TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/82/82final

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                                                                                June 14, 1982 

WORLD

Final Act of a Bitter Tragedy

The clash of two determined nations climaxes in Port Stanley


With speed and effectiveness, the British slashed across the
bleak interior of East Falkland Island last week and poised
themselves for the final push into Port Stanley. Mudstained
Royal Marines and paratroopers, their faces unshaven and
blackened with camouflage cream, slogged through treacherous
bogs and over small mountains, brushing aside sporadic Argentine
resistance. Scorpion tanks and Snowcat personnel carriers
rumbled through squalls of rain and sleet on crude, rutted
tracks that quickly became soupy quagmires. Harrier jump jets
flew mission after mission over the Falklands capital, dropping
600-lb. cluster bombs on Argentine troop concentrations.
Offshore the 4.5-in. guns of Royal Navy frigates and destroyers
kept up a steady pounding, adding to the crump of 105-mm
artillery pieces firing from the heights ten miles or less from
the city.

Suffering only minimal casualties, and seeking to end as quickly
as possible the bitter and improbable little war, the British
force attacking Port Stanley had brilliantly carried out its
assault across rugged terrain. Only a week after the British
breakout from their invasion beachhead around Port San Carlos,
the Argentine force of 7,000 troops was hemmed in by some 5,000
Royal Marine commandos and members of the 2nd and 3rd battalions
of Britain's Parachute Regiment (see map). An additional 3,500
men, chiefly Scots and Welsh Guards and the legendary Gurkhas
of Britain's 5th Infantry Brigade, were expected to complete the
siege. Said a senior official at Britain's Defense Ministry in
London:  "When our big attack goes in, we shall have superiority
in numbers, guns and morale."

But despite their perilous position, the Argentines showed no
sign of surrendering. General Mario Benjamin Menendez declared
that his forces were eagerly awaiting the major British attack.
Said he:  "We should not only defeat them, but we should do it
in such a way that they will never again have the daring idea
of attacking our soil."

As the showdown approached, military experts from around the
world praised the British air, sea and land operation that had
isolated Port Stanley. After traveling some 7,800 miles to the
Falklands. Britain's 40-ship military task force, led by the
aircraft carriers Hermes and Invincible, had ferried ashore as
many as 8,500 troops, plus their equipment, supporting armor,
air defense missiles and other vital supplies.

All last week the buildup of the British forces continued.
Additional Harrier jets were flown in from Britain to increase
the number of the versatile aircraft in combat in the South
Atlantic from 37 to 52. The Harriers refueled from a "daisy
chain" of Victor aerial tankers circling between Britain's
military base at Ascension Island and the Falklands, 3,800 miles
away. But apparently the chain can still break:  late last week
a Vulcan bomber on a maritime reconnaissance mission made a
sudden forced landing in Rio de Janeiro; the British aircraft
may have missed a rendezvous with the tankers.

Both the original British landing and subsequent offensive
depended upon meticulous planning. To ensure that precision,
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's five-member War Cabinet had
from the start delegated complete control over the Falklands
fighting to Britain's commanders-on-the-spot:  Rear Admiral John
("Sandy") Woodward, 50, aboard the aircraft carrier Hermes, and
Major General John Jeremy Moore, 53, leader of the British
ground forces on East Falkland. Initially, says a senior British
official in London, "the only restraints placed on Admiral
Woodward and General Moore were that casualties be kept to a
minimum, that there should be no bombing of the Argentine
mainland airbases and that the timing of the invasion should be
a matter of political decision."

The reason for London's flexibility, explained the official, was
the troubling memory of how Sir Anthony Eden, then Britain's
Prime Minister, had hampered the British task force during the
ill-fated Suez invasion of 1956 by issuing a stream of
contradictory orders to his commanders. Thatcher and her War
Cabinet were determined that there should be no repetition of
such self-defeating ministerial interference. Indeed, since
approving the commanders' general war plan. London has not
issued a single operational order or given any form of military
advice to the fighting men in the Falklands.

One of the key decisions made by Woodward and Moore, say
military experts, was to choose the Port San Carlos area as a
landing site. Sheltered from attacking Argentine aircraft by
fingers of land, the site, says one Dutch military observer,
"provided a kind of naval trench, a defense axis, that made the
debarkation of troops practical."  In particular, the inlet
neutralized Argentina's use of the ship-killing Exocet missile
that on May 4 destroyed H.M.S. Sheffield and two weeks ago sank
the container ship Atlantic Conveyor. Unlike U.S. cruise
missiles, the sea-skimming Exocet lacks the ability to dodge
hills in order to reach its target.

Although the British and Argentine forces on East Falkland were
roughly equal, expert observers like Maxwell Taylor, former
Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, believed that the
British held a decisive advantage. In such a situation, Taylor
told TIME last week, "what matters is the kind of men you have
in the foxholes." NATO commanders agreed that the British
troops, all volunteers, were far superior to the young and
inexperienced conscripts who formed the main Argentine forces.
The Royal Marines and the Parachute Regiment troops that have
carried out the bulk of the offensive are Britain's best. Along
with regular infantry training, the marines take courses in
amphibious techniques, special commando tactics and an
extraordinary series of physical fitness exercises. In addition,
the marines, who have the permanent role of helping to guard the
northern flank of NATO, had trained in the harsh climate of
Norway; conditions there are similar in some ways to what they
found in the Falklands. As for the Argentines, says one NATO
official. "You can't expect conscripts from a warm country to
be very effective on icebound rock."

Before last week's military drive, British officers proudly
referred to the fitness and esprit of their troops as a "secret
weapon in the Falklands."  The officers were right. The 2nd
Battalion paratroopers were eager for combat as they moved out
of the San Carlos redoubt and headed in predawn darkness for the
narrow isthmus sheltering Darwin and Goose Green. Darwin fell
easily, but the British were surprised by the Argentine garrison
of some 1,650 men, nearly three times the expected number at
Goose Green.

At one point the British assault faltered as the paratroopers
came under attack from an Argentine machine-gun nest. Lieut.
Colonel Herbert Jones, 42, known to his men as "H," the
commander of the 2nd Battalion and the man who had urged his
supervisors to include his unit in the task force, led a platoon
against the position and wiped it out. During the attack, Jones
was killed. That evening a detachment of troops brought his body
down a hillside from the battlefield. He was buried on the
original beachhead with 16 other casualties in a spartan wartime
ceremony.

The fact that British casualties were being buried in the
Falklands caused growing resentment at home, although the
nation's dead in other wars had been buried on or near the
battlefield. Responding to the concern, the British government
was considering a plan to bring back any soldier if his family
so requested.

With 250 men killed, the Argentine force at Goose Green
surrendered. The senior officer at the outpost, Air Vice
Commodore Wilson Doser Pedroza, formally paraded his men and
gave them a brief speech lauding their courage and their cause.
The Argentine troops sang their national anthem ("O hear, yet
mortals, the sacred call..."). They threw their helmets and guns
to the ground, some showing obvious relief.

The number of prisoners of war swelled to 1,600 as outlying
Argentine detachments also laid down their arms. Despite their
spirited defense at Goose Green, many of the soldiers were
teenagers who had come into the fighting ill prepared. The
wounded were taken to British hospital ships, the remainder to
the landing ship Sir Percival and another British merchant
vessel. The Argentines were herded to the ships' holds, which
had been converted into huge barracks. There they crouched in
rows while they were stripped, searched and documented. To
satisfy the 1949 Geneva Conventions' injunction that P.O.W.s
must be identified, the British scoured the civilian ship until
they found labels left by the vessel's previous masters, the
Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. (P&O), to use for
name tags.

In the gear left behind by the defeated Argentines was a
stockpile of cigar-shaped canisters suitable for carrying
napalm. London quickly denied a press report that two canisters
had been dropped on British soldiers as they advanced on Goose
Green. But the British did charge that during the fighting one
group of Argentines had waved a white flag of surrender, then
opened fire on the troops who went forward to take them
prisoner. No deaths were reported as a result of the incident.

For the 112 Falkland Islanders who had remained in Goose Green
during the two-month Argentine occupation, some of them elderly
and in poor health, the arrival of the British paratroopers was
a true liberation. For the previous 30 days, the Argentines had
kept them under armed guard inside the local one-story community
hall. As British air attacks on Goose Green increased prior to
the ground assault, the Argentine soldiers became increasingly
nervous. Eric Goss, manager of the settlement, said that when
the British bombarded the area before moving in, some of the
younger Argentine troops "kicked doors down and shot off locks
just to find places for shelter."

Douglas and Teal Inlet were captured by British Royal Marines
and paratroopers traveling the northern route toward Port
Stanley. Some of the troops flew by helicopter, but most made
the trip by "yomping," the marines' slang for their style of
forced marching while weighed down with as much as 120 lbs. of
combat gear. The 40- mile march apparently took the Argentines
by surprise. Reported British Journalist Charles Laurence with
the marine commandos:  "Our intelligence indicates that
[Argentine] attempts to move around the islands, too boggy for
most military vehicles, have exhausted them. They did not count
on the British force being able to move with speed."

The marines marched by night for six hours or more through
sleet, snow and torrential rain. Occasionally they took refuge
in farm buildings, but more often they slept outdoors, eating
cold meals to avoid the giveaway light of a fire. In short, it
was a familiar picture of ground troops on the attack. Said one
officer:  "In the last war, the infantry walked from the
Normandy beaches to Berlin. We can walk to Stanley."

Disconcerted by the rapid British advance, the Argentines kept
falling back from their positions in the direction of Port
Stanley. The occupiers were especially leery of night fighting,
a particular skill of the British. At Darwin and Goose Green,
pointed out one Western European military expert, the British
began their attack under cover of darkness against inexperienced
Argentine conscripts "who don't know how to read shadows and
fired their guns needlessly, giving away their positions and
using up their ammunition."  Some of the Argentines may have
surrendered simply because of ammunition shortages.

The British also exploited their air support. Early in the week,
the attackers used helicopters to airlift men and weapons to
Mount Kent (elevation:  1,504 ft.), the commanding height only
ten miles from Port Stanley. According to one participant in the
attack. British pilots flew their heavily loaded machines as
close to the ground as possible, hugging the contours of the
land for protection.

The Argentines had neglected to defend the high ground in that
area so vital to their stronghold. The British, working through
the snow, overnight installed mortars and 105-mm guns on the
mountain and established advance positions on two lesser hills
known as the Two Sisters, four miles closer to the capital. By
morning they had established a commanding position. Suddenly the
sun came out, and the British could see Port Stanley and the
South Atlantic. Gunnery observers began calling down fire on
nearby enemy bunkers. That was not enough for the marine unit's
commanding officer. Said he: "Let's get on with the targets that
really matter. Start putting a few rounds into Moody Brook [a
former Royal Marine barracks about two miles from Port Stanley
that General Menendez had established as a forward
headquarters]. Then every Argie between here and there will know
that he is in range of our guns."

The Argentine forces seemed unwilling, or unable, to respond to
the British harassment. The British were spared even the
expected daredevil attacks by the courageous pilots of the
Argentine air force, known to their adulators at home as los
condores (the condors), who had sunk three ships during the
British landing on East Falkland. In previous attacks, the air
force had lost some 40 pilots and, according to the British,
nearly 70 aircraft. But the Argentines still had more than
enough plans and pilots to make a final assault against the
British troops besieging Port Stanley, provided the bad weather
cleared. Some British military experts fully expected los
condores to fly again before the battle was decided.

The Argentines, probably short of aircraft and pilots, managed
only two desultory raids against the British task force. In one,
a Skyhawk fighter-bomber was believed to have been shot down.
In the other, an Argentine C-130 Hercules transport aircraft
tried to bomb a British tanker. Airmen on the makeshift bomber
simply pushed the bombs out a cargo door. One projectile bounced
off the tanker, causing no damage.

Argentina was scrambling abroad for new weapons, particularly
for its air force, as the pressure on Port Stanley increased.
British officials last week said that the Argentines may have
acquired a number of Israeli-made Gabriel antiship missiles that
can be used by Argentina's Mirage fighter-bombers. Israeli
Foreign Ministry Spokesman Avi Pazner insisted that his
government had not made any new sales but did not deny that it
might have been fulfilling past contracts that included such
weapons. Libyan Strongman Muammar Gaddafi is also said to have
offered arms to the Argentines. What Buenos Aires particularly
wants is more of the French-built Exocet missiles, which have
sunk two British ships. The British do not know how many Exocets
the Argentines have left, but sources estimate they may have
half a dozen. To counter the Exocet, British technical experts
have adopted the World War II system of dropping thin strips of
metal foil to confuse the target-sighting radar in the nose of
the missile.

Weapons are unlikely to solve the problems of the Argentine
troops on the ground in Port Stanley. Their return fire at the
British positions on Mount Kent last week was described by a
British journalist with his country's troops as "sporadic and
ineffective." He said that the Argentines appeared "disorganized
and unbelievably badly placed to defend themselves."

Trying to undercut the Argentine will to fight, British Rear
Admiral Woodward last week had Harriers drop leaflets over Port
Stanley urging the Argentines to surrender. One leaflet was in
the form of a safe-conduct pass; on its reverse, Woodward sent
an open letter to Argentina's General Menendez. Wrote Woodward:
 "We are both aware of the serious military situation which now
confronts you and your men. There can be no prospect of your
garrison being relieved. Matters have now reached the point
where you must consider whether there is any further point in
maintained resistance in the face of such overwhelming odds."
 Waiting for the assault. Menendez, sent back no reply.

--By George Russell. Reported by Frank Melville/London and James
Wilde/Buenos Aires