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Tourism - The Battle Scene Five Years On By
Heather Boulter Coming in to land over the Falkland Islands, it was possible to see the area around Port Stanley spread out beneath us. Having lived through the anxious days of the 1982 conflict - albeit 8,000 miles away - we were familiar with the map and suddenly here it was, graphically laid out below our RAF Tri-Star plane. The Islands now have the new Mount Pleasant Airport so flights from England arrive from RAF Brize Norton via Ascension Island. I was travelling on the first Battlefields Tour of the Falklands. With my friend and fourteen other tour members, we were to spend seven and a half days exploring the areas around Stanley and the outlying settlements which had featured so prominently during the retaking of the Islands. The tour was arranged by Major & Mrs Holt's Battlefield Tours and led by Lt. Col. Mike Martin of the Royal Hampshire Regiment. Normally tours are conducted around the European theatres of battlefields and, having been on the 170th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, I knew how well organised and educative the tour would be. My personal interest as a florist lay in the opportunity of meeting the Falkland Islanders and seeing the wildlife and flora, so different from northern climes. Our introduction to the problems of living 8,000 miles from the UK were soon displayed to us on the costly new road that connects Mount Pleasant Airport with Stanley. The forty miles took ninety minutes to cover, over roughly broken stones, which have to be continually respread by road roller and are the cause of many a puncture. Our airport bus developed its third puncture of the month on our first journey. The result of one such puncture ended in a fatal crash. With drainage ditches ten to twelve feet deep on either side of the road, and only crash barriers when the road winds through a minefield, no-one takes any chances by going faster than forty miles per hour. We had the compulsory fifteen minute lecture about mines and their dangers, before we had collected our luggage, so we took a keen interest in the road signs warning that minefields were on either side of the road. The landscape - treeless and with close-growing wind-blasted heath-like shrubs - has a feature not seen anywhere else in the world. For the "stone rivers" or "rivers of stone" are just that. Seen from the air, the silver-grey granite rocks look like vast rivers running statically down the mountainsides, but close up they are a jumble of boulders jostling one upon another on their way downhill. We stayed at the Upland Goose Hotel in Stanley. This hotel housed the Argentine military and civilian high-ranking staff during the seventy-four days the Argentines occupied the Islands. When the journalists arrived with the British troops, they in turn lived in the waterfront hostelry. Our local guide had sheltered with relatives and friends in the lounge of the hotel using flour bags instead of sandbags at the windows. To hear the experiences of the Islanders first-hand made the whole trip a living history, and we learnt much from their stories. Such was the account of PC Fairfield who took part in the defence of Government House on 1 and 2 April 1982. Later, we were played a tape-recording, by local historian John Smith, of the sound of the bombardment and gunfire as Stanley was retaken on 14 June. We could only imagine the absolute terror that must have overshadowed the town dwellers. Our first full day was beautifully sunny and even the constant wind dropped sufficiently for us to enjoy a picnic on Mount Tumbledown. The seemingly impregnable positions that the Scots Guards had so valiently fought over and won were expertly shown to us by Graham Bound, a Falkland Islands' journalist and travel agent. He had lived through the war in Stanley and was able to tell us how the inhabitants survived their ordeal. He showed us an Argentine army field kitchen as it lay rusting among the spent bullets and discarded plimsolls that litter the mountainside. After five years, a big campaign - Operation Slogger - has just removed a vast quantity of unwanted equipment, but the mountains still show signs of the hasty retreat of the invaders. To the glee of the Islanders, the army sold off the abandoned Argentine trucks very cheaply so that there are many left-hand-drive vehicles on the roads. The most efficient form of motorised transport in the Islands is the ubiquitous Landrover - no status symbol here, but a basic necessity of life. In Camp, transport is provided by the horses which roam free across the plains, growing fat on the white grass. The sight of a group of horses and riders returning from a four-day journey was one I will remember forever. Flying by the eight-seater Islander plane from Stanley Airport was great fun, even when the grass airstrip at Port Howard appeared from behind a mountain ridge with the windsock flying horizontally in a fierce cross-wind. These small planes are a vital link between the Camp (the settlement) and Stanley because there are few telephone lines outside the town. It is here that the two metre band radio comes into its own. We flew to Pebble Island, the scene of an early SAS raid. The grass airstrip no longer holds the remains of the eleven Pucaras destroyed but, close by, the crashed ruins of a Skyhawk lie just as it dropped from the sky, felled by a British fired Sidewinder missile. Pebble Island boasts an amazing range of wildlife and the increasing tourist industry allows the fortunate enthusiast to visit a place rich in rockhopper and gentoo penguins; sheathbills and sealions; cara-caras and king cormorants; the rare peregrine falcon and the even rarer black-necked swans, found only in Patagonia and on the Falkland Islands. Flying across the Falkland Sound to San Carlos in the Islander plane, we could see numerous albatrosses (my favourite bird) gracefully skimming the waves beneath us. Here we met sheep-farming Islanders, Pat and Isobel Short, who recounted how they were woken early on 21 May 1982 by a soldier bearing the wonderful news - the British Task Force had arrived. Today the Blue Beach War Cemetery at San Carlos is carefully and proudly tended by this couple. It was a moving moment to stand and remember the bravery of the men who fell so far from home. There was also a poignant sight to greet us when we came upon the lonely hillside at Goose Green, where white stones mark the spot where Colonel "H" Jones fell. We had so many such moments and the care shown to the memorials display how much the Falkland Islanders appreciate the sacrifice of those who died. At Goose Green, the second largest settlement, we were shown the wooden village hall where, for twenty-nine days, 114 people of the settlement were held by the Argentines. Islanders Tony and June McMullen shown us the small area allotted their family and described how they survived the terrifying ordeal. We had flown to Goose Green but returned to Stanley overland. The journey, in a convoy of three dusty Landrovers, took four and a half bone-shaking hours. The route lay across a pitted and potholed dirt track, making us realise the difficulties of the terrain in peacetime - let alone war. Interesting though the historical sites were, I think my most lasting memories of the Falklands will be of the Islanders themselves and their great hospitality as they welcomed us into their community - their harsh environment seemed to produce a welcoming warmth and courtesy rarely found elsewhere. I will long remember these hardy, resolute but, above all, independent people, who remain so uniquely British. This article first
appeared in the Falkland Islands Newsletter, Edition 32, August 1987.
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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