The Times - UK (2022-06-08)

52 Wednesday June 8 2022 | the times

Register

5

Baronet of Eshton Hall in Craven,

North Yorkshire, to which baronetcy

he succeeded in 1991 on the death of an

uncle. After Trinity College School,

Ontario, and Sandhurst, he was com-

missioned into the King’s Own York-

shire Light Infantry in 1956, the fourth

consecutive generation of his family to

serve in the regiment, and joined the 1st

Battalion in Cyprus during the EOKA

campaign, subsequently seeing service

in the Borneo confrontation and the

Aden emergency.

In 1962 he married Janet Mowll, a

trainee nurse whom he had met while

an instructor at the School of Infantry

at Hythe in Kent. Lady Wilson survives

him along with a son, Mathew, the sev-

enth baronet, who also served with the

Light Infantry, and a daughter, Victoria,

a lawyer.

After attending the Pakistan Staff

College, Wilson was posted to the oper-

ations staff of HQ Northern Ireland

just as the Troubles began, where for his

service he was awarded the MBE (Mili-

tary). On return to his battalion, by

then 2nd Battalion The Light Infantry

(2LI), he commanded a company in

South Armagh, for which he was

awarded the Military Cross for gallant-

ry. He subsequently commanded 1LI in

Hong Kong, where the battalion was

frequently deployed on the Chinese

border to deter immigrants, before re-

turning to HQ Northern Ireland as the

principal operational staff officer when

Dick Trant was commander land

forces, for which in 1979 he was ad-

vanced to OBE (Military). On promo-

tion to colonel he headed the MoD

branch responsible for UK internal

security, Northern Ireland especially,

before in 1981 being appointed to com-

mand 5 Brigade.

Opinions of Wilson varied. He

seemed to live on his nerves, though

some in the MoD found him refresh-

ingly easy to work with. He was un-

doubtedly a showman, with a rather

theatrical voice, and soldiers are acute

theatre critics. In 5 Brigade he offended

some by wearing the famed red (strictly,

maroon) airborne forces beret and

parachute “wings” although the bri-

gade was no longer an airborne force

and he had not completed “P” Com-

pany, the usual qualification.

He was not all show, however. Soon

after taking command he forcefully rep-

resented the brigade’s lack of critical re-

sources, communications especially, to

the commander-in-chief, though with-

out result. After the loss of Sir Galahad

in 1982 he tempered his style somewhat,

accepting advice from subordinates and

modifying his orders. But the die had

been cast, and on return to England his

name was not on the honours list.

Later that year he resigned his com-

mission and moved to America with his

family, where he became director of the

Wilderness Foundation UK. He subse-

quently spent ten winters in the Baha-

mas following his passion for sailing,

writing The Bahamas Cruising Guide

and lecturing on cruise ships, where his

style was well received.

Wilson wrote a memoir of the Falk-

lands, but the publisher Leo Cooper re-

fused to publish it, advising that it

would do the author no good.

Napoleon reputedly asked of his gen-

erals simply: “Is he a lucky command-

er?” Wilson evidently was not.

Brigadier Sir Tony Wilson Bt OBE MC,

Light Infantry officer, was born on

October 2, 1935. The Times did not run

an obituary of him when he died after a

long illness on December 5, 2019, aged

84. To mark the 40th anniversary of the
    destruction of the Sir Galahad, we are
    publishing one now.

Brigadier Sir Tony Wilson

Falklands conflict infantry commander whose reputation was tarnished by the destruction of the Sir Galahad, 40 years ago today

ALAMY

Email: [email protected]

to the settlement at Fitzroy, 15 miles

from Stanley, established that there

were no Argentine troops present.

Commandeering the single Chinook,

Wilson ferried two companies to Bluff

Cove just beyond Fitzroy, greatly ex-

tending the area requiring air cover by

the carrier-borne Harriers. Now ur-

gently needing to reinforce 2 Para, the

only way his two Guards battalions

could be brought forward was by sea.

On the night of June 6, Fearless took

the entire Welsh Guards battalion to a

rendezvous point near Elephant Island

to meet two “landing craft, utility”

(LCU) from Bluff Cove, but they did not

appear. Only half the battalion could be

taken ashore before daylight in Fear-

less’s own LCUs. The rest returned with

Fearless to San Carlos, and the next

night sailed again for Bluff Cove on the

Royal Fleet Auxiliary landing ship Sir

Galahad. Just before dawn on June 8,

Sir Galahad, unable to complete the

move in daylight, dropped anchor five

miles short at Fitzroy Sound. There was

just one off-loading craft, however, and

the Welsh Guards took priority behind

the field ambulance and Rapier air de-

fence battery.

Meanwhile, the Argentinians had

spotted the ship’s arrival. Some hours

later, Skyhawk jets flying 500 miles

from the mainland with 500lb

bombs, attacked. Three bombs

hit Sir Galahad, killing 48

men and wounding 115.

Many, including

Simon Weston, were

badly burnt. Most

of the casual-

ties were in

the Welsh

Guards, ren-

dering the

battalion

hors de com-

bat until it

was re-

inforced later

by marines.

Mathew John

Anthony (Tony)

Wilson was born in London

in 1935, the son of Anthony

Wilson and Margaret Hold-

en. His paternal grandfather

was Sir Mathew Wilson, 4th

and dispersal forces an enemy to cover

more front, but the issue is whether

the advancing forces can concentrate

at the decisive point before the enemy

can do the same. Besides, movement

on the southern axis was fraught with

difficulties.

After the sinking of the Atlantic Con-

veyor on May 25 with the loss of much

equipment, including all but one of the

heavy-lift Chinook helicopters, the

second axis placed a huge logistic strain

on Moore’s HQ, not least the inability

to communicate across such a long dis-

tance, co-ordination between the bri-

gades, and artillery support. Arguably

the Great Leap Forward had less to

commend it than it promised, not least

in preventing 3 Commando Brigade

from exploiting its rapid

advance and taking Stan-

ley by surprise and sheer

momentum.

Wilson flew to Goose

Green by light helicopter,

where 2 Para had re-

cently overcome an

Argentine

garrison at Dar-

win Goose

Green. Moore

had placed

the battal-

ion back

under 5

Brigade’s

command,

and Wilson

dispatched a

dozen men by

helicopter to

Swan Inlet a

few miles along

the coast. From

there, a civilian

telephone call

The Argentinians spotted

the ship’s arrival and soon

Skyhawk jets moved in

Wilson seemed to

live on his nerves

and was regarded

as a showman

Survivors from the RFA Sir Galahad make their way ashore after the ship was bombed in Fitzroy Sound

40 years ago today, killing 48 men and wounding 115. Left, Wilson (third left) at San Carlos in 1982

“Defeat? I do not recognise the mean-
ing of the word,” Margaret Thatcher
said in April 1982 at the start of the Falk-
lands conflict. Many senior officers
were not so sanguine. Ten weeks later,
however, the Union Jack was flying
again over Port Stanley.
It was a resounding victory but a
close-run thing, and the casualty list —
the “butcher’s bill”, in the grim parlance
of the soldier — was sobering. Reputa-
tions were gained, others maintained;
some were lost. Most spectacular of the
losers was Brigadier Tony Wilson, com-
mander of the 5th Infantry Brigade, the
second of the two brigade-size forces
dispatched to the South Atlantic as the
southern hemisphere winter deepened.
The Argentine invasion came as a
shock to Thatcher’s government, and
its response was at first hesitant. What
followed, Operation Corporate —
assembling a task force to retake the
islands — was an improvised affair, at
times almost chaotic, for there was no
command structure in place to mount
and direct a tri-service operation.
A landing force under Brig-
adier Julian Thompson of
the Royal Marines
(RM), comprising the
3 Commando Bri-
gade (RM), which
included field and
air defence artil-
lery, engineers
and others from
the army, re-
inforced by the
2nd and 3rd battal-
ions of the Parachute
Regiment detached
from Wilson’s brigade,
was hastily assembled
and sailed within days of the
invasion.
Meanwhile a follow-up force was
cobbled together from what remained
of 5 Brigade, reinforced by two Guards
battalions (Scots and Welsh). The in-
tention was that 3 Commando Brigade
would do the fighting, and 5 Brigade the
consolidating. However, the MoD rec-
ognised somewhat belatedly that 5 Bri-
gade might end up in a shooting war
too, and so hastily rearranged their pre-
deployment training in Wales. Unsur-
prisingly, perhaps, for a force thrown
together with inadequate communica-
tions and no common standard operat-
ing procedures, Exercise Welsh Falcon
did not go well. Wilson himself evident-
ly performed so badly that Lieutenant
General Sir Dick Trant, responsible for
the army’s rapid-reaction forces for op-
erations outside the Nato area, and who
had formed a high opinion of Wilson’s
staff work in previous appointments
and been instrumental in his promo-
tion to brigadier, recommended his re-
moval from command.
However, the chief of the general
staff, Sir Edwin Bramall (obituary No-
vember 12, 2019), decided that to re-
move him would be a blow to the bri-
gade’s morale. In the Channel 4 TV
documentary Falklands War: The Un-
told Story, broadcast on March 27, 2022,
General Sir Michael Rose, who com-
manded the SAS in the Falklands, said
that Bramall told him afterwards “it was
the worst decision he had made in over
40 years as a soldier”.
When 5 Brigade sailed for the South
Atlantic in mid-May, Wilson, like
Shakespeare’s soldier and any officer
worth his salt, would have been seeking
to regain “the bubble reputation even in
the cannon’s mouth”, as well as wanting
his brigade to share the glory that
would otherwise go wholly to the
Marines. Everybody wanted a piece of
the action. At Ascension Island, the
staging post for the task force, he was
joined on the requisitioned Cunard
liner QE2 by Major General Jeremy

Moore RM (obitu-

ary September 17,

2007), who had flown

from the headquarters

of the commander-in-

chief fleet at Northwood,

northwest London, the control-

ling HQ for Corporate, where he had

been on the planning team, to take

overall command of the land forces.

The land campaign was shaped by two

predominant factors: the potential for

amphibious landings and the lack of air

superiority. Moore insisted that he could

not make any firm plans before arriving

in theatre. Meanwhile, the possibilities

were being explored by Julian Thomp-

son and his brigade, who managed to

land unopposed at San Carlos Bay on

East Falkland the following day, the bulk

of the Argentine forces being some 50

miles the other side of the island at the

Falklands capital, Port Stanley.

By the time Moore, having trans-

ferred to the amphibious assault ship

HMS Fearless, arrived at San Carlos

with Wilson on May 30, two days before

5 Brigade, Thompson’s men were fast

advancing east. The SAS had already

occupied the heights overlooking Stan-

ley, and next day Thompson flew 42

Commando (battalion equivalent) and

a battery of artillery forward by heli-

copter to take Mount Kent, which was

considered key ground.

During the passage from Ascension

to the Falklands, however, when the

QE2 had only intermittent communi-

cations with both Thompson and Fleet

HQ, it seems likely that Wilson and

Moore discussed a second axis of ad-

vance in the south of the island. On

May 30, Moore told the two brigadiers,

despite what could at times be an ad-

verse air situation, to plan on a two-axis

advance. “The Great Leap Forward”, as

the southern axis became known,

would have the merit of bringing 5 Bri-

gade up alongside 3 Commando Bri-

gade for the final push on Stanley.

In the Channel 4 documentary,

Moore’s former army deputy, the then

Brigadier — later Nato’s deputy su-

preme allied commander Europe —

John Waters criticised the concept for

breaching the principle of concentra-

tion of effort. The principle applies at

the point of attack, not the approach,

S

4

under Brig

pson of

ines

he

te

hed

gade,

sembled

days of the

M

ary

2007

ffffrom

of the

chief fleet

northwest Lond

ling HQ for Corpora