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Bravo Site By Martin Carey It's dark, bitterly cold, with a strong breeze coming out of the South-West. The almost human coughing of huddled sheep interrupts the soft shushing of the waves on the pebbles, overlaid by the whistle of the wind through the wires of the radio antenna. The stars, strange new galaxies, terribly bright, sweep in glorious parade, never ending, from horizon to horizon. The sea is dark, the land is dark, save for the lights of the Portakabin home of the Artillerymen and the red glow from the top of the mast carrying the antenna. The sky, slightly brighter, has some of its immortal glory blocked out by the wicked ungainly cardboard cutout shape of the Rapier missile launcher. The grass is tough, wiry, giving little nourishment to the sheep and the flocks of Upland Geese. Rock, grey and white, shoves brutally through the thin covering of soil, gleaming dully in the starlight. Down at the shore, the snow white ganders of a small flock of Kelp Geese dabble around in the rock pools, visible only as gleams of grey in the darkness. A sudden uproar from the Portakabin disturbs the sheep: the Artillerymen laughing at the antics of some comedian - forced laughter, forced fun, 8,000 miles from home - gleaned from a 22 inch box and a video machine. The inside of the cabin is in stark contrast to its surroundings: multi tier bunks, white topped coffee stained tables, dirty red plastic chairs 'proffed' somewhere in Stanley, piles of camouflage patterned kit and clothing, beer cans - 2 per man per day - muddied floor. Pin-up girls on the walls and even on the ceiling smile brightly, provocatively at the Artillerymen, some very young, some not so young, bringing a curiously sad cheer to men, who express their inarticulate longing for the softness, the feminity of their wives and girlfriends in crude jokes written across their pin-up girls, acknowledging that the blatant sexual challenge of the glossy paper women is but a passing physical thing. To feel the warmth and comfort, breathe in the musk, caress the hair, to feel at home with their own, that's the gut hurting need of all, seen in fleeting glimpses in eyes and faces, before the mask slips back. It is never quiet here, voices, bumps and bangs, curses, snores, frantic radio and TV audiences, hissing static from the Command Radio, the wind, the pounding rain, the crying of scavenging gulls and Caracara buzzards: never quiet, never alone. The moon is rising, halved, no clouds. The land takes on that silvery, hidden look, great stretches blacked out, that only moonlight and cold can give. The white caps on the sea can now be seen, the geese and sheep picked out more clearly, stark white feather and ragged grey wool. The wind is easing allowing the ripping, cropping sound of the feeding sheep to carry. Wool machines, killed and dumped at seven, their stupid eyes searching for a little more grass; uncaring of all else, they eat and eat and eat. Still cold, still dark, still strange, brutal and heart-wrenchingly beautiful, these islands are never going to change, yet never will be the same. The fag-end of Empire held ransom to ambition has the imprint of that most transient, most enduring of marks scorched deep in the minds of the quiet people of the land. The imprint of the British military boot. We came as liberators, we stay as defenders, we despoil as ignorants, we leave as wanderers and are replaced as necessary: strangers in a land of strangeness. Lonely, desperately lonely, one soldier, much like the next, sits in the cold dark moonlight of a Falkland winter, thinking of what might have been, might yet be. (First published in 'The Southern Star, The Most Southerly Service Newspaper in the World', No.70, dated 30 August 1985) This article
appeared in the Falkland Islands Newsletter, Edition 25, November 1985.
The Falkland Islands Association is an independent organisation which
brings together those who support the continuing freedom of the people of
the Falkland Islands. Its Constitution states that its objectives
are to assist the people of the Falkland Islands to decide their own
future for themselves without being subjected to pressure direct or
indirect from any quarter.
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