Cedric Delves - Across An Angry Sea: The SAS in the Falklands War

LIEUTENANT GENERAL SIR CEDRIC DELVES

Across an Angry Sea

The SAS in the Falklands War

HURST & COMPANY, LONDON

First published in the United Kingdom in 2018 by

C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd.,

41 Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3PL

Cedric Delves, 2018

Foreword Max Hastings, 2018

All rights reserved.

Distributed in the United States, Canada and Latin America by Oxford University Press, 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America

The right of Cedric Delves to be identified as the author of this publication is asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

A Cataloguing-in-Publication data record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-7873-8181-0

www.hurstpublishers.com

We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go

Always a little further; it may be

Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow

Across that angry or that glimmering sea.

James Elroy Flecker

Dedicated to the Merry Men of D Squadron Group, 22 SAS, South Atlantic, 1982, and for all our loved ones.

Contents

I: SOUTH GEORGIA:
With a Task Group: Feeling Our Way

2: THE FALKLANDS:
With the Task Force: Soldiers of the Sea

The 1982 seizure of the Falkland Islands by Argentina, then governed by a military junta, came as a profound shock to virtually all Britons. The realisation that the United Kingdom had so diminished in another nations estimation that even a pariah state, as Argentina was in those years, might use military force to seize one of her dependant territories and its people and think that they could get away with it, was almost too much to take in. But then the country did feel to be on its uppers, its citizens at odds with each other, in what felt like terminal economic decline, weak and uncertain of its place in the world. The resulting war seemed to arrest all that, to draw a line under one age and set the conditions for another to re-ignite our national optimism and self-belief.

Many historians and commentators have spoken and written about the nature of the Falklands conflict, its purpose and consequences. Chief among their views is the idea that we went to war to defend a profound principle, one bigger than just the matter of putting right a wrong, one more important than the Falklands or even the Falkland Islanders. They point out that we fought to uphold the right of all people, everywhere, to self-determination and the exercise of power to secure that end, particularly where the enjoyment of that right had been usurped by aggression. It was a cause near impossible to refute. They would add that it made the world sit up, and take us seriously once more, that it showed our spirits intact, that we understood strategic power and how to use it, all in an intensely-felt, commonly-held purpose.

Things were stacked against us. The war was to be conducted in the South Atlantic, at the very gateway to the Antarctic, deep in the Western Hemisphere. It is easy now to overlook that there were then those in the US Administration uncertain about supporting our venture, but very many more who could see clearly the principle and all else at stake, and the need to stand by a staunch friend. Weather, distance, the local balance of forces, all these suggested Argentina would win. The eventual success of our armed forces surprised most if not all informed observers, including many in uniform. It caused the Soviet Union to reassess their assumptions about western resolve and fighting capacity. Years later, President Gorbachev would admit that British actions in the South Atlantic played a part in convincing the Soviet leadership that the USSR was never likely to win the Cold War.

As for national decline, the same historians would offer that the Task Force demonstrated Britain to be as much a concept as a place: distinct, credible, and counting for more than a worn out imperial has-been. We could still distinguish right from wrong, what was important, what was not, and had the initiative and wherewithal to do something about it. The operation suggested that there remained much to us waiting yet to emerge, that we were ready to move on, to achieve another form of greatness.

In short, historians, commentators and many others have observed that during those austral, early winter months of 1982 we showed the world, and perhaps most importantly ourselves, that we still had what it took: the ability to achieve through common sense and practicality steered by principle. It had worked before, it worked still, it had achieved great things once, it could do so again.

To someone who fought in the war, who lived through the disheartening years immediately before, it can feel now that we have lost much of the unity, consensus and optimism that followed immediately upon our success in the South Atlantic. We look to be once more troubled and adrift.

This then is the story of those 100 days as experienced by D Squadron, 22 SAS. I believe we fought as well as we could, with decency, in a manner consistent with our shared, national values. I believe we helped to achieve success, did our bit to uphold the principles for which the country had to fight. In so doing perhaps we too helped to bring the United Kingdom to a good place after years of relative decline. It came at a cost that must never be forgotten.

I wish it had been possible to mention all members of the Squadron and its attached personnel. For one reason or another this has not been possible. Even so, this is the story of their part in an historic event as seen through my eyes. I hope this account goes at least some way to mark their achievements and nobility of spirit, bringing a degree of comfort and pride most particularly to our families and loved ones. And I trust the record can serve to reassure the British public in whose name, to whose values and with whose treasure we dared to do our best.

I first met Major Cedric Delves, as he then was, on an early June night in 1982, when I landed by Sea King below the summit of Mount Kent on East Falkland with 22 SASs commanding officer Michael Rose. Men of Cedrics D Squadron were in the midst of a firefight with Argentine troops, causing tracer rounds to slash open the darkness and to frighten the wits out of me. The SAS, of course, appeared wholly unfazed. As we flew towards that landing zone amid a waist-high welter of weapons, equipment and mortar rounds, I shouted to Mike above the engine racket: what happens if the Argies start shelling the LZ? The doughty colonel shrugged and shouted nonchalantly back: Oh well, who dares wins! Those men were, and their successors remain to this day, among the finest professional warriors in the world, of whom Cedric is an outstanding exemplar. No man saw more than he did at the sharp end of the 1982 action in the South Atlantic. He has now compiled an extraordinarily vivid narrative of his squadrons experiences. It tells me, as it will tell countless readers, all manner of details about the war, and about the remarkable contribution of the SAS to British victory, that have been hitherto unknown.

The Falklands campaign was a freak of history, an anachronism such as the world will never see again. I always regretted that I was not of an age to accompany Kitcheners 1898 expedition up the Nile to destroy the Dervishes. The next best thing was surely to accompany Margaret Thatcher, by proxy at least, down to the South Atlantic to defeat the Argentines. That crazy expedition gave Britains armed forces an opportunity to display their skills at their very best before defence cuts and the coming of a new century removed both the means by which such things could be done, and the environment in which they could take place. Cedric describes how, on the brink of battle, he found himself summoning up memories of old war movies with which he, like me, had grown up: