Brian Short - The Band That Went to War: The Royal Marine Band in the Falklands War

The Band That Went to War

This book is dedicated to my family

The Royal Marines Band in the Falklands War

Brian Short

First published in Great Britain in 2021 by

Pen & Sword Military

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire Philadelphia

Copyright Brian Short 2021

ISBN 978 1 39909 640 9

eISBN 978 1 39909 641 6

The right of Brian Short to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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T he peerless musicians of the Royal Marines Band Service are no strangers to war, as the author, Brian Short, himself a musician, reminds us in his book The Band That Went To War. For example, Royal Marine bands suffered the highest percentage of casualties compared with the numbers experienced by any branch of the Royal Naval Service in the Second World War. Every ship from light cruisers to battleships carried a band. Their action-station was deep below decks in what was called the Transmitting Station (TS), and playing their musical instruments was secondary to the vital task of operating the gunnery fire-control table in the TS. The accuracy of the ships guns depended on the skill and dedication of the orchestra grouped round the control table far below the gun turrets. Several ships bands, keeping the guns firing until the end, lost every man, trapped in the bowels of their ship unable to get out in time or just blown to bits when the magazines exploded; HMS Hood, Barham, Gloucester and Neptune are but four of a long list. The Royal Marine musicians were perfectly aware of this; they were far too intelligent not to be.

As a young lieutenant from 1959 to 1961, I served as a house officer in charge of a house of some fifty junior musicians, one of the non-band service officers commanding the four houses in the Junior Wing at the Royal Marines Depot at Deal. With this experience behind me, I was well aware of the history of the RM Band Service, as well as the high quality of its people, both musically and personally. Therefore, when the Task Force was dispatched to recover the Falkland Islands from the Argentines, I welcomed the decision to send the Band of Commando Forces with us. As Brian Short relates, the band travelled down south in the liner Canberra , attached to the Medical Squadron, as part of the 3rd Commando Brigade Royal Marines. The smaller band of the Flag Officer Third Flotilla also went south in the ship Uganda , converted at lightning speed from a schools tour ship to an official hospital ship. This band carried out some of the same tasks as their fellows in the Canberra . Brians book concentrates on the story of the band in the Canberra , touching here and there on Uganda s band; the latter being designated as a hospital ship was not subjected to enemy attack.

Brian Short has an engaging style and sense of humour, combined with a shrewd assessment of his fellow human beings.