How the Falkland Islanders went to war in 1982 to rid their country of the Argentine invaders with courage, ingenuity and vital practical help to the advancing British forces has been told for the first time.
They braved danger, deportation and imprisonment as they also spied on and carried out sabotage against the Argentines, carried out psychological propaganda, transmitted intelligence by radio, ferried ammunition and the wounded, guided the advance paratroop patrols and fought in the front line. Women as well as men were in the forefront of "the fighting farmers".
Their astonishing story of resistance during occupation is outlined in a book, 'Falkland Islanders at War', by one of their own, Graham Bound, a journalist and founder editor of the Penguin News newspaper. It is a riveting, well-written narrative, recounting in dramatic, graphic, and factual detail, tales of daring-do, based on eye-witness accounts hitherto surprisingly unknown to the world at large. It fills a big gap in the lexicon of more than 200 books about the Falklands War.
Two men who carried and used arms in the ferocious close combat battle for Mount Longdon - former police chief Terry Peck and air service engineer Vernon Steen - were awarded medals for their bravery, and a woman who organised the ammunition supply chain and evacuation of the wounded, Trudi Morrison (now Trudi McPhee) was praised by tough paratroop officers and won a military commendation from the Task Force Commander in Chief. Heroes all, it is surprising that many more were not awarded medals. Here are their remarkable stories.
Front line fighter - code name 'Rubber Duck'
Some of the most daring adventures were by Terry Peck, described as "a tough, gutsy maverick in his early forties.... Terry Peck had the strength, determination and sheer guts to carry his mission through." He became a legend accepted by the paratroops as "a man of calibre". In the initial stages, he walked about with a telephoto camera concealed in a length of drainpipe taking pictures of military targets which were smuggled out to British intelligence officers to study. "Locals thought it odd and Argentines must have assumed that Islanders often wandered the streets clutching a large piece of plumbing."
Tipped off he was about to be arrested by Argentine military intelligence, he fled Stanley on a motorcycle. He avoided capture at different times by sitting in a locked toilet or pretending to be a travelling plumber. He laid low for ten freezing days in the open in Geordie's Valley which he knew from fishing forays. When he arrived at Trudi Morrison's Brookfield Farm caked in mud, she insisted he take a bath and threw something at him saying: "You have forgotten your rubber duck." Thus was born his code name as he carried a forged identity card on which his name was skillfully altered to "Jerry Packer".
Farmer Neil Watson helped him to find weapons on Long Island beach buried by British marines before the surrender. Armed with rifle, ammunition and grenades, Terry Peck set off by motorbike to meet the advancing British troops, guided from Salvador to San Carlos by fourteen year old Saul Pitaluga on his motorbike. Terry Peck gave them valuable information and maps of Argentine positions and guided advance patrols, led by Major Pat Butler, ahead of the main force, to join battle for Mount Longdon.
Terry Peck recalls: "It was unreal. We would get as close as possible without spitting in their eye, only tens of metres. I got a bit nervy on moonlet nights." He was stunned by the ferocity and brutality of the fighting. "The smell, the carnage, were unreal. There were bodies everywhere". Terry Peck went home to Stanley and "reverted to being a peaceful, law-abiding citizen". He says: "From my lounge I can sit and watch Mount Longdon. Some days, the sun reflects on the steel cross."
The Quiet Air Service Engineer
Vernon Steen, an NCO in the volunteer Falkland Islands Defence Force, joined Terry Peck as a guide on Mount Longdon scouting ahead for the group in which Sergeant Ian McKay was killed winning the Victoria Cross. They made it to the first line of Argentine trenches capturing soldiers still in their sleeping bags. Vernon Steen is described as "a modest, shy man who does not talk about that night on Mount Longdon". But he fought aside the paras as the bullets flew and guarded equipment for Sergeant McKay as his section "assaulted a machine gun nest and slipped into history".
Major Butler paid his tribute. "Vernon Steen bravely did what he was asked to do." After the surrender he returned quietly to Stanley to begin rebuilding the Falklands Air Service whose planes the Argentines had destroyed.
Fighting Farmers 'undisputed woman leader'
To overcome the challenge of getting ammunition and supplies up the mountains, Terry Peck suggested they exploit the Islanders' tractors, trailers and cross-country driving skills to maintain a supply line. He radioed Trudi Morrison: "Rubber Duck here. Can you get as many drivers and vehicles together as possible and meet us at the Heathmans." (Tony and Ailsa Heathman at Estancia Farm provided shelter and food for the 600-strong para battalion.) Trudi responded: "There is no way I am going to miss this. I am doing my bit for my country."
As "the undisputed leader", she gathered a wagon train from every farm in the area, driving a landrover, with her partner, Roddy McKay "driving an old and incredibly noisy caterpillar tractor". From Johnson Harbour came Bruce May and Claude Molkenbuhr; from Rincon Grande, Keith Whitney; from Port Louis, Trevor Browning and Andres Short; from Green Patch, Raymond Newman, Pat Whitney, Maurice Davis, Terry Betts, Mike Carey and Peter Gilding; joined by Patrick "Pappy" Minto and his brother Ally; and Terence Phillips from Mount Kent.
"The motley caravan rolled through the Para defences into Estancia..... Major Roger Patton developed a profound respect for their resourcefulness, determination and downright courage, particularly Trudi." He says: "I don't know how we could have managed without them. Trudi was the focal point. It needed someone to get a grip and she took it upon herself to do so." When being briefed by the military, one officer said: "Such was her strength of character, it was not always clear who was giving orders to whom."
She distributed the task to the tractor teams who, with little sleep, moved 300 paratroops, rations, ammunition and water across trackless terrain, sometimes in driving rain, to their tactical position on Mount Estancia, shuttling supplies around the clock, within range of Argentine artillery and mortars and sometimes bomb attack. And they evacuated dreadfully wounded soldiers back to helicopters at Teal Inlet.
Terry Peck said: "I'd never seen driving like it. I don't think anybody could better it. They were just an amazing bunch of people..... They just could not do enough to help." Major Pat Butler said: "I have the absolute deepest respect for them."
Trudi Morrison's commendation from the Commander in Chief, Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse reads: "On June 11th, Mrs Trudi Morrison drove a landrover in support of the 3rd Battalion the Parachute Regiment operation to secure Mount Longdon. Travelling across the most appalling terrain, without lights, she drove one of only three landrovers which successfully arrived at the mortar line.... At times under enemy artillery, Mrs Morrison remained resolved to continue, showing tremendous steadfastness in dangerous and unfamiliar circumstances."
Radio Ham Hero
Reg Silvey, the Cape Pembroke lighthouse keeper and former British Antarctic Survey radio expert, indulged his hobby as a radio ham by transmitting intelligence to Britain at great risk throughout the occupation from his stone cottage, defying an Argentine ban on radios and radio detector vans which failed to find him.
His Falklands call sign "Victor Papa Eight" was picked up by a radio ham, Bob North, in Rotherham, Yorkshire. Silvey fooled the Argentines by handing in a spare radio smuggled to him by George Betts, captain of the Monsumen supply ship, dismantling his landmark normal aerial, adapting a brilliantly simple substitute - his steel-core washing line stretched across his garden, and illegally acquiring a notice signed by the Argentine Military Governor, General Menendez, denying entry to Argentine soldiers as, it proclaimed, his house had been cleared by the military police.
He thereafter indulged in serious spying with all its dangers, sending fifteen second bursts of intelligence about Argentine gun emplacements and revealing that Stanley Airport was occupied by Argentine soldiers and receiving ammunition supplies and could be attacked as there were no Islanders there. He was never arrested nor subject to arbitrary searches that plagued so many other Islanders. Nor was his dangerous work ever officially acknowledged.
Brave Broadcaster
Broadcasting officer, Patrick Watts, was to be awarded an MBE for his courage and stamina for a marathon invasion phone-in, relaying the Governor's messages as the invasion unfolded, and keeping Islanders even when Argentine soldiers burst into his studio with guns. His broadcasts "sustained the Islanders throughout the invasion night, with no exhortations to violence, no impassioned condemnation of the invaders, and certainly no suggestion of fear. The tone had been subtly subversive and defiant but dignified; indicative of a community that might be beaten but would not be bowed."
When Robin Pitaluga on Salvador farm used his radio to try to pass a message from the Task Force to the Argentines to surrender, heavily armed men were helicoptered in to arrest, interrogate and terrorise him by holding a revolver to his neck and pulling the trigger several times without his knowing it contained no bullets. He was tied up in a trench overnight then put under house arrest.
Denzil Clausen was beaten up because the Argentines thought he was transmitting messages when he was only tuning in to BBC World Service. Other radio hams at Port Louis - Chilean Mario Zuvic, Andres Short and his father, intercepted, confused and jammed Argentine signals.
Heroes All
Eileen Vidal, who manned the radio telephone system, relayed military intelligence to HMS Endurance and warned Captain Nick Barker to keep away from Stanley: "For God's sake stay the hell out of it. There are enough ships here to blow you out of the water."
Veterinary officer Steve Whitley was dissuaded from "sticking knives in Argentines". But he and teacher Phil Middleton indulged in "dangerous mischief", cutting army telephone wires with his vet's castrating scissors and taking clandestine photos of Argentine defences. others rendered Government vehicles unserviceable. Canadian immigrant Bill Curtis tried on invasion night to redirect the Argentine aircraft beacon. He was at one stage arrested.
Eric Goss, Goose Green farm manager, and others hid petrol and immobilised tractors to deny them to Argentines and sabotaged water pipes serving the invaders. When the Argentines asked about lights in the distance presumably from British patrols, Eric made up the on the spot fiction that they were "a curious local phenomenon - moonlight reflecting on seaweed-covered rocks at low tide"!
There was also psychological propaganda. When the Gurkhas arrived in the Falklands, Eric told the Argentines they were fearsome fighters. "When you wake up in the morning, just shake your head. If it falls off, the Gurkhas have been around."
Sabotage and Spying
Graham Bound says no one indulging in low-key sabotage and spying knew what risks they faced but they would have been harshly treated as spies.
Dr. Alison Bleaney, while looking after her baby, supervised essential medical services and was instrumental in arranging the Stanley ceasefire. Eric Goss and Alan Miller at Port San Carlos helped by radio messages to arrange the ceasefire and surrender at Goose Green. Education superintendent John Fowler evacuated children from Stanley.
The men who maintained the electricity and water services are described in the book as "local heroes" as is nineteen year old Constable Anton Livermore. Electricians Les Harris and Bob Gilbert cut off Argentine power supplies and inserted low tolerance fuses to halt transformers serving the military. Public Works Department head, Ron Bucket, and his staff made it clear they were working to maintain essential services for the Islanders for whom plumbers led by Dennis Paice and Derek Rozee kept water supplies flowing for the Stanley residents.
Des King and his family sheltered Islanders in their Upland Goose Hotel. Terry Spruce offered West Store as a reserve shelter and helped prepare emergency survival packs. Safe houses were designated and marked for civilian refuge, equipped with short wave radio to receive BBC World Service.
Imprisoned at Goose Green and Fox Bay
After air raids on Goose Green and Stanley, the Argentines forcibly imprisoned all Goose Green residents in the community hall - 115 people including 43 children and two people over eighty, at first with no food or bedding, and only two toilets. In breach of the Geneva Convention, they were kept in a building not marked as for civilian detainees and not provided with shelters against air and artillery bombardment. The prisoners lifted the floorboards to dig dank uncomfortable bunkers for safety as bombs and shells exploded.
They were not held as hostages but because the Argentines were paranoid about spies and fifth columnists. Convinced the prisoners were transmitting radio messages, the Argentines frequently carried out searches which no one escaped, not even four-month old Matthew McMullen. "They would look in his nappy while the watching adults hoped Matthew had a special surprise for them!" They got a message to the Catholic priest Monsignor Daniel Spraggon, who remonstrated with the Argentines to relieve their plight.
A group of Stanley citizens were suddenly rounded up to be incarcerated together at Fox Bay. These included Brian and Owen Summers, Gerald Cheek, Stuart Wallace, and George and Velma Malcolm, who describes her arrest with characteristic bluntness: "A big burly bumptious bugger said: "You're going to camp..... He had drawn his pistol and was standing over me. I said: 'You don't need that gun. I'm not likely to do anything silly.'" The book describes their experiences as "demeaning and terrifying".
Curfews, Deportation and Community Spirit
"Shared dangers and self-help brought the community together. People who had bickered for years became firm friends." Compassion also extended to Argentine conscripts who were given food by Islanders.
There is a dramatic account of how three civilians - Sue Whitley, Doreen Bonner and Mary Goodwin - were killed and others injured in John Fowler's house by a misdirected British Naval shell from HMS Avenger.
Curfews were imposed and Bill Luxton - "the famous vitriolic critic of the Argentines" - and his family from Chartres were forcibly deported to Britain. A positive side effect was that Bill gave the British forces useful intelligence information and launched a worldwide information campaigned condemning the Argentines.
'Nice Argies, Nasty Argies'
The Argentine who caused most fear was the "sinister and dangerous" head of military police intelligence, Major Patricio Dowling, who personified "the Argentine terror machine". He had detailed personal dossiers on Islanders and carried out arbitrary house searches and arrests. In one incident at Neil and Glenda Watson's Long Island Farm, Dowling pointed a weapon at their young daughter Lisa and repeatedly ordered her to stand up. Lisa repeatedly said no and continued sucking her thumb, until Dowling gave up.
Dowling was ordered home part way through the occupation by two "decent" senior Argentine officers. Comodoro Carlos Bloomer Reeve, described as "the acceptable face of Argentina", a man of "humanity and bravery" who did a great deal to protect Islanders from the excesses of their compatriots in what he regarded as a misguided adventure. He was amiable, always smiling, not politically driven, having previously lived with his family and made friends with Islanders in 1975/1976 when he ran the Argentine Air Force passenger service to the Falklands. His 1982 task was to organise an interim military administration, helped by naval Captain Barry Melbourne Hussey, "a man of humane principles" who worked to help Islanders.
Orders were that Islanders were to be regarded as Argentine citizens and treated well. In these two officers, Graham Bound writes, "Islanders had gained powerful friends who, though Argentines, proved that fundamental decency could survive when all other strands of civilised behaviour were unravelling."
Benign Whitehall Warrior: Foreign Office deceit
Another person highly praised is Chief Secretary Dick Baker, for his cool, pragmatic reaction and organised leadership in the early days of the invasion until he was reported. "Dick Baker was as benign and decent a representative of Whitehall as anyone could hope for and his presence was re-assuring."
This was in contrast to his bosses, the Foreign Office, who come in for bitter Islander criticism for "deceit and inept management" of relations with Argentina and the crisis. Foreign Office policy since 1971 is described by one of its former Labour Ministers for Falklands issues, Ted Rowlands, as "kicking the ball into the long grass, and it would take a bit of time to find it".
The British Ambassador in Buenos Aires, Anthony Williams, is described as fussing "around the Argentine Foreign Office apologising for Islanders' hostility and trying to patch up relations".
Invasion Predictable
The judgement of the official Franks Committee Report that Ministers in London is dismissed with "disbelief" and derided as "ridiculous" by Dick Baker. He says efforts to sound alarm bells in London were wasted. "A lot of us did foresee it. The tragedy was no one in London seemed to want to know or to react to the signals.... Why nothing happened in response is a great mystery to me." He suspected there was a deliberate policy to ignore the signals and weather an invasion in the hope that Britain would be rid of a troublesome colony. "We used to joke we were expendable".
Ordinary Islanders were kept in the dark but several came back from visits to Argentina convinced the Argentines intended to invade at the end of March. A British colonel on a visit to Argentina is quoted as saying that he was warned of an invasion a year beforehand and shown amphibious personnel carriers that Argentines told him would be used in the invasion. The Royal Marines Commanding Officer in the Falklands in 1982, Major Mike Norman, asked in an intelligence briefing how reinforcements might be sent to the Islands in a crisis and was cynically told: "We'll parachute them in from Concorde."
Gratitude is repeatedly expressed by Islanders to the BBC World Service. The 'Calling the Falklands' programme and BBC correspondents on the Task Force and in Argentina were "essential listening".
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