Men in fleet hope for settlement, prepare for battle

Press, 21 May 1982, Page 6

Men in fleet hope for settlement, prepare for battle

By

Richard Savill.

British

Press Association correspondent Aboard H.M.S. Bristol Sailors en route to the British task force in the South Atlantic still hope for a peaceful end to the crisis, but with military escalation now seemingly inevitable, the 400 men aboard the mis-sile-carrying destroyer H.M.S. Bristol are keyed up and preparing for action. As they head for the battle zone to reinforce the fleet the ship is buzzing with invasion talk.

“If we can’t get the Falklands back peacefully then we will knock hell out of the Argentines,” said Rick McManus, a 22-year-old steward from Newport, Isle of Wight.

An officer added: “We are all nervous — we all have families — but we want to make sure we get the islands back."

Spirits are high, much of which can be attributed to the officers, whose cheerful smiles are warmly received

by their subordinates. ” A huge cheer greeted the mail when it arrived, bringing a lifeline to the crew as they braced themselves for the worrying times ahead. Makeshift medical teams have been set up and are busy practising the tricky task of ferrying casualties around the ship, and morphine has been issued to the officers. I volunteered to act as a casualty with two broken legs and, heavily strapped, was stretchered up two decks by four chefs, one wearing his Red Cross jacket. Sweat pouring from their brows, the men carried me from the medical supply room, below sea level, up two narrow flights of steps and through the small round hatches.

But as jokes about my 82.5 kg (13 stone) subsided and reality sunk in, one chef took a drag of his cigarette and said: “I hope it’s all over soon and we never have to put all this into practice.

“Ascension Island looked a dump when we passed it, but it will be like heaven when we return.”

In London, the Defence Ministry said yesterday it was starting twice-daily Spanish-language broadcasts to Argentine troops on the Falkland Islands in a bid to counter what it called “wildly inaccurate Argentine reports.” A Ministry spokesman said the broadcast, from a transmitter on the mid-At-lantic island of Ascension normally used by the British Broadcasting Corporation, would begin today. The programmes would include popular music and news, produced by Ministry staff without help from the BBC or other established media, but they would not include propaganda, the Ministry said. The Ministry’s spokesman, lan McDonald, said that there was “an appetite for a truthful account .of the news,” among the Argentinian troops.