The cost of conflict

Saturday, April 3, 1982. The House of Commons was in emergency session and the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, spoke of “a situation of great gravity. We are here because, for the first time for many years, British sovereign territory has been invaded by a foreign power”.

David Brown was passing through Leeds railway station at the time en route to Elland Road to see his team play Manchester United.

Football and the wider world were very different places then. No mobile phones, no emailing, texting or tweeting, no 24-hour news channels. In a time of crisis, when your country needed you, communicating could still be surprisingly basic only 30 years ago.

Policemen were knocking on doors. In Brown’s case he saw a notice board, one of several placed at transport hubs, telling members of the Parachute Regiment who were on leave to contact HQ in Aldershot immediately. Seven weeks later he waded ashore at San Carlos on the Falkland Islands. It was his 21st birthday.

The Royal Navy knew Mark Hiscutt’s whereabouts. The gunner – or missile man, as they’re known – had been aboard HMS Sheffield in the Gulf for five months. They were heading back to Portsmouth until an announcement was made to the ship’s company in Gibraltar. The destroyer would be turning south instead of north and there was just time for each crewman to send the briefest message to loved ones. Hiscutt wrote to his fiancee, Kirsty: “Not coming home. Cancel the wedding. Lots of love, Mark”.

As they broke away from a refuelling vessel someone played Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina. Black humour and bizarre episodes accompanied the British Task Force to the South Atlantic in response to the invasion of a distant remnant of Empire by the military junta in Buenos Aires. Vessels were taking on supplies. “We were getting food on board and it was all Argentinian beef. It was surreal eating that,” says Hiscutt, then aged 21.

They sailed knowing the situation was serious but not quite believing they were going to war. Hiscutt wrote to his sister expressing optimism. “Don’t worry, we are well protected and nothing can happen to us.”

Like him, everyone still hoped that politicians and diplomats could resolve the crisis. And then a Royal Navy submarine sank the cruiser General Belgrano with the loss of 323 lives.

“We were informed and said a prayer for the sailors. They were sailors just like us and our problem wasn’t with them. They were doing their job and it was either them or us.”

Hiscutt thinks he’s blocked out much of what happened after that. On May 4, four days before he was due to be married, an Exocet missile struck the Sheffield amidships and started intense fires. During desperate efforts to put them out he twice returned below decks looking for colleagues and helping others. About six hours later the order was given to abandon what the crew regarded as their second home. Twenty officers and ratings died. The survivors made it to another vessel and were allowed to send a telegram home. Hiscutt sent his to Kirsty. “I am alive and well and OK and let dad know.”

Physically well maybe, but he’s still struggling with the emotional trauma, just as ex-paratrooper Brown has his demons, and which he knows have been similarly unleashed in others by war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hiscutt and Brown are among 10 interviewees in a new book, Ordinary Heroes, Untold Stories from the Falklands Campaign, published to coincide with its 30th anniversary.

It’s an unusual account of a conflict. In exploring servicemen’s memories, and the war’s impact on their lives, author Christopher Hilton went only to those who had no rank at the time, so that even lance-corporals were excluded. In his own words, his subjects “were all of modest background, and who were young, who mostly left school early and were at the very lowest strata of the services. None could give any man an order, only obey the orders given to them”.

A recurring theme is the battle to live with their experiences and, after leaving the services, their often painful efforts to find meaningful work, avoid trouble and regain “ordinariness”.

At the time of the war one was a 19-year-old Royal Marine, others were a sapper, radio operator, a marine engineer from Chesterfield, and a mechanic with the Fleet Air Arm working on helicopters. In spring, 1982, all of them thought the Falklands were some islands off Scotland.

So did David Brown. Today his house in Thornton, near Bradford, round the corner from where the Brontë sisters were born, is full of photographs, plus a large painting, of a wild landscape with no trees but lots of sheep. It’s 8,000 miles from home but take away the military aspects and the scenes could be the Pennines or North York Moors. Stanley, the Falklands’ capital, is twinned with Whitby.

Like others in the book, Brown believes he was fighting for a just cause on behalf of a few hundred islanders wanting to preserve their way of life under the Crown.

The veteran of 2 Para told Hilton: “People had been thinking ‘great, the battalion’s going to war, we’re going to parachute in like Arnhem’, and then reality intervened.”

Distance ruled out an airborne assault and on Ascension Island they practised an amphibious landing via the Norland, a North Sea ferry from Hull that had become a troopship.

“The Royal Marines do it all the time, but we jump out of planes. On Ascension it worked brilliantly. We had a lovely, tropical, sunny day and a calm sea. It was like a pleasure-boat trip at Scarborough”.

In the Falklands conditions were extreme. The Paras were weighed down with equipment, went ashore in cold, stormy waters and pitch darkness and were uncertain of the enemy’s strength. It was a microcosm of the entire campaign – chaos, the unforeseen, good and bad luck, military ingenuity and professionalism, tragedy and heroism.

A week later Brown’s company, in exposed positions above Goose Green, were under sustained fire.

His friend, 19-year-old Private Mark Holman-Smith, died in his arms, sacrificing himself in trying to help a wounded comrade. Mark’s grave in Blue Beach War Cemetery, San Carlos, is next to that of Lt Col Herbert ‘H’ Jones, 2 Para’s commander who was killed nearby in a related action and posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. The feeling lingers that the teenager should also have been decorated.

A few days later Brown helped rescue soldiers and crew from the Sir Galahad on which 48 lives were lost during an air attack. He still carries the guilt of a physically unscathed survivor. For one thing, he hates his birthday now because of its associations with the war.

He left the Paras three years later and had problems with alcohol, violence, relationships and other symptoms of what is now acknowledged as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Their macho culture would have scoffed at that in ’82. “Our briefing when we got back was go home, get p***** for six weeks and forget about it, so it’s no wonder that so many lads couldn’t cope.

“When they were still in battalion they had their mates, they could talk with them, laugh and joke... When they hit Civvy Street and they were in a council flat on their own, that’s when the problems started hitting home. I know because I’ve been there.”

Brown still suffers from insomnia, flashbacks and panic attacks but the healing process was helped when he returned to the Falklands for the first time for the 20th anniversary. He now takes his annual two-week holiday there, paying his respects to the fallen, meeting islanders who have become his friends, and simply to reflect.

He no longer feels so adrift from everyday life and has found a purpose as northern organiser of the South Atlantic Medal Association, which arranges visits, reunions and provides psychological support.

As the anniversary approaches the calls tend to increase. “I get phone calls, sometimes at three in the morning, often from wives saying, ‘He’s lost it this time, he’s going to kill himself’ and things like that. I’ll talk to them all night long if I have to because I don’t want another call saying, ‘He’s just taken his own life’.

“It’s like we are human time-bombs waiting to explode. I’m seriously worried about Afghanistan. We had a short, sharp, brutal conflict over a few weeks in the Falklands and that was it.

“The lads in Afghanistan are in firefights every day. Some of them have done three or four tours and now it’s all Improvised Explosive Devices and suicide bombers. The problem there is you don’t know who’s who.”

As a footnote Gunner Hiscutt did marry Kirsty and they have six children. He says: “If people hear me talking on the phone to any of my mates from the Sheffield the thing that we always end with is, ‘I love you.’ There’s that bond between us and I’m not embarrassed to say it”.

Ordinary Heroes, Untold Stories from the Falklands Campaign by Christopher Hilton (who died as he completed the book). The History Press £11.69. To order your copy, ring our order line 01748 821122 Mon-Sat 9am-5pm. Or by post, please send a cheque or postal order, plus £2.75 postage, to Yorkshire Books Ltd, 1 Castle Hill, Richmond, DL10 4QP. Order online, www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/shop

David Brown of the South Atlantic Medal Association can be contacted at [email protected]