20 • The Sunday Times MagazineI
t’s difficult to imagine a less
hospitable place to spend five
days and nights than dug into the
side of Sussex Mountain on the
Falkland Islands. Bleak doesn’t do
it justice. The hillside is treeless
and bald, ravaged by anabatic
winds that feel as though they are
whipping in straight off the Antarctic ice
sheet, which indeed they may well be.
This is where the crack 2 Para — the 2nd
Battalion, The Parachute Regiment —
spent the first five days of the Falklands
War, 40 years ago last month. These tough
infantrymen cuddled together in the wind,
lodged their frozen feet in each other’s
armpits and wore ladies’ tights for warmth.
“The longest five days of my life,” was how
the paratrooper Tony Banks described it.
Eventually 2 Para were ordered off Sussex
Mountain and conducted a night march
over comically rough terrain to reach Goose
Green, a heavily fortified hamlet. There
they fought a vicious battle, losing 18 men,
including their famed commander, Colonel
“H” Jones, ultimately forcing almost 1,
Argentinians to surrender. As Britainreflects on the 40th anniversary of this
strange and final colonial war, one wonders
whether it was all worth it. All that blood
and treasure: 258 British and Gurkha lives
lost, along with almost 700 Argentinians,
six British ships sunk, 34 aircraft destroyed
and £10 billion spent, all to recapture a dusty
imperial relic in the middle of nowhere.
There were about 1,800 inhabitants of
the Falklands then, a dwindling British
farming community mostly descended
from Scottish settlers, who found the
unforgiving conditions somewhat familiar.
The islands had changed hands repeatedly
over the 18th and early 19th century, but
immediately prior to the British occupation
in 1833 they had been controlled by the
Argentine Confederation, a predecessor
to Argentina. The country of Argentina never
gave up its claim and when the bellicose
military junta came to power in 1976,
growing tensions over the islands and a
series of diplomatic fumbles eventually led
to the Argentine invasion in April 1982.
Trudging from Sussex Mountain to Goose
Green in 2 Para’s painful footsteps, the point
of this remote but nasty squabble is notimmediately obvious. This is the Falklands
of the popular British imagination: “Miles
and miles of bugger all,” as Denis Thatcher
memorably described it. Two thousand
alcoholics clinging to a frigid rock about the
size of Yorkshire, said others; a barren
anachronism with the highest sheep to
person ratio on the planet. During the war
British soldiers got in trouble for
nicknaming the locals “Bennies”, after the
simpleton character from the TV show
Crossroads, which summed up our
patronising sense of the Falklanders as
Bovril and Bisto bumpkins frozen in colonial
aspic. It’s a cliché that endures even now.
The Falklands are an altogether different
proposition today, though. War changed
everything. It was a tragic and shocking affair,
but in its wake came prosperity and growth.
The conflict generated unprecedented
economic support from Britain, but also gave
the islanders a future to believe in and a
point to prove. Thanks to fishing revenue
and oil exploration, the Falklands are now
considerably wealthier per capita than
Britain, and just as cosmopolitan. The
capital, Stanley, has about 60 nationalities
represented according to the last census;
higher education is free for all; land is almost
entirely locally owned and not by British
investors. The islands’ population has
doubled since 1982 and is now about 3,600.
Argentina’s claim hasn’t gone away — it still
refuses to recognise or trade freely with the
Falklanders, but despite this the Bennies are
booming.
Today the hour-long drive from the
British military airport at Mount PleasantBritish soldiers got in trouble for
nicknaming the locals “Bennies”,
after the simpleton character
from the TV show Crossroads
Previous pages:
signs of prosperity
abound in the
capital, Stanley.
Left: captured
Argentine troops
are led from Mount
Tumbledown by
soldiers of the 2nd
Battalion, Scots
Guards, June 1982