Dan Snow's History Hit - Falklands40: Battle of Goose Green

Episode Date: May 29, 2022

Please note that this episode contains descriptions of combat and some explicit language.At the Battle of Goose Green the Second Battalion the Parachute Regiment (2 Para) fought against various sub-units of the Argentine army and air force— this would be the first and the longest battle of the Falklands War.Lt Col Philip Neame MBE joins Dan on the podcast to mark the 40th anniversary of the Battle of Goose Green. In 1982, Philip was commanding D Company, a rifle company in 2 PARA, under Lieutenant Colonel ‘H’ Jones who won the VC at Goose Green during the Falklands War. Philip and Dan discuss the realities of war, the tightrope between success and disaster and the strength of companionship.Want more on the story of Lieutenant Colonel ‘H’ Jones? Subscribe to HistoryHit to listen to this episode about Airdrop Ursula here.Produced by Mariana Des Forges and Hannah WardMixed and Mastered by Dougal PatmoreIf you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. It's another Falklands anniversary episode for you today. Forty years ago, one of the biggest battles the British Army had fought since the Second World War took place, in the Falkland Islands, the first major land confrontation of the campaign to retake the islands. The plan was a British unit, two para, Second Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, would march south from where the landings had taken place at San Carlos Water and they would strike at the Argentinian garrison at the settlement of Goose Green. This would provide a morale-boosting first win for British forces and it would secure the southern flank of the advance as the rest of the army headed east

to liberate the main centre of population, Port Stanley, on the eastern side of the island. One of the senior officers of 2 Para was Major Philip Neame. You know, there's two ways to take life when your dad was awarded the Victoria Cross and won an Olympic gold medal, the only person in history to achieve that double. There's two things you can do. One is give up and drink gin all day, and the other is get busy becoming a legend in your own right. Phil chose the latter. Before he ever got to the Falklands War, he'd seen active service in Dofar, in Northern Ireland.

He'd taken part in mountaineering expeditions to the Himalayas. He was a standout company commander. As you'll hear in this podcast, Phil tells me about that advance to contact to fight the Argentinians at Goose Green. He tells me about the battle, about the famous death of Colonel H. Jones, awarded a Victoria Cross for valour, and about the ruse, the trick by which they got the Argentinian garrison to surrender to a much smaller and exhausted unit of British soldiers. Goose Green was a British success, but it was a hard one. There was fierce fighting and dozens of casualties. But it did start to give the British that all-important sense of momentum that they could and would overcome Argentinian units when they found them in entrenched positions

across East Falkland. The History Hits TV team has produced a documentary about the Falklands Waltz and what its 40th anniversary. They actually interviewed Phil for that occasion as well. I did not get to meet him in person because I'm currently in Egypt recording this episode. We were chatting over Zoom. You may hear in the background of my audio that there is an Egyptian wedding going on next door.

So there are some exciting contemporary electro beats with an Egyptian flavour, which may occasionally intrude onto this conversation. So enjoy those two. Head over to History Hit TV to watch the documentary. You can tap on the link in the description to this podcast. It'll take you right there. You get two weeks free if you start today, so you can watch the Falklands documentary. You can also go and watch other things like Elna Janneger's smash hit on medieval lives, in particular sex and drinking. Don't know why I was watching that, but they are. So head over to History Hit after you've listened to this. But in the meantime, on the 40th anniversary of Goose Green,

here's the legend, Phil Neame. Enjoy. Phil, thank you very much for coming on. You're welcome. 40 years ago, as a young officer in the paras, you must have been thinking very much like the young officers in the paras thinking now. You were thinking about fighting in Eastern Europe, perhaps in the Baltic. You can't have imagined that you'd be going someplace called the Falklands. Certainly not, no. I was on holiday when the news broke, doing some ice climbing in Scotland. And the first thing was, we were thinking, well, that can't be too far from here, an offshore island, you know, the west coast of Scotland or something. And we had to dig out the atlases to find out where they were and so on. press previously about Argentina sort of rattling the sabre a bit and so on. But I don't think anyone seriously thought it was ever going to come to anything at all. And well, at least for

the first half of the sailing down there, again, I think we just thought this is just going to end up as a holiday cruise rather than anything serious. So yeah, it did come out of the blue. And I'd had a little bit of experience previously when I'd been in the RAF regiment in the Dofar War in Oman in the sort of early 70s. But that was the closest I ever come to serious sort of all-arms combat, as it were. As a company commander, how many young men have you got under your command? It's about 100 in round figures, yeah.

And so you know their names, you know their strengths and weaknesses. It's a small enough unit as a company commander that you are, well, it's to borrow the easy company. It's like a sort of band of brothers. Yeah, it is, very much so. It's an enlarged family, almost. I wouldn't say that I knew every single one of them individually and their strengths and weaknesses.

I certainly knew the strengths and weaknesses of all my section commanders, platoon commanders, platoon sergeants, people like that. I like to think I did anyway. Did the normal peacetime training prepare you for this? Or when you know that you might be going to a shooting war, even if you didn't believe you would be, is there another level? Is there something you go beyond what you might do usually? Well, I don't think we had the chance in terms of training because it was normal training and then suddenly we're on the norland where your opportunity to do sort of all arms combat training is a bit limited we did do some very serious training on the trip down there all the things

that in peacetime you tend to not bother about because it's all a bit boring such as first aid and stuff like that but i think the way I'd put it is that I've been in for 15 years. I always thought this is what the job is about. And here now is a chance to put 15 years of training into practice. I think that's rather what I saw it as. And I think probably it's fair to say that most of my toms, obviously much younger that had the same sort of approach you know we joined the parachute regiment you volunteer twice over for the parachute regiment you go through selection and so on and um i think they were there and wanted to show what they could do so i think the sort of mindset was quite definitely already established and it sort of starts to be

established from really the moment you sign up for the Parachute Regiment and sign up to the regimental ethos. How would you characterise that? When you're going south and you're talking to your men, are you conscious that you're going to try and do things differently to the Welsh Guards, the Scots Guards, another unit going down there alongside you? Yes, we were conscious of that. And I think always would be. I mean, we did see ourselves as setting the standard, if you like, as crack troops. H. Jones, the CO, was fairly instrumental in that. As soon as this kicked up, I mean, he was storming all around MOD and HQ UK left saying, you've got to send my battalion, you know, there's no one else can touch them. And we all bought into that. So we wanted to get stuck in and we were pretty confident that if we had to get stuck in, we would do the job. I'm sure lots of units like to think they're very aggressive and could take the fight to the enemy. What do you do differently? How did you train the men to get that reputation as the people that you want at the tip of the

spear? I mean, it's the old adage, train hard and fight easy. So our exercises were always pretty testing and demanding, often in pretty uncomfortable conditions, Dartmoor, Brecon and so on. The weather's often pretty hostile. And we just went in with the frame of mind, I think, that no one really was as good as us. I think that was the sort of start point. And I'll give you an example, peacetime training, the sort of thing that I did. I think that was the sort of start point. And I'll give you an example, peacetime training, the sort of thing that I did, I mean, it took my toms a little bit by surprise, but one day we had a intercompany competition doing this classic parachute regiment 10 miler, that's 10 miles in an hour and three quarters with your rifle and 35 pounds or so on your back.

And as we got to the end of that I peeled my company off and everyone thought where are we going I thought we're going back to the barracks and we ended up at the assault course and I said right okay now we're here we're now going to have an inter platoon assault course race and so the Thompson were thinking bloody hell you know we've got 10 miles So that was the approach I took. And I certainly by no means the only person who sprung surprises like that, just to kind of keep people on their toes, just to get the message under, you know, it ain't over until it's over.

And there was a bit of muttering before this all-course competition, but when it was all over, you could see the Toms had thought, yeah, no one else did that today. We're better than anyone else. They're a company, you know. So it was that sort of approach. Yeah. I think the other interesting thing actually about my company, and I sort of talk about this in my book, is they were D Company. The army always seems to follow religiously the alphabetical order. So it was A Company, B Company, skip C Company who were patrols, and then the third rival company, D company. And so when it came to sort of dishing out the goodies or the jobs or anything else,

it always went A company sort of left forward, B company right forward. Oh, afterthought, D company, reserve, you know. And we soon discovered after a few exercises that the reserves usually ended up doing more than anyone else anyway because they either were exploiting a great opportunity or otherwise coming to the rescue of a cocker. So that sort of contributed to the ethos, I think, of the company. And I exploited it. I mean, I could see it.

I couldn't explain why that relationship in the battalion had developed and we were the company which was the parking lot for all the bad lads that got booted out of the other companies and so on, be the last chance saloon, as it were. And I don't know quite how that kind of reputation developed. It's a Cinderella type relationship. But I exploited that. It helped build the company morale. I think it was important. Sure enough, you were the first boots on the ground 21st of May when the British amphibious assault went in? Yes, we were. I mean, we weren't supposed to be, but like all military plans,

you know, cock-ups took over, and so we did end up the first major unit ashore. I mean, there'd been special forces ashore before us, and we were supposed to be met by an SBS patrol, but in the event, it was all chaos, and they hadn't been expecting us for another three nights so but then you see our exit it was chaotic in a sense but most airborne exercises end up with the element of chaos anyway so we just knew to expect chaos and i think that's really really

important because i look back now i think you know actually the people who win are the people who chaos is going to hit the enemy and you and if you know, actually the people who win are the people who, chaos is going to hit the enemy and you. And if you can recover from the chaos quicker than the enemy, then you rule the day. At the risk of turning this into a psychoanalysis session, your father won a Victoria Cross very early in the First World War. Yeah, Neufslappel, yeah.

He had just died, I think, sadly, hadn't he, before? He died, yeah, four years earlier. Is sort of family tradition, is your dad's example, was that on your mind as a young major, leading your men into battle in St. Carlos? Because also no one knew what, in the event, it wasn't that bloody a landing, but it could have been a very nasty opposed landing, couldn't it?

I don't think really it featured largely. I mean, I think, you know, beset the doubts. And I suppose, you know, way back in my mind, there's probably, you know, well, I want to sort of kind of let the family tradition down, obviously. But I think much more is, I don't want to let those around me down. It's very, very powerful motivator, I think. And I think that goes, you know, from my level, all the way down that I don't want to let my way down. I don't want to let my mates down. I don't want to let my men down. That was, I think, first and foremost in my mind. And, you know, always the question, am I going to measure up to this? What's the job of a commander like you in that situation, particularly when everything's quite chaotic? Is your job just to look like everything is absolutely fine and people can sort of just look at you and take confidence from you?

Well, I think I tried to do that. And you'd probably have to ask my men how successfully I did that. Some of the feedback I got afterwards is, I suspect I did that reasonably well. And there was a couple of incidents, certainly where I was sort of breezing around as if there was nothing going on. And the odd comment like, you know, look at that mad bugger. If he's okay, then it's not so bad as that. You know, a little bit of that. But I think that really, and I found this very much so, especially at night, our first night contact, that you very quickly lose control.

Your ability to control things is extremely limited. And I'd always taken the approach in training the company of trying to push things down. And occasionally I used to say, look, sometimes you're going to have to get on with things on your own because I might be gone. Who knows what's going to happen? So I was quite keen to work the company in that way rather than over control it. And nothing happens without my say so. And I think that was very much the ethos of the company. And I think generally the ethos of the parachute regiment anyway, simply because chaos invariably reigns after a parachute descent and things like that. So I saw my job as much as anything else to

kind of set that ethos, try to get the confidence in my subordinates, if you like, to take the initiative, not wait for orders necessarily from me, but just to get on with it. And that is an important thing. You know, I think it does need that culture and people need encouragement to take the initiative, if you like, and feel, yeah, okay, I'm safe to do this. So you go ashore, you advance into, well, one of the biggest battles the British armies fought to that point since the Second World War at Goose Green a week later. Was there much fighting in between landing and Goose Green? No, none at all. Not on land anyway. I mean, there were things

going on. There were long range patrols from the SAS and so on, but no serious contacts between the landing and Goose Green. On sea, of course, it was very different because we were stuck on Sussex Mountain, 800 feet above San Carlos water, watching literally a ship a day being sunk by the Argentinian Air Force. So there was plenty of action in that sense. With this grandstand view, quite soon, really after three days or so, there were sort of mutterings of this looks like another Gallipoli. It was quite important that we got moving, really. It was not good for morale just to be sitting there, knowing actually the enemy were miles away and there was no immediate threat of a ground attack against us and so on, watching the Navy being ravaged.

And so they let slip the dogs of war, and that was you. The main Argentine garrison, effectively, is quite a long way to the east of you, towards Port Sully, but there is this group to the south in a little sort of, you'd almost call it a farming hamlet, wouldn't you? Goose green. And those are the ones you were told to strike at. Why was that? It's a complicated story. Julian Thompson, the brigade commander, I think would have preferred not to have attacked Goose Green. He felt, I think, that it could have been masked off and as a member of his staff put it,

you know, almost be turned into a self-induced prisoner of war cage. There were two things. The first is H. Jones was desperate for us to get stuck in. And we all shared this sentiment, which I mentioned earlier, you know, sort of sitting on the hill doing nothing was pretty demoralizing. And we were the closest battalion to Goose Creek. Hall, I think there was increasing concern that nothing seemed to be happening on shore. There was still pressure from the Americans to negotiate with the Argentinians, which was clearly never going to happen, certainly not with Maggie Thatcher. And so I think in the end, Thompson, despite his reluctance to engage Goose Green, was very much ordered by Northwood to go and do something. So at minimum risk to the main advance towards Stanley, which you've identified, that was the real focus. And that was, after all, where the war was going to be won or lost.

Goose Green was available and reachable, if you like. And so that is how it really sort of evolved. But it was very much a sort of come as you are party. Initially, it was go and raid Goose come as you are party initially it was go and raid goose green and then the first attempt was cancelled i got halfway there as the advanced party and had to plod all the way back and eventually we got the go ahead and when h sent me off to secure the assembly area it was still a raid same as before he said you know only this time we're all going sort of approach.

And it was not until he caught me up at Camilla Creek House, the assembly area, that he said, it's now an all out attack to recover the settlements. And that had lots of implications because, if you like, we had the fire support for a raid, but not for an all out attack and recapture of the settlements and so on. I'm not sure that actually it would have been possible to give us more fire support anyway, because the helicopter lift was so limited. But we did sort of rather, well, I sort of described as we trickled into this mission rather than, you know, right from the start, this is what we're going to do. It evolved rather than was, that's the plan. So no helicopters around to carry big sort of heavy guns? No, very limited. So, I mean, carry big sort of heavy guns? No, very limited.

So, I mean, we started with three field guns in support instead of the normal battery of six guns. We could have probably lifted six guns down to the gun line, but then there wouldn't have been the helicopter lift to keep six guns resupplied with ammunition. So one way or another, you sometimes have to make do with what you can get hold of. And it was cold.

You've been marching. Lucky you had done that assault course because you had to advance that point. You had to keep everyone together. It's freezing cold, wasn't it? Yes, it was certainly cold. I think the worst thing was you got four seasons in a day. Fine.

But what didn't change was it was always constantly soaking underfoot. And, you know, the old DMS boot really wasn't made for that reconstituted leather sort of stuff. And so really from the first day onwards, I mean, some people got their feet wet going ashore, obviously, sort of wading in from the landing craft. But there was no chance then of getting your footwear dry and so on. You were stuck constantly with wet feet in boots, which pretty soon started to fall to bits. So that was the worst of the conditions, in my view. Again, when we set off for Goods Green, we'd gone ashore.

Each man was probably carrying £100 plus on his belt and his back. And by the time we got to the top of Sussex Mountain, I mean, everyone, you know, no matter how fit they were, everyone was cream-crackered. And, I mean, I think it was age took decision, but we all bought into it that, you know, right, the next time we have to move, and especially if we're advancing to contact, we do not carry bergens, we go light scales. Now, light scales is all very well. But I mean, actually, by the time you've got all your ammunition, two days of water and rations on your belt and everything else, it's still 60 pounds. So pounds so like scales you know it's a relative term certainly ditching things like sleeping bags and ponchos and so on yeah i think people were a bit twitched about it people needed a bit of

encouragement there i knew we could do it i mean i think my time in the mountains more force bivouacs and i can't mention told yes, we will be able to do it. We will cope. It might look pretty fearsome, but we'll do it. And I mean, that was my message, if you like, to my Toms was, look, we'll just get on with it. Getting on with it means attacking without the fire support that you would usually hope to have

and without the kind of attacking ratio of men that you'd hope to have. Typically, people talk about three to one, don't they? You should have three times more troops than defenders. And you're attacking fixed positions of Argentinians who were sort of expecting you. So this has got a tall order. Yeah, I think they certainly were expecting us because early morning, still dark, we were listening in to the BBC World Service on HF radios in Camilla Creek. And, you know, we hear the news coming out, you know, it's been announced today in Parliament

that there is now a parachute battalion within seven miles of Goose Green. Great, you know, if we could listen in on our HF military radios, then presumably so could the Argentinians. So we were very much aware that we were probably going to be expected. I think it's worth mentioning H. Jones here, because when he gave his orders, BBC had announced we were coming, then we managed to get some reconnaissance of the ground ahead and so on, and where the enemy positions were, etc. And it looked pretty dire. I mean, my map ended up full of red marking enemy positions.

You'd see there wasn't a great deal of scope for manoeuvre and achieving supplies in that way. And my own view is H would have had every justification for saying, I don't think we can do this. But he didn't. And he absolutely convinced us that this was going to happen, that it was possible. Very detailed plan, which I think painted a good picture, sort of visualization if you like of how we might do it not necessarily how we would end up doing it and in my mind H earned his spurs at that moment the day before at the O group and he absolutely instilled in us a complete faith that we would succeed and I think we could have been 50 casualties casualties and we'd have still been pushing and pushing and pushing.

I'd put that very much down to him. You're listening to Dan Snow's History. We're talking about Goose Green on the anniversary of that battle. More coming up. Did Edison really take credit for things he didn't invent? Were treadmills originally a form of corporal punishment? And would man have ever got to the moon without the bra? You can expect answers to all these questions and more in the brand new podcast from history hit Patented History of

Inventions. Join me, Dallas Campbell, as I uncover what really sparked history's most impactful ideas. Each episode, I'll be recruiting the help of experts, scientists, historians, and even a few real-life inventors. Subscribe to Patented History of Inventions wherever you listen to your podcasts. Subscribe to Patented History of Inventions wherever you listen to your podcasts. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. So you end up attacking these positions. It's not a million miles away from the kind of warfare that your dad would have recognised, perhaps towards the end of the First World War,

more than the beginning. But you haven't got the big supporting firepower. You haven't got airstrikes. You haven't got drones, of course, or that kind of thing. You are moving forward. Your firepower is whatever you can carry effectively. And you're working as a unit, trying to look for local opportunities. It is, in a way, quite a traditional form of battle, this.

Yeah, I think it was very, by today's standards, very dated, if you like, closer to the way a battle might have been fought in the first war than it would be today. The advantage we had was we started at night. The plan was to have got to the outskirts of the settlement under darkness. And that meant that actually the day before really advanced night vision equipment and so on. That did give us a lot of protection. We were able to get close in to the enemy before things sort of kicked off. And once we closed and started fighting through, the ethos of the Parachute Regiment, unbounded aggression and so on, won through. And the first position I attacked, by the time we started to fight through it, most of the Argentinians had given up and were lying at the

bottom of the trench with a sleeping bag over their heads saying, you know, hang on, this has nothing to do with me. So as long as we had darkness, we were okay. But the trouble was that we got our time-space appreciation completely cockeyed and we'd allowed ourselves only four hours to cover effectively seven miles and take out at least six identified enemy positions. seven miles and take out at least six identified enemy positions. Well, after my first night contact, I picked up four casualties in that. And it took us an hour and a half to reorganize. On training, you know, if you took more than 20 minutes, some member of the directing staff be chewing your backside for taking too long. But you know, in the dark, people being pulled in every direction, they didn't know which way even they were facing casualties. So there's four people missing. What are they missing, dead, wounded? Again, you can't just abandon them when they reorganisation, you got to put some time

into trying to find out what's happened, whether they need help, and so on. So that absolutely put the time space appreciation out the window. And come daylight, instead of being outside the settlements, we're only halfway there. And at which point, really, the boot went straight onto the foot of the defenders. And at that point, that life became difficult. It was at that point that, by Christ, we could do with more fire support, more effective fire support. We could have certainly done with the CVRTs, the light tanks that we had down there, which hadn't been allocated, that would have made all the difference. Then life did become demanding. Was it thrilling leading your men in battle? Was it terrifying?

I don't know. It's hard to tell whether I was thrilled or terrified. Probably a mix of the two. Putting in that first assault, the air was thick with tracer and it all looks like it's coming direct to you and then you sort of keep moving forward and you're not being hit. It's a funny experience. So the mix of thrill, fear, relief, all going on almost at the same time. I must ask you about Colonel H. Jones who was killed at around about the time you mentioned when the defenders got the advantage. He was leading a counterattack. It's one of the most talked and raked over moments in recent British military history, he won a Victoria Cross. What's your memories of that moment or reflections on it? Well, my own view is that H spurs and arguably

his Victoria Cross starting the day before the O Group and things like that. I mean, it's sometimes more demanding of your courage when it's all quiet, in the quiet moments before you start to engage. I mean, I sort of think in my climbing experiences, I never slept the night before a big root in the outs or something like that. But once I was involved, then the fear dropped away, the nerves dropped away and you just got stuck in. And so, you know, I think H showed, because he only had the sort of, if you like, the half-hearted support of 3th Commander Brigade with this attack.

Their heart was not in it. They thought it was a needless distraction. So he didn't even have that behind him, I think, in many respects. And so I think he showed extraordinary courage, moral courage, perhaps more than physical courage at that point. When he died, the way he died and so on was... I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history.

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By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Wherever you get your podcasts. It's difficult. He was basically with a company who'd been effectively ambushed from the top of Darwin Hill as they approached Darwin settlement. At night, he was in just the right place, right behind his lead company. So I've got no argument with that. I guess really, perhaps what happened was that as daylight came up and they were ambushed from the top of Darwin Hill, there was H with the company, and he got sucked into their battle rather than, you know, I was back in reserve at that stage again, some kilometre further behind. that stage again, some kilometre further behind. And I had a sort of, if you like, a panoramic view and I could see the ground. But he got, if you like, sucked into this and it took over his vision, if you like. So I think he lost perspective of the battlefield somewhat, therefore focused on what could he do in the immediate surround of where he was. And clearly around him,

people were struggling, casualties were being taken. And he was and clearly around him people were struggling casualties were being taken and he was certainly one of those people who would never expect or ask someone to do something that he wouldn't do himself and I think he came down to a sort of very blink of view at that point of I've got to set the example that's really I think what happened now yes great physical courage at the time as well but I think had he not allowed Now, yes, great physical courage at the time as well. But I think had he not allowed himself to be sucked into that situation, had he been back with me, he would have been more useful, I think is the way I put it. He could have looked at other things. He still had over half his battalion not committed to that point. He had to support weapons, Milan

and things not committed. He had my company not committed, me offering possible alternatives like a right flanking down by the Western shoreline. And he couldn't see that because he was fighting effectively that time, a section commander's battle. So that's my view of it. But I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that he deserved his award he was a man of great courage a really dynamic character i just think that um well someone once told me they were talking to general frost who was then our honorary colonel you know second world war fame and i think frost said i wouldn't have written his citation like that, but he would have still got his VC. So I think that's where a lot of this controversy comes in.

And I would still say he deserved his VC. Even more so if you put it in the context of, to some extent, a medal for the commanding officer is recognition, not just of him, but of his unit. If that's what Frost, the man who holds the north end of the bridge at Arnhem for days on days, he says that, I mean, who's going to argue? You talk about right flanking, you used Milan, the anti-tank weapon, mortars very effectively, and you push forward. In the end, you invited them to surrender. But you were also, both sides were quite exhausted by that point. And I guess you're glad they didn't know quite how at the limit of your endurance and logistics you were. Yes, I think, you know, by the time we got to the

end of the day, I'd already taken the surrender of one other enemy position, which was a fairly tense moment, whether it was a genuine surrender being offered and so on. But by the end of the day, yeah, we were pretty knackered. I remember getting the instruction from Chris Keeble, who'd taken over from H2IC of the battalion, to exploit no further because the veiled speech message was because we've got other plans being developed. I had no idea what those plans were, but I have to say, at that stage, it really geared myself, we've got to keep pushing,

we've got to keep pushing. And when I got that word, exploit that stage, it really geared myself. We've got to keep pushing. We've got to keep pushing. And when I got that word, exploit no further, just go firm. At that point, suddenly I realised how absolutely knackered I was. And I guess everyone else. Like H, you were being sucked into the battle in front of you as well. I think as a company commander, yeah, of course I did. I mean, I did leave it to my platoon commanders, but occasionally you can't avoid being sucked in.

It's easy in hindsight to say H allowed himself to be sucked in, but at the time, shit happens and you suddenly find, oh, what the hell am I doing here, you know? So Keeble's sort of taking a big view, saying, calm down, D Company. He'd very much let the company commanders then get on with fighting the battle that they knew they had to fight. You know, we were the closest to the problem. And I think, you know, in a sense that liberated the battlefield and we cracked on.

But by the time he said, right, exploit no further, I was chinstrapped, I realized at that point. We were down to the last few rounds of ammunition per man. D Company were lucky. We'd had a little breakfast earlier in the day once H would not let us develop the right flanking possibility. So perhaps we were better fed than the rest of the battalion. But most people hadn't eaten for 24 hours. And as I say, down to the last few rounds of ammunition. If the Argentinians had chosen to counterattack at that point, well, we'd have ended up just flinging compote into them or something like that.

There would have not been much resistance. Well, I think there would have been resistance. That's overstating it. But we'd have been seriously stretched. If they'd put in a determined counterattack, and I think they had the resources to do so, then I think it could have gone either way. So, yeah, it had been a long day. And, you know,

again, I give credit to Keeble for setting up this negotiated surrender, because, you know, the alternative might have been to have fought through the settlements. Otherwise, we could have just bombed the shit out of them in the same way as the Russians are doing in Ukraine at the moment. But it wouldn't have have exactly looked like a success had we had to storm through the settlements themselves and probably invariably would have incurred civilian casualties. You think how perverse that looks. We're here to liberate the islanders and we end up killing them.

We're seeing lots of that at the moment. So that was inspiration from Chris Keeble. And I think the other thing is that, in a sense, we were given the mission recap to the settlements. But until Keeble grasped this nettle late in the day, no one, I think, had really thought through what is success going to look like here. And storming through and killing civilians, probably at the end of the day, wouldn't have looked like a success. So I think it was a pretty cool move. And I think he played a good hand of poker because, as I say, we were down to pretty

slim resources by then. Well, apart from anything else, you numbered about half the Argentinian numbers, which is a very unusual military balance. Nearly a thousand of them became prisoners of war and they realised how few in number you were. I mean, what, 600 by that stage, having lost some casualties? They must have thought it was astonishing. I mean, I had to overlook the theatre of surrender, for a better way of describing it. I think Robert Fox had advised Chris Keeble that the technique here was to let the Argentinians apparently keep their respect and, you know, all due honour and everything else. He was the BBC defence correspondent at the time and he'd been embedded with us for Goose Green.

I think he'd spent a lot of his life in Italy. So I think he, I understand the psychology of the enemy sort of thing. You know, this is what you need to do, Chris. It was that sort of conversation, I believe. So there was this little pantomime of theatre going on on this sort of open field. And my company had been tasked to discreetly, from a distance, oversee this and be ready to intervene if things started to go wrong. As it happened, they didn't go wrong.

It looked like occasionally it wasn't going too smoothly, but eventually it all settled down. And so I was the first company then to go and, you know, once all these Argentinians had come out of the settlement in batches really i mean the first lot came out we thought it's all there is and then you know another 800 appeared i remember just looking at the faces of some of these chaps and difficult to read really but i think they were just stunned i think they couldn't quite grasp that a thousand of them came out of the settlement and it was one bedraggled company of parachute soldiers looking like vagabonds at this stage you know 100 of us herding them off into the sheep shearing sheds and i think they just couldn't grasp it i think how many men did you lose in your company a goose green i lost eight

men and another four injured and that was odd as well that um normally the ratio would be two to one or three to one so you might have four dead and eight injured and for some reason the ratio was the reverse with my company. I think that was down to a number of things but one of them certainly was the difficulty of getting people off the battlefield into the regimental aid post. We'd been quite isolated and separated from the aid post for a lot of the time in the afternoon before by a forward slope, which was being rigged by AAA fire. So if we got casualties, they were stuck with us and couldn't get them back. So that obviously didn't help.

And what's it like as a commanding officer when you've survived the battle, but there are men left behind in the battlefield, there are men who won't be going home? If I'm honest, we didn't think too much about the dead at that point i mean obviously people did think about close friends that it lost but i mean all i was concerned with that i had at the end of the battle i had 12 fewer in my company than i started with and my operational capability was diminished therefore and the welfare side of it and everything else and all the things that you do, writing letters and so on, didn't really take place until the war was all over. So at that time, all I knew in Goose Green was, you know, the war isn't over. We've still got battles to fight. I've lost 12 men and I need to make sure that we don't lose many more. And the interesting

was that suddenly the number of Toms who were reporting sick at the regimental aid post began to increase. And that worried me because if they got Casa back for any reason back to Ajax Bay, the odds of getting them back were quite slim. They'd survived Goose Green. It looked apparently fit. Why was this happening? And it just occurred to me that actually, I think they just needed a bit of reassurance. So I said, right, no one goes sit to the regimental aid post without first seeing my company sergeant major. A talented man.

He was a super chap. And he just knew which toms perhaps needed an arm around the shoulder and then perhaps others who instead needed a sharp pencil up the nose. And, you know, the trickle of sickies just stopped. I mean, they'd been through 36 hours of a real neck stretch. I mean, I mean a serious neck stretch. And, you know, these guys were 18, 19, 20 young chaps. I mean, I was a seasoned old fart by then.

That was the issue. They just needed a little bit of reassurance, a little bit of encouragement, and it all continued to work. Phil, we could talk about Wireless Ridge and Chandler parachuting in various things that happened to Tupara for that, but I've taken so much of your time.

Thank you so much for coming on and talking about Goose Green. Quickly tell everyone, what's the name of the book? The book is Penal Company on the Falklands, and I've alluded already to D Company being the Cinderella of Tupara. I've called it Penal Company because 30 years after the war, I did a presentation to the RE Depot sergeant's mess in Chatham. And the word had leaked out that I was doing this to some of my ex-toms and MCOs. And I got up to speak, packed sort of audience. And from the back,

I could see these hands waving. And I suddenly realized there was a dozen of my MCOs there. Well, crikey, I've got to tell the truth and not exaggerate and all that sort of stuff. And I gave these a picture of D Company. And I sort of described the Cinderella scenario, its relations with the rest of the battalion. And my company medic was in the audience and bought me a beer afterwards and said, Phil, didn't you know we were called Penal Company? And I said, no, I didn't. But now it all makes sense. So I thought, right, there's the title of the book. And that was also perhaps the first spur I had to write the book, really. I thought, right, I need to write their story. And I hope I've done

them justice well thank you so much for coming on and sharing all your thoughts us I really appreciate that great thank you very much indeed Dan thank you for making it to the end of this episode of our country, all work on and finish. Thank you for making it to the end of this episode of Dan Snow's History. I really appreciate listening to this podcast. I love doing these podcasts. It's a highlight of my career. It's the best thing I've ever done.

And your support, your listening is obviously crucial for that project. If you did feel like doing me a favour, if you go to wherever you get your podcasts and give it a review, give it a rating, obviously a good one, ideally, then that would be fantastic and feel free to share it. We obviously depend on listeners, depend on more and more people finding out about it, depend on good reviews to keep the listeners coming in. Really appreciate it. Thank you. you