Goose Green eyewitness report

Press, 31 May 1982, Page 6

Goose Green eyewitness report

From Robert Fox, the 8.8. C. 1 correspondent with the 2nd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment on the Falklands. At one end of the Goose Green settlement a Union Jack now flies high above a school, and at the other end the Rag of the 2nd Battalion, of the Parachute Regiment. After a whole day’s bitter fighting and a morning’s delicate surrender negotiation, the cheer of liberation came in the early afternoon. Women handed round cups of tea in Royal Wedding mugs, children carried round tins of sweets and biscuits to the young “paras,” their faces still camouflaged and their eyes bleary with exhaustion. For nearly a month, Tl4' people had been shut up by the Argentinians in a com-;, munity hall. Their houses had been raided, with fumi-

ture smashed and excrement left on the floor. The store had been looted, the Argentine troops were under-fed and in one house used by pilots it seemed" tR officers were hoarding , tinned foods. The Argentinians! committed' acts of petty smashing and stealing radios and shooting up a shepherd from a; helicopter as he tended, his sheep. .Now the prisoners are being, made to clear up the mess they made in the settlement. ■ .. The surrender came after a 14-hour battle the'previous day. It began before dawn, a full battalion assault on an enemy twice as numerous as expected, almost 1500 in all and well.dug in.,-, The . attack began under Naval 'gunfire and shells lit the sky ..as. the paras moved forward. ‘ In thefdhylight; they were ; on their own,- covered only

by guns and mortars, the Argentinians were falling back slowly . through prepared positions. ... At. each post their, own mortars had been ranged perfectly. Time and again we were pinned down by mortars and fire from anti-air-craft guns. I was with the battalion headquarters and if we were within 10 feet (three metres) of death from shrapnel and shells once, we were there 40 times. ' v. •' H - Around mid-morning we were pinned down in a fold in the land by mortar fire, when the'first prisoners, and . casualties came i in. The prisoners made a pathetic sight, looking for . their own dead and preparing them for burial. This was interrupted by an

air attack from Pucara aircraft. As they swung across the sky, every firearm available opened up but to no effect and the two planes shot down a scout helicopter just beyong the ridge.

. In mid-afternoon we were again pinned down by mortar fire among some gorse bushes. We., were, told that the Commanding Officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Herbert Jones—always known as *ll”—had been .shot by machine-gunners as he led a platobn attack against ma-cine-gun nests which had held up the battalion for more than half an hour.

A generous, extrovert man, he died in the manner in which he had led his battalion in peace and war.

Before the attack, he confided to me that while he was eager to get on with it,

he was worried about achieving 100 per cent success with such a complex plan of attack.

“The victory is entirely his. It was ‘H’s’ plan that worked,” said the second-in-command, Major Chris Keeble.

' The architect of the surrender was Major Keeble. At midday he walked on to the Goose Green airfield. I and a colleague, David Norris, of the “Daily Mail,” were asked to be civilian witnesses.

Within two hours the senior officer, Air Vice Commodore Wilson Doser Pedroza, had agreed to surrender, He paraded his airmen and gave a political speech, and after singing the national anthem, they threw their guns and helmets to the ground with obvious relief.