day, such as HDS (Helicopter Delivery Service) around the San Carlos area or casevac between the field hospital and the hospital ship SS
Uganda
out in Falkland Sound. Other aircraft were given specific jobs. A typical start to the day might involve landing on the deck of
Fearless
and taking advantage of the opportunity to refuel. Somebody would then bring in a list of instructions to the aircrewman who would discuss it with his pilot. The aircrew would then work their way through the list until complete.

A typical task would be ‘loads from
Sir Galahad
to green beach grid 123456', or ‘Rapier resupply red beach grid 234567, destinations as advised'; or ‘40 Commando troop move blue beach two grid 345678 to Sussex Mountains'. During the day,
Fearless
might radio a helicopter to switch to another job. And if an aircraft had an empty return journey, the aircrew would always radio ahead to offer the space. In this way, an awful lot of useful additional work took place. When aircraft ran out of instructions, they would simply return to their forward base.

But tasking was also a major source of frustration. Although all
junglie
aircrew were highly proficient at
moving
loads and stores, they were not being used to move troops forward.
Junglies
are trained for front-line operations. The Royal Marines yomping out of Port San Carlos knew this. Both troops and aircrew wondered why at least some of the helicopters weren't giving them a lift. Jack Lomas went out of his way to find out why his boys were still spending all their time offloading ships. The response was very clear: building up beachhead supplies remained the priority. Wessex would not be released from ship control to land control until later on. The troops would have to walk.

There were also minor frustrations of working with units not accustomed to helicopters. But these rarely lasted. The Rapier air defence teams had drawn a very short straw indeed, living in miserable muddy trenches high up on the hills above San Carlos, often in cloud and freezing drizzle. Resupplying each of these cells with fuel and food was a vital task. But sending aircraft back to the same site for the fourth time because somebody had forgotten something did not endear ground troops to aircrew. Lomas made sure his aircrew and the Rapier teams both understood that aircraft were to be used for the job and not the day. Rapier resupply for weeks thereafter became a vastly more efficient operation.

Venturing too far inland was another issue for aircrew unwilling to risk an unnecessary encounter with enemy ground troops. During air raids, pilots were very aware of the tension between finding a sheltered gulley close to the beachhead but far enough away to avoid getting shot by their own side. The incident with Yankee Tango's shattered windscreen convinced crews to push outward a little further. The real threat from the ships was definitely greater than a perceived threat from the enemy, who may or may not be just over the hills.