The Rest Is History - 171. The Falklands War: Battle for the Islands

Episode Date: March 31, 2022

In the third episode of our Falklands War mini-series, the story heats up. The most controversial episode of the war, the sinking of the Belgrano, takes place, the British Task Force lands and battle plays out. Tom and Dominic thumb through their copies of the Sun, relive Reagan's final plea to Thatcher, and recount the stories of the men on the ground as Britain closed in on victory. For access to all four episodes, go to www.restishistorypod.com Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producers: Jack Davenport & Tony Pastor *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. just rejoice at that news and congratulate our forces and the marines rejoice so uh dominic that was mrs satcher um yeah obviously well i mean maybe you thought it was mrs satcher because it was so unerringly accurate that was actually me it was me all along possibly leon leeson tom no um you're just being jealous so yeah that was mrs satcher responding to the news that south georgia had fallen to the task force um yes and my memory of that is that uh she's on the steps of downing street and john not is with her looking incredibly embarrassed

by this kind of exultant tub thumping. Actually, no, because what actually happens, Tom, you're right that John Nott does look embarrassed at that point, but it's very weird because they come out and she says, ladies and gentlemen, the Secretary of State for Defence has some very good news, which I think he'd like to share with you. And he's sort of standing there like a child who's been asked to perform. And he looks incredibly miserable. I mean, he just looks fantastically unhappy. And he reads this statement, the White Ensign flies over South Georgia, God save the Queen.

And she wasn't going to say anything. And then they turned to go in and the newspaper people shouted questions. And she says then, just rejoice at that news. So actually, not, I don't know, his demeanor is just so lugubrious. But that final rejoice, she kind of pops back out of the door, doesn't she? Yes, she does. Yeah. It's a sort of admonition to the press, isn't it? Yeah.

And I suppose that it's remembered because it captures something about her role in the war, that increasingly she is identified both by supporters of the war and opponents of it as towards the war is channeled by an episode that happens in the wake of South Georgia, which is the sinking of an Argentine troop ship called the Belgrano. Yeah. So it's about the point of South Georgia where she's told people to rejoice. You know, basically, there's been virtually no loss of life. So one Argentine soldier was killed in the capture of the islands. But since then, certainly nobody from Britain has died. And there's been no large-scale loss of life at all. The public in Britain are delighted by South Georgia.

And the press are absolutely beside themselves. We'll come to the press in a bit. And Mrs. Thatcher is increasingly playing this Churchillian role. Her rhetoric is full of allusions to Kipling. And she says that Britain has found its role to fight for liberty and all this stuff. But so far it is like a kind of – It's a game.

It's bloodless. It's like a computer game or a TV drama or something. Or it's a role-playing game. A role-playing game, yeah. Everybody is playing the part of – exactly. And then there is the mission that um i know you you wanted to talk about earlier which is uh britain has sent vulcan bombers to bomb the um the the airstrip in in the fulcrum islands to stop the argentines getting um supplies and that's the one where

they refuel it in midair they refuel in midair which is i still don't quite understand how that works your brother's podcast would be able to explain. They would spend entire episodes discussing refueling valves or something. But they do it. But in our podcast, we don't go in for that malarkey at all. But they do it. And this is seen as this tremendous feat, even though they don't manage to knock out the airfield completely. But then the day after that, I think pretty much, it's a Sunday.

She's in Chequers. The defense chiefs arrive. They say they need to talk to her urgently and they basically say we've had a request from the commander of the task force in the south atlantic which is steaming south um there are two argentine ships in particular that have been shadowing the task force that um they've alarmed about One they've already talked about, which is the 25th of May. And the other one is named after a hero of the Argentine War of Independence.

He was called General Belgrano. And the General Belgrano is this sort of aging cruiser with more than a thousand men on board. And the British commanders would like permission to sink the Belgrano. Now, this is the single most controversial episode of the war. One of the most controversial episodes of Mrs. Thatcher's whole career. If you've seen the film, The Iron Lady with Meryl Streep, you will remember that she shouts,

sink it. And Dominic, what makes this controversial is that the British have said that they're setting up an exclusion zone a total exclusion zone that's 200 miles around the falklands and that that any argentine ship found within that will be shot will be sunk and attacked yeah but this does not mean that they're committed to not attack ships outside the exclusion zone yes often often right, right. So often, if you loiter, Tom, as I do every day on the Guardian website, reading the comments underneath articles, people will often say, ah, it wasn't in the exclusion zone,

therefore it shouldn't have been. It was illegal to attack it. It was a war crime and stuff. Now, that's completely wrong. When the British said there was a total exclusion zone around the Falklands, they explicitly said, if you're an Argentine ship ship going 210 miles or 220 miles beyond the falklands does not get you off the hook if you're a danger to their forces

they will sink you wherever what's the point of the total exclusion zone if they're still going to attack ships outside it the exclusion zone is basically saying especially for other ships don't come into the exclusion zone okay so it's not's not just targeted at Argentines. This is a designated kind of theater of war, basically. I mean, I know there'll be people who are absolute experts on this sort of stuff, listen to this and think that it's not right, blah,

blah, blah. But, but basically this is sort of saying, this is the battlefield. Everybody else stay out. And if any Argentine ship in this area, we will sink you.

But that doesn't mean. But we might still sink you if you're outside it. Yeah. Because you're a threat to our ships. you've invaded our islands so what's happening is the belgrano is this cruiser it's it's supported by destroyers i mean it's not there on a kind of it hasn't been rented for a pleasure outing it's there for a good reason you know to attack the task force the argentine commander who is rear admiral ayara he has a plan with a sort of pincer movement he has the vento sink into my in the north and the Belgrano in the south.

And between them, they will target Britain's aircraft carriers. Because the aircraft carriers, if the aircraft carriers go down, then basically the task force is sunk. Pretty much, I think. You need at least one aircraft carrier, ideally two, to give you the air cover and stuff. Because where else are your planes going to take off from? So Admiral Woodward, who's in charge of the task force, says to Mrs. Thatcher,

we'd like to attack the Belgrano police. It's outside because you have to ask permission. This is the thing, if it's outside the exclusion zone. So when he asked permission, he doesn't ask permission thinking there's any possibility she will say no. I mean, any prime minister, I think, by and large, would say yes. Because, counterfactual, she says no and the Belgrano then sinks the aircraft carrier. Right, and then she's damned for all eternity in British reputation.

It takes her and her ministers 20 minutes to say yes. It's just a no-brainer for them. Now, the complicated thing is this. The Belgrano looks like it's sailing towards the fleet, but by the time the order then gets to Admiral Wood woodward the belgrano has changed its course so what it's doing is zigzagging and the argentines had a plan for the attack but but in the small hours of sunday morning the weather has changed and the captain of the belgrano his man called hector bonzo he is told head back towards the mainland and await further orders for the time being.

So don't attack immediately. He's not told, I mean, obviously, this doesn't mean never attack. It just means hold your horses. So when the British submarine, the Conqueror, which has been told to sink the Belgrano, when it sees the Belgrano, the direction in which it's sailing is irrelevant to them.

So the captain just basically tracks the Belgrano for two hours. He twice almost has it. doesn't quite get it but then at 357 i think it is in the afternoon um belgrano is in his sights conqueror opens fire two massive hits um probably about 200 people are killed immediately by the kind of fireball ripping through the corridors the belgrano in total 323 argentine sailors and or servicemen were killed a third of them were conscripts you have very young men more than 700 of them survive on these life rafts so if you've ever seen the photo the belgrano sinking it's actually the life rafts which are kind of orange yeah that are in the the foreground and actually with that the the Argentine admirals say, oh, the plan is destroyed.

Go back to port. So the rest of their fleet are knocked out by this one act of sinking the Bolgrano. So militarily, it's very successful. Yeah. I mean, militarily, there's absolutely no debate about it. But in human terms, as you say, 323 men are killed. And so, I mean, I suppose globally, suddenly this is no longer a kind of opera buffet. Right. Comic, carry on up the Khyber escapade.

Suddenly people are dying very horribly. And I think it also seems it's the fact that the major casualties are inflicted by the British, who suddenly seem like the bully. NATO bullies. The NATO bullies against the sort of plucky South Americans. Yes. That's how it plays. Okay, so that plays out internationally. And to a degree, it has that impact in Britain as well.

So it serves to confirm people who are opposed to the war, absolutely in their conviction that this is deeply immoral. And I think there's a woman who orders it, Tom, who signs it off. I mean, it's not her idea. It comes to her for the sign-off. And the fact that it's a woman who does it, people sort of say, how could a woman of all people, how ghastly, this dreadful woman, you know, who's presided over unemployment, et cetera, et cetera.

So there's all that stuff. But there are also conspiracy theories, of course, about the sinking of the Belgrano. So the most famous one is the one propounded by the Labour MP, Tam Dayal. And he says, the Peruvians had cooked up a peace proposal. And Mrs. Thatcher knew of the peace proposal. And she deliberately ordered the sinking of the Belgrano in order to destroy any chance for peace because she craved war. And this is just, I mean, I'll pin my colors to the mast.

It's utter, utter nonsense. It wasn't her idea to attack the Belgrano. The request came from below, from the Navy. She didn't know about the Peruvian peace proposal. And what's really interesting is what the Argentines themselves think about the Bacchina. So this is the aspect that you never see in the British sort of the sort of more self-flagellating British commentary about this. So the guy who was running the operation, Rear Admiral Ayala, he basically, he told the historian Martin Middlebrook, he said, we knew perfectly well the entire South Atlantic was an operational theater

for both sides. We, as professionals, said it was just too bad that we lost the bug runner. The captain of the ship himself, Hector Bonzo, he said there was absolutely nothing wrong with the British attacking us. It was what we expected. It was completely reasonable. And there was an amazing thing I found, which i don't think had been written about before um in 2005 an argentine newspaper referred to the belgara sinking the belgorno offhand as a war crime and the former head of the argentine navy wrote a letter of

complaint to the newspaper obviously in spanish um and he's which which read as follows he said it was not a war crime, but a combat action. The Belgrano and the other ships were a threat and a danger to the British. It was not a violation of international law. It was an act of war. So I don't think there's actually, the funny thing about the Belgrano controversy

is I don't actually really think there's any great debate about it. Okay, well, Dominic, so in which case, the question then rises, why is it so controversial? And I would put it to you that one of the reasons why it's so controversial is that it was greeted by a British tabloid, The Sun, with what is probably the most notorious headline in the entire history of the British press, which was gotcha. Our lads sink gunboat and whole cruiser. The Navy had the arges on their knees last night after a devastating double punch wallop wallop etc etc and even they even they the sun become embarrassed about this

and well they changed it they changed they changed the headline yeah but essentially the press coverage on both sides as always tends to happen as we saw with brexit entrenches opinions yeah Yeah, of course. Knowing what the other side think kind of encourages editors on both sides to kind of go further and further and further. And this definitely happened with the Falklands. So The Sun, which had only recently overtaken The Mirror in the late 70s to become the best selling newspaper in Britain, Rupert Murdoch's paper, sort of populist, very pro-Thatcher,

conservative, ultra patriotic. paper in britain rupert murdoch's paper sort of populist very pro-thatcher conservative ultra patriotic um so for our overseas listeners i mean the sun played an absolutely gigantic part in the kind of national imagination in the 80s um loved and loathed in equal measure um what is it about 12 million readers or something just enormous readers readership. And the Sun, right from the beginning, embraced the war with absolutely wholehearted enthusiasm. Can I read again a top historian, namely yourself, on this? So you describe, I think, was it the news editor or something, who's been on holiday when the Falcons warped. And he comes back to the Sun office and he finds the news editor

wearing a naval officer's cap and insisted on being called commander while a giant map of the south atlantic had been pinned up beneath a newly installed portrait of sir winston churchill yeah so they go full in and this is famously parodied by private eye satirical magazine yeah that the headline is kill an rg and win a metro yeah but i mean that's not it's hard to distinguish that from because kelvin mckenzie the editor of the sun famously when he saw the parody he said that's such a brilliant idea why didn't we think of that because they do all kinds of so they run again and again the same headline during the peace negotiations which is stick it

up your hunter um they like it so much they make T-shirts, the Sun readers, sensational T-shirts, they call them, that people can write in and get these T-shirts. They run a column where you can send in anti-Argentine jokes. So the column invites you to give those damn arges a whole lot of bargy by sending in the best anti-Argentine, and which they will reward you with a tin of non-Argentine corned beef they do various stunts

so something that is very controversial as well as the gotcha they sponsor a missile and they get they write stick it up your hunter on the missile. And the big story is saying, to Galtieri's gauchos with love from the sun.

All this sort of stuff. And don't they also donate massive portraits of... Page three models. Topless models. Page three models. They airlift them. They airlift them to Ascension Island so that they can go on. they airlift them they airlift them to ascension island so that they can go on they airlift them so they airlift them out to the fleet so the task force will have

something to look at when they're when they're en route so there's a whole series of i mean they absolutely you know they absolutely go for it in terms of these sort of jingoistic stunts which as you say leaves some people absolutely appalled and And funnily enough, The Sun's readership actually declines. But The Sun also, it accuses, it absolutely, unrepentantly accuses critics of the war being traitors. I mean, its big rival, The Daily Star, famously commissioned a lawyer to see if Tony Benn could be prosecuted for treason for opposing the war um they accuse the daily mirror of being traitors what is it but treason they say in this

huge editorial the organization that they really go after is the bbc so you yeah you've been guilty of this the british broadcasting corporation yes but but um not calling them our troops. After the Belgrano, is it on Newsnight, Peter Snow, father of Dan, refers to the British. Can we trust the British? And this generates blowback, doesn't it? Massive. So this is on Newsnight. He says, we know that the Argentines are not telling us the truth but we can't be sure about the british will and when he does the the bbc deluge with complaints not least from conservative backbenchers saying how dare you call us the british and imply that we have propaganda exactly exactly so they get the

most you know sort of intense abuse but then they also do a panorama um a sort of anti additional panorama which is this big sort of current affairs flagship news program where they sort of look at the case against war they interview people who they have a sort of report from buenos aires they have interviews with with dissenting mps like tory backbenchers who had fought in world war ii and don't think the war is a good idea and this gets a colossal amount of flack uh dennis thatcher basically says you know i'll never trust the bbc again they're pinkos i mean not that he ever did in the first place no i think it's fair to say you know the daily express has a big thing about tratorama and so obviously the sinking of the belgrano amplifies this debate but then what further sharpens it is the sinking of a british ship

um hms sheffield and what one of the kind of one of the overriding memories i think for everybody who lived through the falklands war and watched it on british tv was the lugubrious tones of um ian mcdonald who was the ministry of defense spokesman so so i've got it here. And he announced it as though he was announcing the cricket score. I don't think you'll be able to do it as boringly as he did it, Tom. In the course of its duties within the total exclusion zone, HMS Sheffield, a Type 42 destroyer, was attacked and hit late this afternoon by an Argentine missile. And it was that tension, the contrast between the absolute bled of emotion and the thought of how many lives had been lost

that, as I say, I think is certainly one of the, it's certainly one of my overriding memories. Yeah, he became a real, do you know the weird thing? He became this huge public figure because of his incredibly slow and lugubrious delivery of this either good or bad news. And he had, a woman started stalking him. Well, I get, so all the men, all the men involved in this, they all wear kind of thick glasses, greying hair, balding, very unfashionable suits. And the idea that any of them could be sex symbols seems improbable. But he was one of the most improbable.

He had to get the security men of the Ministry of Defence to protect him from this woman for whom he was obsessed with him. I mean, it does seem absolutely bizarre that he was announcing ship losses. But yeah, so the Sheffield... So what's the impact of that? Well, 20 men were lost on the Sheffield out of a crew of about almost 300, I think. So it's, you know... And then there's another HMS Coventry, isn't there? Later on, exactly.

So it's not comparable with the Bolognano. But of course, it's a massive... It's a tragedy for those people who do die in their families. The casualty figures are never released immediately, so they always appear at first to be more than they are. And I think it makes a huge dent in – it doesn't dent public opinion, but there's a sense of loss. It's really interesting how human life is much dearer in 1982 than it was

let's say in the 1940s so by the standards of the second or in the vietnam war or well britain has not known anything about the vietnam war and human life is so much dearer in 1982 that losses that to previous generations would have seen i mean i don't want to say trivial but they'd have seemed slight by comparison i assume colossal proportions. I mean, really tragic proportions. There's no real television coverage. So Robert Harris says about this, it's the worst reported war since the Crimea, which is quite something. Takes three weeks for the film footage to get back from the South Atlantic.

So it's all happening in some shadowy realm of the imagination almost. You don't even see still photos often of these things. And so, Dominic, does the loss of HMS Sheffield, how worrying is that for the British High Command? And does it in any way threaten? Because by this point, presumably, they're closing in on the Falklands themselves. They are closing in. I don't think it does threaten the success of the operation but the combination of the belgrano

and the sheffield and the international kind of outcry lots of people are really shocked by so many people are being killed um means that the government feels pressure to particularly from the americans um to to to compromise so again we talked about it previously, what happens and which is never really talked about in retrospectives of Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands is that in the aftermath of the loss of the Sheffield, they again agreed to compromise. So now this Peru deal that she supposedly wanted to scupper

by sinking the belgrano which is a myth but she accepts the peru deal so on the 5th of may the cabinet agree that they're actually divided but she is the decisive voice and she says we should take the deal and the deal basically is the same old deal as before just just fiddled with which is both the british and the argentines will withdraw and the there will be a sort of a UN administration or an administration of different countries while the sovereignty of the islands is decided, which almost certainly means that they will end up

under Argentine sovereignty. And she accepts the deal. And yet again, the Argentines are off the hook. Galtieri says no. He's just not prepared to withdraw his troops. And how long is this before the British actually reach the Falklands? So this is about two weeks. So this is the 5th of May or so.

And when that happens, is that it? No. Even then, it's not it, Tom. So there's then two more weeks of the fleet sailing. They're now virtually at the edge of the total exclusion zone so they're just a couple of hundred miles from the Falkland Islands and on the 16th of May the government makes a final offer to the Argentine government it's pretty much the same deal with a UN administration taking um coming in to run

the Falklands now here's an extraordinary thing they they agreed the final offer and mrs thatcher's un ambassador actually says to her are you sure you want to send that offer because that's giving up quite a lot that's that will probably end up with argentina getting sovereignty of the islands at the end and she says yep i do want to send the offer they send the offer and the Argentines are given until the 18th, I think it is, or the 19th of May to accept it. The deadline expires. They have not accepted it.

So at that point, they basically give the go-ahead, go for the landing. So the fleet have sailed on and on. They are very close now. And you have this incredibly dramatic sort of D-Day style landing scenario. Well, hold on, Dominic. Hold on, hold on, hold on. This is, I mean, this is too dramatic a moment. I'm going to have a break. You love a cliffhanger.

So let's go and listen to some adverts, unless you're a member of the Restless History Club, in which case you won't have to listen to adverts. And when we come back. They're on the islands already in the Restless History Club, in which case you won't have to listen to adverts. And when we come back... They're on the islands already, in the Restless History Club. They've already, yeah, the Union Jack has already been run up over Port Stanley.

Spoiler. When we come back, let's listen to what happens when the British actually land on the soil of the Falklands. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest is Entertainment.

It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com hello before we return to the falklands war we just wanted to talk about um another article that has recently gone up on the web page of our friends at unheard that is un h e r d unheard.com dominic yes um and this is uh well actually you know it's it's an article that does relate to the history of modern britain um it's an article about cumbernauld which is a new

town wasn't it that was built in the 60s in kind of very concrete what would now be called brutalist style it was brutalist so it's in north lanarkshire in scot Cumbernauld. It was put up, the city centre was put up in 1967, I think. It's an absolute sort of temple to 60s idealism and then the collapse of that idealism in the 1970s when it started rotting and there was all problems with damp and graffiti and crime and stuff. And I believe the article is by a guy called Daniel Calder and he's talking about the destruction of this dream and the fact that the buildings are about to be destroyed aren't

they and architectural historians are very agitated about this yes they are although i gather that people who actually live there are less agitated delighted and i gather that daniel calder actually spent time in the soviet union perhaps you know his experience isn't entirely confined to scotland when writing about brutalist or should i tell you what tell you what he writes, Tom? Yeah, tell us. He says, glimpses of Cumbernauld's town centre from the window of the bus over the years have not done justice to the scale of the architectural catastrophe. It reminded me of the vast Ishmash plant in Odmurtia, Russia,

where they pump out AK-47s and other weapons. But Ishmash at least had a decorative historical entrance. With the general absence of windows and the abundance of pipes and wires in Cumbernauld's town centre centre everything looks like the back of something um and of course it's interesting because a lot of people are now very very nostalgic in a way about brutalist architecture they see it as a lost utopianism I absolutely hate it personally entirely happy to see it the trouble is I think I quite like it existing but I wouldn't live in it I go the full Prince Charles on this.

Yeah, I was about to say that. You know, a bit of columns, pediments, that kind of thing. Georgian. Yeah, Georgian. Prince Charles is all about Georgian. Yeah. But architectural historians and stuff would say, Tom, this is gross reactionary conservatism on your part.

I don't care. And you're all about hierarchy and order and keeping the, you know, you don't care about social democratic idealism. But I worry that in saying that I'm not pushing it back against herd mentality which is what i'm all about because i suspect that most people probably agree with me unless they were in architecture departments i mean i'm aware you know it's a wholly unoriginal perspective anyway it's a fabulous article um do read it and you can read a lot else as well on their site we've got a special offer uh which is open to you the rest is history listener it's one

pound a week normally but if you sign up for your first 10 weeks you get it free and you'll get four long pieces a day you'll get a podcast a podcast and youtube interviews showcasing new and independent thinking come on over yeah it says here unheard.com slash rest go and subscribe then come back to us and we'll continue with the second half of our own tremendous podcast thank you hello welcome back to the restless history Falklands war special and Dominic Sandbrook we have reached the climactic point the task force has steamed all its way from southern England down to the falklands and we

have reached the point where british troops land on the falklands so what happens next well tom there are some brilliant uh there's lots of really good falkland soldiers memoirs i think two of the best by ken lukowiak and vincent bramley i think we're both paratroopers really good um and uh vincent bramley has a wonderful description of the platoon commander calling all the NCOs together. They've sailed into the total exclusion zone. It's all been hijinks on the ships till now. It's been sunbathing. Giant page three.

Giant page threes. It's been a great laugh, basically. And now the platoon commanders say, right, this is it. And the mood completely changes. It's very tense. He says, you know, they can feel the fear. They can feel it in their stomachs. These are young men, by and large, who've never envisaged.

I mean, they're not conscripts. They're professional soldiers. But they've never really envisaged that this is anything like this. And also an amphibious landing, famously very difficult. You know, jumping off basically into the unknown wading up the beach it's very d-day um but it's colder right but it's yes because d-day is in the summer so but it's terrifying first they have to get off the canberra which is the big kind of cruise ship they have to get onto the assault ship intrepid which they do and and he has this great description that it's

dead you know the joking is over so and so where are they going to land so we've never really talked madly about the geography of the falkland islands there are two islands west falkland and east falkland um everything all the action is really on east falkland um so stanley is on east falkland but stanley's over on the east they know that the argentine forces thousands of them are in basically in stanley they're going to land on the other side um in a bay called San Carlos. They're almost a bit like kind of tiny fjords, I suppose, kind of low level fjords. I mean, that's probably geographically completely the wrong expression, but you kind of know what I mean. They're going to land there. They're going to land at night. They've got to hope that the Argentines don't

know exactly where they're going to land because they'll be sitting ducks. They'll just be sitting there unloading all the troops. So midnight on the 20th 21st of may they're kind of in position they get the they get the the go ahead they all go down they're waiting um they're waiting for like they're packed in they're waiting for this kind of green light to come on um the green light finally comes on they all get into their little landing craft then they're kind of bobbing um through this freezing sort of sea towards the land they can see tracer fire up above them you know they're they're so nervous they're they're complete sitting ducks but they get there they haven't been attacked and then they're off their

ramps go down they're up they're on the beach and amazingly um the argentines have not cottoned on to the fact they're there and will not for a few hours. That's very poor. Well, it is poor, but I mean, it's also a result for the British. Yeah, it is. But I mean, you know that there's a landing coming. Yeah, but they don't know where. They don't know where. They've got helicopters.

They have got stuff. Kind of buzzing around. Yeah, but it's the dead of night. What have got lights? Torches. Well, you should go on your brother's podcast They've got, yeah, but it's the dead of night. What got light? Tortures. Well, you should go on your brother's podcast and he will explain the military, the logistics, which I can't really do.

But anyway, they get off. I mean, there's wonderful stories. The task force have journalists embedded with them. So most famously, Max Hastings, and this is what makes his name, basically. So a lot of our listeners will know as a historian, but before that was a newspaper editor, and before that was this correspondent

who really became the voice and became the pen of the Falklands campaign. They've landed, and there's this tiny hamlet called San Carlos, and the Royal Marines go to the farmhouse, and the bloke who opens the door to them says, you're British, we've been expecting you for two or three nights. And his wife says, we were getting fed up of waiting for you.

A guy from the Sunday Times with another attachment, they get to a farm guy's cottage, and he opens the door, and he offers them some soup. And the first thing he says is, did Leeds United get relegated? So it's very sort of, that's the 1950s kind of comedy. Sort of evening wisdom. Exactly, aspect to it. So there they are.

They've landed without the loss of a single man. But basically by daylight, the Argentines know they're there. So they send in their fighters. They immediately hit two ships. That's Argonaut and Antrim. So lives are now being lost and basically there's now a race to unload all the equipment get all the stuff off because there's no like great supply line back to london they brought all their stuff with them and if it's

destroyed destroyed yeah right but they managed to get all the stuff off it's at this point that coventry you mentioned commentary Coventry earlier on, it's a type 42 destroyer like Sheffield, that that is hit. 19 men are killed on Coventry. Most of them get off. By the 27th, which is basically six days, they've managed to unload all their stuff.

So they've unloaded 3,000 men and all their gear, all their ammunition, their vehicles, whatever they need, and off they go. So now you're into a completely different phase of the campaign, which is the kind of land campaign. And at this point, you know, the government's just going to go for it. There's going to be no more talk of peace talks. Once they've got the men on the islands and lives are being lost, they're just going to do it.

And the first sort of battle, I mean, I say battle, they're obviously not Second do it and the first sort of battle i mean i say battle they're obviously not second world war type battles they're much smaller but they're still very bloody and vicious and almost because they're smaller they're often hand to hand at times which makes them you know there's a sort of intensity to them so the first thing they do is they actually turn some of them turn slightly back on themselves away from port stanley to a place called goose green which is on an isthmus, which connects the two harbs of East Falkland. And the reason they do that is the Argentines have a kind of garrison

of 1,000 men there, and the British government say, you have to knock that out because we need an early land success. And even though the commander doesn't really want to do it, Julian Thompson is told, you have to do it because we need a land victory immediately. We're not just going to leave this garrison there. You've got to basically eliminate it. This is where you get the real martyr.

So this is Colonel H. Jones. Colonel H. Jones, old Etonian, who is the commanding officer of 2 Para, who's always had a reputation for sort of devil-may-care kind of recklessness. And he leads his men on this it was planned as a raid but he basically wants it to be a big battle and he leads them um they start fighting starts at two in the morning on the 28th of may they get basically bogged down and stuff and he decides he's going to do a bit of a henry the fifth he just charges up the hill and just charge up yeah lead the charge and he's shot down and killed but britain ends up winning the british end up winning the battle of goose green and is that because of the his his charge does

that no they'd have won anyway they'd have won anyway so there's always been a bit of a debate among military historians about um was this a need need needless yeah i mean i'm not a military historian as some people people are military stories listening to this will probably know so people are often arguing in the about the minutiae of these attacks rather like you know sports reporters would argue about a scrum or something or yeah a penalty yeah the the but also there there's never a sort of definitive account because there's always battles are so confusing so there's always sort of but you said the truth that the british needed um a victory did they also need a war hero i mean do you think we didn't need one but they were happy to have one so the press immediately

he's got a wife i mean they couldn't so they couldn't say well i mean it's just kind of insane incompetence no but i don't think i don't think i think it would be very harsh and unfair to say it was well some people have said that, haven't they? Yeah, you're right. Okay, fair enough. They have. Some people have. You're absolutely right.

The press immediately, they turn his widow into a great Sarah or Sarah Jones. They turn her into this great martyr. She's a sort of photogenic widow with young children, I think. So absolutely, yes. He becomes the face of the fallen, if you like. And everyone needs heroes. Exactly. So what's that? That's about 28th of May.

Then there was one last attempt to give a piece. Back to the comedy. Very good. So this is from Ronald Reagan. He rings Mrs. Thatcher. We have a transcript of the call. It's very funny. She's absolutely –

No, no, no. Ronald, no. I didn't lose some of my finest ships and my finest lives to leave quietly under a ceasefire without the Argentines withdrawing. Just suppose Alaska was invaded. It's a long way away from you. Put all your people up there to retake it. You wouldn't withdraw.

You wouldn't do it. And Reagan, if you read the transcript, he starts off talking quite a lot. And then when he gets to about page two, he's like, Margaret, I... Margaret, and at the end, he just says, well, Margaret, I know I've intruded. And then, sorry, that almost veered into my Donald Trump, which it shouldn't have done.

But anyway, she says, oh, no, you haven't intruded at all, Ron. You know how you'd feel if you went through the same conflict. And off he goes with his tail between his legs that she's not going to compromise now. And to be fair to that, the British have made a lot of attempts to compromise but the argentines were having none of it so the argentine there's this poor bloke called mario ben ramine menendez who's that guy who's been put in is he he's arabic is he i imagine he's got moorish antecedents time maybe maybe. Hence the pronunciation. Exactly. I look at him and I see multicultural heritage. He's part of that extraordinary mix that you get in the medieval period in Spain.

Philosophy, bubbling fountains, the Alhambra, all that. Anyway, he's pitched up in Stanley and he basically says to General Galtieri, we are sunk, we are finished, unless you can send support general galtieri says you know no support is coming you must hold out and then there's publishers i have to say an absolutely splendid call to arms the adversary is getting ready to attack puerto argentino which is what they call poor stanley with a rash and hateful intention of conquering the capital of the Malvinas not only must we beat them we must do it in such a way that their defeat is so crushing

that they will never again have the impertinence to invade our land to arms to battle it's very kind of Aragon yes yeah it is and does it have the desired effect it doesn't no it's the Argentine soldiers are incredibly miserable many of them by this point have actually said, they write in letters and diaries or memoirs. They say basically by this point, we're desperate for the British to arrive so that we can go home. They're really cold. They're really miserable.

They don't have enough rations. They hate their officers who treat them like dirt. So their morale is pretty low. So you have a couple more, one more tragedy for the british which is landing more troops um a place called bluff cove which is oh is that is that the galahad so this is the galahad simon weston simon weston who is the other great british war hero who suffers burns to 46 percent of his body, is very, very badly hurt, loses eyelids and his ears and stuff like this, but survives

and then becomes the face of kind of heroism. So 49 men are killed there. But, I mean, by this point, it's pretty obvious. The British are a professional army, incredibly well-trained, very well-armed, got all the right equipment, absolutely poised for this. This is what they've been preparing for. The Argentines are conscripts.

There's only really going to be one winner. The British troops are poised around Stanley. So Stanley is, I mean, they're described as kind of mount this, mount that, but they're not really mountains. They're kind of hills. I mean, they're not kind of the Alps or something. So these hills at Mount London, Mount Harriet, and there's one called Two Sisters, which're not kind of the alps or something um so these hills at mount longdon mount harriet and there's one called two sisters which is two kind of peaks and basically what the

british are going to have to do is just attack um usually uh very late at night or first thing in the morning sort of in the early hours um so it's kind of night fighting which is always really confused and horrible and it's kind of close quarters basically work their way up these slopes clean out the argentine trenches and positions at the top and and you know all the accounts of this that you get from the i mean we haven't really dug into the kind of military side of it because it's not what we do but when you read the soldiers memoirs they are they're they are horrible they're really horrible so there's um i mean i can't quote everything um but for example in vincent bramley's um memoir there's a point where an army medic says to him i've done all the

training possible for this and it still hasn't been what i thought it would be and these because nothing prepares them for their friends being shot around them people's brains falling so what are the casualties well they're not massive so they're they're sort of dozens um sometimes just a handful of people certainly the british side because the british they're like a clockwork machine sort of working perfectly so the casualties aren't great so for example in longden the british lose um 23 men on two sisters they lose eight on mount harriet they lose seven so they're quite they're So they're not massive by any means. But again, there's something about the intimacy of it, I suppose,

that makes it seem... Do you think also, I mean, the Falklands sounds very like the kind of terrain on which the British Army train. So the Highlands or Brecon Beacons or Darwal or something like that. That perhaps, you know, you've done it so many times on that in that kind of training and suddenly you really are i mean maybe the fact it seems so familiar makes it almost worse i don't know yeah i can see what you mean the fact that it feels like an exercise but it's not and people are actually dropping down around you yeah i think there's some i mean it's an interesting i found this really interesting to study and to write

about because i'd never really written about war. And when you read the soldiers' memoirs, one thing they talk about, which sometimes comes up in particularly in this sort of left-leaning press accounts of the Falklands, are what we would call atrocities. So that is bayoneting prisoners, cutting off the ears. As what? As trophies? As trophies. There's a bit in, I can't remember whose book it is. I think it might be Ken Lukowiak, where he says, oh no, it's Vincent Bramley.

He says one of his friends picks up a man's head with the brain still inside and says, oh, this is the ultimate souvenir. My missus will love this. I mean, that's very Petch-an-egg behaviour. It is very Petch-an-egg behaviour. But the thing is, if you actually read any military history about previous wars really detailed ones this always happened i mean this happened in world war ii it happened in world war one but

there's something britain in the 1980s with the exception of northern ireland felt itself to be a country that had gone beyond all this this just wasn't what happened but the historian who's written about this most interestingly is um a historian Helen Parr, whose uncle Dave was in the Paras, I think, and he was killed in the Falklands. And she talks about the sort of, you know, the so-called atrocities. And one of the things she points out is actually by the standards of wars, there were very few major atrocities in the Falklands. And one reason for that is that actually it's, as it were,

a more gallant campaign, is that neither side is actually fighting for their own native land. Yeah. So they're almost fighting on a slightly neutral territory because the British soldiers have no great stake in the Falklands. I mean, it's not there. They've never been there before. They do think of it as theirs, of course,

and they feel some vague connection to the people who live there. But it's not the same thing as fighting for your hometown. So it doesn't have that intensity. And there's no civilians around. I mean, the civilians, the 1,800 civilians, are all kind of drinking tea and kind of hunkering down in their farmhouses.

So I don't think it's a a it's not an especially bloody campaign from that point of view anyway um so it's basically three two three nights of fighting and the argentines just eventually kind of crumple do they surrender do they officially surrender they do eventually so you get to there's this amazing scene on the the 14th morning of the monday the 14th of june so they've just fought they've the british have moved on the 14th, the morning of the Monday, the 14th of June. So they've just fought. The British have moved on. The Scots Guards have fought to the top of Mount Tumble Down.

And two para have got to the top of Wireless Ridge. So now they're basically closed in on Stanley. And Stanley, which is, by the way, I mean, it's the capital. But it's a tiny town. I mean, it's by the standards of most. A large village. Yes, a large village, you know, really. And it's by by by the standards of most a large village yes a large village you know really um and it's sort of laid out beneath them and and the most the famous thing that happens now is i talked about embedded reporters so one of them is the evening standards max hastings and he's with um he's on wireless ridge so he's with the paras and he sits down he writes his

latest dispatch to the evening standard and then he looks and he sees stan paras and he sits down and he writes his latest dispatch to the evening standard and then he looks and he sees stanley and he sees the argentines are kind of basically running back into the town and he thinks to himself you know i could actually just go down there and i would be the first person there and he hitches a lift with some paratroopers down the hill to the outskirts and then they stop to brew up some tea. And he just thinks, well, I'll just go. And he starts, it's an amazing scene in his memoirs. He starts walking and he just walks along this lane.

And one of the paras says, what are you doing? And Hastings just ignores him and keeps going. And he kind of goes around a corner and then he thinks, God, I'm kind of here. You know how it is when you've done a big walk, especially when you're walking downhill and you see the sort of village that you're walking to and within before you know it you're there yeah this is exactly what happens and he sees a group of argentine soldiers and he says to them good morning in spanish or english in english i think and they sort of um they sort of say nothing. They look very miserable.

And eventually he bumps into a colonel and Hastings says, are you planning to surrender? And the colonel says, I think so, but I won't know until your general meets General Menendez. And Hastings is like, oh, okay, can I keep going? And the colonel says, of course you can.

So he just keeps going. And this is the funny thing that we talked about earlier that the argentines generally were quite well behaved and given their abysmal behavior to their own people they were very i think as we said before they have this sort of sense they have to be on their best behavior when they're fighting the british who they've envied and you know resented for so long so he keeps going and lots of argentines see him but they don't shoot him or anything they just sort of look away or glare at him or whatever he ends up going to the pub it's called the upland goose and there's this incredible moment when he walks in

and there are 20 people in the bar of the pub and max hastings says to them um i'm with the british task force and they all start clapping and then the landlord says to them, I'm with the British task force. And they all start clapping. And then the landlord says to him, we never doubted for a moment that the British would come. We've just been waiting for the moment. Now, would you like a drink? And he says, yes. And he says, yes. Well, I think that's a splendid note on which to end.

We have one last episode. We will look at the aftermath of the war. Why it mattered? Or did it matter? Yeah, did it matter? We have a lot of questions. So we'll go through some of those questions, trying to put the narrative that we've had in the kind of the broader context,

the impact that the war had on Argentina, on Britain, on the broader world. And I shall be advancing to my thesis about the Falklands and Brexit. Well, that's exciting. It is exciting. A Sandbrook thesis. And people love talking about Brexit, don't they?

They love it. They can't get enough of it. Yeah, they love it. So we'll see you back on Monday for the final part of our Falklands series. Or if you want to listen to it right now, join the Rest Is History Club to get access to that episode. www.restishistorypod.com. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening,

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