Lion Resurgent (52 page)

Darwin Road, Port Stanley, Falkland Islands

The convoy of trucks came to a halt; one more annoying incident in a day filled with them. All the tracks were overloaded since the plan had been to make up the unit’s requirement by confiscating vehicles from the civilian population. The planners had overlooked something, most of the confiscated light trucks were gasoline powered while the Argentine Army’s own vehicles were diesel-engined. Last night, the inevitable had happened. During the preparations for this move, somebody had filled the tanks of the gasoline-engined vehicles with diesel fuel.

Colonel Alfonso Fernandez got out of the lead track and walked down to the bridge. It was easy to see what had happened. The Landrover had smacked into the bridge abutment, ricocheted off and overturned. The driver was on the ground beside the overturned vehicle. From the way his head was twisted, he had obviously been killed on impact and thrown out. He walked over to these scene of the accident and looked at the victim.

“That’s Major Dowling. At least nobody human has been killed.” Captain Vazquez made the observation with at least some satisfaction in his voice.

“Shut up you fool. Somebody will hear you.” Fernandez looked at the bridge again and sighed. His battalion had been tasked to take possession of Mount Tumbledown and Wireless Ridge overlooking Stanley. Nobody had admitted it but it was widely known that the Argentine Navy had fought an engagement with the British. It had not ended well for them. Now, the British amphibious ships were closing in to land their troops. According to the last reports, they had been some 600 kilometers out, so the counter-invasion was expected in around 24 hours time. Fernandez was supposed to be holding the back door to Stanley in case the British did an end-run and tried to hit the position from the South. Only, everything had gone wrong as usual.
Now this idiot from military intelligence has gone and blocked the road.
“Organize a work team and get that wrecked Landrover out of the way. And put Dowling’s body somewhere appropriate.”

Fernandez tried not to hear the splash as the dead Major’s body was thrown over the parapet into the swamp. The simplest way to get the Landrover off the bridge would be to push it off with a truck. To do that efficiently and without damage to a scarce truck, it would have to be righted and put on its wheels first. A group of men from Vazquez’s company had just started that when Fernandez heard a strange whistling noise; one that seemed to be modulated by a low-pitched drone. He spun around just as the stream of British Rotodynes burst over the ridgetop and opened fire on his battalion, helplessly strung out along the road.

Fairey Defenders, that’s what they’re called,
Fernandez thought, hardly able to credit himself with remembering that at such a moment.
Those are the assault versions, troop carriers armed with unguided rockets, guided anti-tank missiles and a 20mm gatling gun in a nose turret. And they are all trying to kill me.
It was that last thought that broke the strange freeze in his mind and he dived into the ditch for cover.

Armies had learned from the damage wrought by low-flying fighter-bombers in the Second World War. The Argentine Army was no different. One man in five carried a shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile. But the Defenders were flying as low as helicopters and as fast as aircraft. They were skimming terrain features, using buildings and trees as cover, flying down roads and around hills rather than over them. More frighteningly than that, each Rotodyne carried six 38-round packs of 3 inch unguided rockets. They were firing a constant stream of them into the battalion strung out along the road in front of them. They also had Adder anti-tank missiles on their wing racks and had used those to pick off the four vehicles in the battalions anti-aircraft platoon. Lastly, each had a 20mm gatling gun that poured a hundred rounds a second at its target. For all those reasons, not one of the Argentine soldiers managed to fire his missile. Most died in their trucks as the rockets reduced the convoy to blazing chaos. The rest saved their lives by throwing away their equipment and running.

Fernandez was one of the survivors. Vazquez and his team were not. They died as they ran, caught on the bridge where there was no cover and no hope of finding any. The Colonel shook his head and watched the Rotodynes overfly the remnants of his battalion and land on the hills he had been supposed to garrison. Troops poured out of the bellies of their assault transport aircraft. Little armored vehicles left with them. Some had guns strapped to the sides of their hulls; others were obviously infantry carriers. The message was obvious. Mount Tumbledown and Wireless Ridge had been seized by coup de main and were held by at least a battalion with armored support.

Fernandez was a professional officer and he already knew the area assigned to him well. Now the British were established on the high ground, it would be the devil’s own job to force them out. With his battalion gone and most of the rest of the Argentine Army the wrong side of the ridge, there was very little between the British and recapturing Port Stanley. Carefully, very carefully, he edged out of his ditch and worked his way between the wrecked vehicles that littered the road. Once on the other side of them, he set off for the Headquarters at Stanley.

Argentine Airbase and Garrison, Goose Green

The line of Junglies lifted over the ridge and poured rockets into the base that lay spread out before them. This was a classical air-mech assault. The Fairey Defender ‘Junglies’ had lifted the assault force into the dead ground on the other side of a ridge. Then, the armored vehicles, the troops they carried and the Junglies that had brought the assault force into position swept over the ridge in a single devastating wave. The Argentine troops had a few minutes warning of the assault but it had done them little good. If anything, it worked against them. When the assault hit, they were half way between being at minimum readiness and at full alert. All too many of them were in the open when the waves of rocket fire tore into the camp. They scattered and went to ground, pinned down by the barrage of rolling explosions and unable to resist the assault that was already breaking upon them.

The Junglies had used their speed and range to slip across the coastline in one of the many undefended areas. Then, they had swung inland, still using the terrain as cover, and approached the base from the Lafonia side. What defenses the Argentines had prepared faced north, in anticipation of an assault from the landing beaches on the northern half of the island. It was the right choice; the logical choice to make. There were no good landing beaches for armored vehicles in Lafonia. The ground was open enough to make an assault by unsupported infantry a potential bloodbath. Goose Green should have been a very tough nut to crack.

The assault that was taking place was something entirely new. The little armored vehicles brought by the Junglies streamed forward; their machine guns raking the ground in front of them. The Junglies followed behind, firing their barrage of rockets over the heads of their infantry. It was teamwork. The infantry kept the Argentine missileers from attacking the rotodynes, the Junglies saturated the ground with fire and kept the defenders from mounting a coordinated defense against the infantry. The whole mixture, armor, infantry, rotodynes, formed a whole that was much greater than the sum of its parts.

The defenders had armor of their own; a platoon of four M92 light tanks. Had the fortress been attacked by unsupported infantry, those tanks would have been decisive. They were well-positioned and their crews were good. One blew up as soon as it started to move, hit by a Cobra anti-tank missile from one of the Junglies. A second was hit by a 120mm squash-head round from one of the British Chevalier light tanks. They were tanks in name only. In reality they were a descendent of the pre-World War Two Bren gun carrier and had armor as thin as paper. Each Chevalier mounted two 120mm Wombat recoilless anti-tank guns, one on each side of its hull. The Argentine M92 took a direct hit from one of the guns, lurched to a stop and was hit again by a shot from the Chevalier’s other gun. It started to burn; the crew bailed out into the torrent of rifle, machine gun and rocket fire that was already engulfing them

In the midst of the chaos, the Chevalier stopped and two of its crew jumped out from the back. Each was carrying a single 120mm round and they had the reloading drill down to a fine art. They had the guns reloaded just in time to see their vehicle hit by a 76mm high velocity round from the third M92. The armor on the Chevalier was barely capable of stopping a rifle round. It offered no resistance to the high-velocity 76mm shot. The Chevalier blew up, killing all four crew members. They would have been better off if they had gone to ground and reloaded under cover but their inexperience, shown as over-enthusiasm had got the better of them. Others would learn from the mistake they had never got the chance to correct.

The third Argentine tank got no chance to celebrate its kill. A Cobra missile exploded its fuel tanks and that set off the ammunition stowage. The explosion was spectacular; tanks brewing up always were. It highlighted the fourth and last tank as it tried to back away to a more defensible position. It died in the process, killed by the one-two tap from another Chevalier. By that time, the Argentine defense was collapsing. The British assault swept through the positions the infantry should have been holding but had never managed to reach. The battle was over before it had fairly begun.

Colonel Jones was already getting his own defenses set up when the Junglies took off for the long flight back to HMS
Bulwark.
Most of them anyway. One Junglie had crash-landed just outside the perimeter wire after an anti-aircraft missile had taken out one of its engines. It looked repairable, but that wasn’t his call to make. The other aircraft had to go back and pick up the Marines and shift them to Mount Kent.

“Sir. Butcher’s bill.” Sergeant Ian Mackay had a single short piece of paper in his hand. “Eight dead. Four from one Chevalier that was knocked out and four infantry. Twelve wounded; mostly rifle fire. Argies have twenty dead, mostly from the four tanks, and about sixty wounded, almost all fragmentation injuries from the rockets. Our medics and theirs are working together to treat the wounded. We’ve got a joint field hospital set up.”

“Twenty dead and wounded, and they took eighty. It could have been a lot worse Sergeant; this was a strong position. If we’d have had to take it unsupported, I doubt if either of us would have lived to tell the story.”

“May be, Sir. But this air-mech stuff seems to be all that the top brass thought it would be. The Argies never got themselves together enough to put up a real fight.”

“Sir.” A Signals officer had a flimsy in his hand. “We have the word from Kingfisher-Two. Mount Tumbledown and Wireless Ridge are both secure. No casualties in the direct assault. Their Junglies caught the Argentine garrison moving up on the road and tore it up something horrible. One Junglie got nailed by a SAM when it took off again. Crew are MIA.”

“Very good. Make back to Prime. ‘Kingfisher-One objective secured. Most of Argentine garrison have been taken prisoner. Own casualties, eight dead. One Junglie damaged but secure.”

Jones and Mackay looked around at the base, now securely in British hands. The Union Jack was fluttering proudly over it. When Jones spoke, his voice caught slightly, as if there was an obstruction in his throat. “Sergeant, I think we’re back.”

Operations Room, HMS
Bulwark,
East of the Falkland Islands.

Forty rotodynes had gone out, carrying the two paratroop battalions. Thirty eight had returned and were spread out between the two assault ships, being refueled and rearmed. The Marines were waiting, ready to stream on board the aircraft that had landed on
Bulwark.
A couple of nautical miles away, the rotodynes were preparing to pick up the heavy equipment for the two existing airheads. Artillery mostly; the lightweight 25-pounders that would open the siege of Stanley.

Strachan watched a Marine driving his Chevalier light tank up the ramp and into the belly of the Rotodyne. Counter-intuitively, it had been loaded nose first and would back out of the aircraft when it made its touch-and-go landing. So much experimentation had gone into making tiny decisions like that. Backing the vehicle out meant that its guns would be facing the right way as soon as they cleared the Junglie’s rear ramp. That, in turn, meant they would be available just a small fraction of a second earlier.

“Ready to launch in thirty minutes?” Strachan addressed the question to Hartmann who was watching replacement Adder missiles being loaded onto the wingtip racks of the Junglies.

Hartmann didn’t answer immediately. Instead he spoke first into the intercom on the operational panel in front of him. “On schedule, Sir. A few of the Junglies have bullet holes in them but nothing to worry about. They’re being checked out while my Marines load up.”

“Then, we’d better get down to the flight deck and mount up ourselves, Karl. We don’t want your booties thinking we’re holding them up.”

Position Kingfisher-Two, Mount Tumbledown, Overlooking Stanley

“Friend.”

The voice from the rocks was exhausted, shaky and near-spent. But, it was in English and that made the paratroopers in the observation point take notice. “Firefly.” That was the password and the reply was “Serenity.”

“God knows what the watchword is. We’ve been stuck out here for weeks. We’re just about done in.”

“Identify yourselves.” The paratrooper nearest the voice settled down a bit closer into the rocks. If this was a trick, things would get very bloody, very quickly.

“Sergeant Jordan, Royal Marines. Late of Naval Party 8901. We’ve been evading and resisting ever since the Argies landed. Bagged a few of them as well. Who are you?”

“Two Para.”

“Oh God, a bunch of Toms. There goes the neighborhood.”

“Yeah, we thought you booties were around somewhere; the sheep are terrified. Advance and be recognized.”