The Day Argentina Knew War Was Lost

Twenty-five years ago today the British won the Falklands war. Argentina did not surrender for another three weeks, but by nightfall on what the military called D-day, 3,000 Royal Marines and paratroopers had scrambled ashore at the little farm hamlets around San Carlos Water on East Falkland, and the game was up. They were still 90 miles from Stanley, but privately Argentinian commanders conceded that once the taskforce had secured the bridgehead, they could not be defeated.

Not that it seemed like that at the time. It was a perilous operation. The textbooks say that for an amphibious operation an army should have secure lifelines, air superiority and a troop advantage ratio of 3 to 1. British forces were about to mount the biggest amphibious landing since Suez, 8,000 miles from home, with limited air cover and no missile defense shield. Nor did the numbers match up; the enemy, well dug in, was estimated at 11,000 men. As Brigadier Julian Thompson, the head of 3 Commando Brigade and the architect of the land campaign, told his unit commanders: "This will be no picnic."

Now, in the early-morning darkness, hundreds of men, their faces black with camouflage cream, their helmets flecked with tufts of gorse, scrambled silently down into the landing craft for a hazardous hour-long journey to three beaches. Then what Brigadier Thompson called the Fanning Head Mob opened up. This was a detachment of 60 Argentinian soldiers dug in on a headland above the bay. Rod Bell, a Spanish-speaking Royal Marine officer, had gone ashore with a loudhailer in an effort to persuade them to surrender. The sharp, excited chatter of machine-gun fire was their response.

Daybreak brought waves of Argentinian fighter jets. They screamed in off the sea in more than 60 sorties that day alone, strafing and shelling the British flotilla and knocking out three warships. Nothing seemed to deter them; they flew so low you could see their faces. Over the next few days, San Carlos Water acquired a new nickname, Bomb Alley.

The best news of the day came in mid-afternoon: the 450 men of 42 Commando, the Royal Marine unit with whom I was embedded, were going ashore. Among the commandos, all was suddenly excitement and anticipation. Weapons were distributed; grenades, mortar bombs and ammunition handed out. Camouflage was adjusted, and soon we were jumping into the landing craft.

The journey was quietly apprehensive. Helicopters clattered overhead carrying Rapier missile batteries and other stores ashore. Men talked lightly among themselves. Last cigarettes were handed out. I was struck by how little hostility anyone showed towards the Argentinians; they were the opposition, not the enemy. As we drew closer in, the landscape engulfed us, looking disarmingly like Dartmoor-by-the-sea, all peaty slopes and granite outcrops. We synchronized our watches, ear plugs were handed out, men instinctively cocked their rifles. Quite suddenly, the landing craft touched bottom, the ramp went down and we waded ashore, water lapping round our knees. This was not the Normandy beaches, but it was our first landfall for six weeks, and it was a relief to be out of Bomb Alley.

An hour or so later I met my first Falkland islander, an elderly farm laborer stooping forward with an offering of soup in a silver jubilee mug. "You a reporter?" he inquired. "Tell me, did Leeds United get relegated?"