Books

Sir Henry Leach's War

Christopher Booker

The Battle for the Falklands Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins (Seeker and Warburg £10.95) The Falklands War The Sunday Times Insight Team (Andre Deutsch £8.95) Eyewitness Falklands Robert Fox (Methuen £7.95)

War in the Falklands: The Campaign in Pictures The Sunday Express Magazine Team (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £7.95)

Gotcha!: The Media, the Government and the Falklands Crisis Robert Harris (Faber and Faber £2.95) A Message from the Falklands: The life and gallant death of David Tinker R.N. Compiled by Hugh Tinker (Junction Books £3.50) Iron Britannia Anthony Barnett (Allison and Busby £2.95) One Man's Falklands Tam Dalyell (Cecil Woolf £4.95, paper £1.95)

From the moment it broke upon us last March, the Falklands crisis unfolded to its conclusion like some vast, brilliantly composed play, provoking a whole range of unusually intense and often conflicting thoughts and emotions.

By one view it was possible to see the whole thing as tragically absurd. Here were these tiny, barren islands at the other end of the world, which the Foreign Office would long since have got rid of had it not been for the intransigence of a population no larger than that of an English village. And here we were, sending a huge armada of more than 100 ships and nearly 30,000 men to win back these rocks by force, at a cost of more than 1000 lives and more than one million pounds for each Falklander knowing that by doing so we were going to land ourselves with a massive commitment for the future which would make it harder to achieve a reasonable solution than ever.

By another view it was possible to see the whole episode as a glorious gesture in defence of principle, far outweighing any considerations of cost. The Falklands war was a crusade, which brought out in the British all sorts of inspiring and admirable national qualities they had too long lost touch with; which by dint of great heroism and skill they brought to an almost im-

probably triumphant conclusion; and which was worth it if only because it restored to us a measure of self-respect which could not have been otherwise recovered.

Those who held this latter view are quite right to ask those who urge the former what do you think would have been the consequences for our national self-respect if we had simply knuckled under to aggres- sion and accepted the Argentine invasion as a fait accompli? Supporters of the first view are quite right to ask those who argue the second — how do you really think, in the long run, this freakish episode, with its gigantic cost in 'blood and treasure', has really helped to solve anything, except to land us in an even more intractable mess over the Falklands than before?

Is there any final point of perspective on the Falklands war which can take account of both these views? In attempting to work towards such a summing up we can certain- ly be grateful for several of the dozen or more books on the crisis which have ap- peared in recent months, culminating in perhaps the most eagerly awaited of all, The Battle for the Falklands by the war's 'star reporter' Max Hastings and his co-author Simon Jenkins.

The Hastings-Jenkins version competes with The Falklands War by the Sunday Times Insight team as the only other book which tries to give an overall picture of every part of the story. Eyewitness Falklands by BBC Radio reporter Robert Fox, who managed to get into the thick of the action, including the battle for Goose Green, is the best 'personal' account of the war by a journalist on the spot. A Message from the Falklands has been compiled around the letters from Lieutenant David Tinker, who found himself increasingly sceptical about the war's purpose and was killed when an Exocet hit H.M.S. Glamorgan in the final days of the cam- paign. Robert Harris's Gotcha! is a splen- did behind-the-scenes account of the play's most obvious comic sub-plot, the antics and adventures of the 'rude mechanicals' of the media, ranging from the jingo-crazed headline writers of the Sun (and the reporters who swamped cable traffic from Invincible with stories about special sup- plies of soft-porn and Sun knickers being. air-dropped to the fleet) to the shananigans at the Ministry of Defence as information officers suppressed or leaked vital informa- tion seemingly at will. While Anthony Bamett's Iron Britannia and Tam Dalyell's One Man's Falklands represent the 'oppos- ed minority' who viewed the whole episode with horror as little more than a frightening

spasm of post-imperial atavism.

Each of these books has something to add to the story, several are admirable, one at least is outstanding. But there is only one chapter in any of them, I believe, which seriously changes the perspective on the Falklands war which we might have been able to draw last June. It comes from the longest and most recently published ac- count of the war, that by Hastings and Jenkins, and I shall begin with this episode because it sheds such fascinating new light on almost everything else which happened.

One of the strangest ingredients in the whole drama, we may recall, came right at the outset, when we suddenly moved from one scenario which seemed drearily predic- table to another so unexpected as to be almost incredible. How was it possible, onlY 24 hours after an invasion of the Falklands which had left the British government in such total disarray that two senior cabinet ministers offered resignation, that a Prime Minister with no military experience should announce to the House of Commons that the largest task force since the Second World War was already being assembled to win the islands back? Was it simply that Mrs Thatcher had uttered the magic word `Shazam!' and been transformed into Superwoman — or was some deeper plot at work? Simon Jenkins (who contributes the political chapters to The Battle for the Falklands) reveals that there was — and how it was not really 'Mrs Thatcher's War' at all. It was Sir Henry Leach's. The significance of Jenkins's revelation has to be explained by way of a little back-. ground. For 30 years we had become used to the steady retreat of Britain's imnertal and naval power. We had withdrawn from Asia, from Africa, from 'East of Suez', to the point where, at the beginning of 1982, we were left with only a handful of posses- sions dotted across the globe, all of which, like Gibraltar or Hong Kong, seemed to present primarily diplomatic rather than military problems (we could scarcely have contemplated a war with Spain or China). Not surprisingly we had progressively trim- med our naval capability to the point where, by the end of 1982, we would have been limited to an almost entirely North Atlantic role as part of NATO. We had scrapped our last fixed-wing aircraft carrier in 1978. Under the lugubrious Mr Nott, s 1981 Defence Review, Hermes, Invincible and the two assault ships Fearless and In- trepid were shortly to follow. We were even about to lose little Endurance, the clearest possible signal to the Argentines that we no longer contemplated maintaining a naval presence in the South Atlantic. As the Royal Navy's senior officers led by their First Sea Lord, Sir Henry Leach, gloomily recognised, it finally meant the end for Bri- tain's historic role as a maritime power. Then suddenly, just at the Navy's 11th hour and 59th minute, came the first indica- tions over the last weekend of March 1982 that an invasion of the Falklands might be imminent. As far as the Foreign Office and the Cabinet were concerned, it was scarcely surprising that they were taken aback. For

Years they had looked forward to an even- tual diplomatic settlement of the Falklands problem, if only because there was no im- aginable alternative. To have maintained the kind of military and naval presence in the South Atlantic necessary to deter any sudden Argentine invasion would have in- volved a commitment of resources which no British government in the past 20 years could have contemplated. So when the un- thinkable was confirmed, and signals reach- ed London on Wednesday 31 March that Invasion seemed inevitable, a deeply unhap- py group of ministers including Mrs That- cher and Mr Nott assembled at the House of Commons, their mood, by Mr Jenkins's account, cautious, hesitant and confused.

But there was another group of people in London who saw the situation quite dif- ferently. Within 24 hours of the first indica- tions that an invasion might be on the cards (Probably not more than two days, inciden- tally, after the junta had taken its final deci- sion), Sir Henry Leach had summoned a Meeting of his senior officers at the Ad- miralty. As they met on Monday 28 March, they knew that an invasion of the Falklands was the one conceivable crisis which could Justify all their seemingly forlorn attempts to maintain the Navy's worldwide am- phibious role. They quickly concluded that any attempt to win back the Falklands would require the largest balanced force the Navy could muster, including all the ships Mr Nott wanted to get rid of, Hermes, In- vincible, Fearless and Intrepid (oh for the scrapped Ark Royal as well!). And they already on the Monday night began to plan how such a force could be assembled.

Two days later, as Mrs Thatcher anxious- IY gathered her advisers round her at the House of Commons, Sir Henry Leach was Just returning to London from an engage- ment in Portsmouth. When he heard what was going on, he headed straight for Mrs Thatcher's room, still in his full admiral's regalia, insisted on being given admittance and arrived to confront the dithering Politicans, in Mr Jenkins's words, like 'a deus ex machina'. Mrs Thatcher, it seems, Was transfixed. Here at last was a firm, masculine figure, who knew exactly what to d°: a man with a plan, who advised not °nlY that we could send a task force — the largest possible — but that we should. From that moment on, two days before the invasion actually took place on Friday mor- ning (and before either the Cabinet or Parliament had been consulted), the assembling of such a force was virtually agreed. The Navy was about to get its war. It is worth retelling this invaluable story at such length because there are few aspects of the Falklands crisis on which it does not change our perspective. For a start, it gives new colouring to the real motivation behind Britain's decision to send the task force. It is obviously too cynical to suggest that it was just 'to save the Royal Navy'. But it certainly makes all the self-righteous rhetoric about 'sovereignty' and 'the prin- ciples of international law' which was flying round the House of Commons during that hysterical debate on 3 April, the day follow- ing the invastion, look even thinner and more like ex post facto self-justification than it seemed at the time. The fact is that Britain had just suffered what Lord Car- rington called 'a very great national humiliation', and the Royal Navy, partly for its own reasons, provided an anguished Mrs Thatcher with the only lifeline she could recognise to retrieve both the nation's honour and that of her government.

It is interesting to note that both the books which attempt the most comprehen- sive account of the Falklands story, Jenkins-Hastings and that by the Insight Team, come to a striking degree of agree- ment that Britain's historic and legal claim to the Falkland Islands is extremely tenuous. Twice in the 18th century, it seems, we signed away all claim to the islands in treaties (in 1770, and again in the Nootka Sound Convention of 1790). When Argentina succeeded to her Spanish in- heritance in the early 19th century, she took formal and entirely legal possession of the Malvinas — and it was only when the Americans high-handedly turned off the Argentine governor during a local dispute some years later that we, equally high- handedly, took the opportunity to steal the islands back. In other words, our only legal claim to the islands is prescriptive, by virtue of our occupation since 1833 and the fact that the inhabitants we put there, hardly surprisingly, wish us to remain — a claim which Argentina has every right to dispute, (as the Foreign Office has several times this century privately conceded.) So much for the background. What do we learn from these books about the war which followed? Two overwhelming im- pressions are conveyed by the more detailed accounts of the campaign — Max Hastings, Insight and Robert Fox. The first is of what an admirable bunch of men the British put into the field, intelligent, brave, honourable, humorous and extremely good at their job. From all these accounts there is a sense of growing intimacy about the story, as we meet the same small cast of highly in- dividual figures turning up again and again — the pipe-sucking, imperturbable Julian Thompson; the Old Etonian 'H' Jones of 2 Para, rearing to get off the San Carlos beach- head and into action; his devoutly Roman Catholic second-in-command Chris Keeble, who took over at Goose Green when Jones was killed; David Cooper, 2 Para's splendid Yorkshire chaplain, an expert marksman who preached that memorable sermon in Stanley cathedral, then went straight home to win the Army's individual rifle-shooting trophy at Bisley; the eccentric Marine ma- jor and yachtsman Ewen Southby- Tailyour, who had been stationed in the Falklands in 1978 and knew every inch of the islands' coastline better than anyone in the world; Major Cedric Delves of the SAS, who seemed to pop up, blackfaced, anywhere and everywhere, regardless of where the formal battle lines happened to South Georgia turned out to be far from the effortless success it seemed in Britain at the time, as both our first two SAS and SBS

be; Lord Robin Innes-Ker, dashing around with his little squadron of Scorpion light tanks; General Jeremy Moore in his Afrika- Korps forage cap (who only arrived off the QE2 on 30 May, which is why he nominated Brigadier Thompson as 'man of the match' when it was all over).

Max Hastings, as might be expected, pro- vides an extremely competent and detailed account of the land campaign (it was hardly surprising that he enjoyed such a 'good war', because he was one of the few jour- nalists who already knew a good many of the men and units fighting out there). But for bringing the whole scene alive, it has to be said that Robert Fox has the inestimable advantage over the two 'team efforts' of being able to describe everything in the first person, just as he saw it. He got to know many of the key figures, such as 'H' Jones and Southby-Tailyour, on the trip out in the Canberra. He used his sharp observa- tion to best possible effect, particularly in the battle for Goose Green, of which his is by far the most vivid account. And to the end of the war and beyond, when hd accom- panied the largest group of POW's back to Argentina on the Canberra, he is able to produce flashes of personal observation and anecdote not available to Hastings or the Insight team, who are in this sense cir- cumscribed by having to produce a more detached and therefore impersonal overall picture. In Hastings's case circumscription reaches its apogee when, for the most celebrated personal moment enjoyed by any journalist in the war, his lone advance to liberate The Upland Goose, the book mere- ly reprints his report at the time, with the coy preface: 'The episode that followed has no place in the history of the war, nor among the achievements of the British land force. Max Hastings quotes his despatch that day as a curiosity of journalism, not of the battle for the Falklands'.

This said, these three books do combine to give a splendid close-up picture of the land war, although it has to be added that we have so far been given nothing like so in- timate an account of the naval war as it was being fought on Rear-Admiral Wood- ward's ships or by the pilots of the Sea Har- riers, whose successes (31 'kills') tipped the balance between success and failure of the whole operation.

This brings me to the second overwhelm- ing conclusion which emerges from all these books, which is to underline, at almost every stage, how phenomenally lucky we were, and how near the expedition came to total disaster. From the moment the task force set sail in April, it was clear that a gigantic risk was being run by exposing our ships and men to land-based air strikes without the sort of early warning and long- range fighter capacity that could have been provided by a fixed-wing carrier (Tam Dalyell was quite right to ask the Prime Minister on 14 April 'Does the Rt Hon Lady not remember what happened to Prince of Wales and Repulse?'). Even before the extent of this risk was demonstrated in practice, the recapture of landing parties withdrew in disorder with the near loss of more than 20 (in fact Cap- tain Astiz's Argentines surrendered more out of terror at the crippling of their sub- marine than anything else). The Sheffield sinking brought home to the task force its appalling vulnerability to low-level missile attacks. The Vulcan bombing of Stanley airfield was a fiasco. The landing at San Carlos began with brilliant success, but was succeeded by the worst week of the war when the successive waves of Skyhawks and Mirages not only sunk four ships, but hit six more with bombs which failed to detonate. In fact the most fortunate thing here was not even so much that the bombs were wrongly fused, but that the bombers con- centrated their attacks on the escorting war- ships rather than the troop-carriers and assault ships. Had they gone for Canberra or Fearless, we would almost certainly have had to call the invasion off — just as we would if either of the carriers had been put out of action.

Of course, in a sense, war is always a mat- ter of 'luck'. Fortune does favour the brave, the skilful, and those who go in con- vinced that they are going to win, and therefore one should not be too ready to ascribe to 'luck' the battle for Goose Green, where 2 Para unwittingly took on a force three times their size, or even the fact that when Port Stanley surrendered our artillery had less than ten minutes' worth of shells left to fire (it was this which prompted General Moore to agree that the battle had been a 'damn close run thing').

But the fact remains that Sir Henry Leach's Royal Navy despatched 31 ships to the Falklands to fight the war that might 'save the Navy'. Of these a sixth (5) were sunk and more than a third (11) were badly damaged adding up to more than half the total number. Just a few more bombs cor- rectly fused and we should be looking back on the Falklands war as an ignominious catastrophe.

The more one learns about the Falklands episode, the harder does it become to take a cut-and-dried line about it all. I said at the beginning that it was like some vast, brilliantly scripted play, with a cast of tens of thousands. Possibly that even amounted to tens of millions, if one includes the populations of Britain and Argentina in the cast as well, though it is the dozens of cen- tral actors we all remember — Galtieri and his junta, Sandy Woodward and Jeremy Moore, Brian Hanrahan and Michael Nicholson, Captain Salt, Ian McDonald, Costa Mendes, Captain 'Birdseye' North, `H' Jones, the `Ushuia Three', Prince An- drew — the list goes on like the dramatis personae of War and Peace. And I think that is precisely how we should look on the whole episode — as a huge, real-life drama in which each person involved played his or her part well or badly. As great drama should, it heightened the intensity of all our lives, forced us to think and feel in ways we should never have done otherwise.

That is perhaps why the quality of the books inspired by the Falklands is so much

higher than is usual with 'instant history'. The Sunday Times version is extremely competent, despite occasional mistakes and the fact-packed Insight prose (it was rather unfortunate they should have stated so categorically that the Commander of the task force was 'known universally as Sandy after his striking red hair' when, as Admiral Woodward later put it in an interview 'for a start my hair is not red, or even sandy. I got the nickname because my mother, when 1 appeared, thought I was going to have red hair'), The Falklands War made full use of a team of reporters covering every con- ceivable aspect of the crisis (including events in Argentina), and remains the best all-round reference book. The two-man team of Hastings and Jenkins, while lacking such comprehensive coverage, has produc- ed an immensely solid effort, though perhaps unpredictably it is Jenkins's ac- count of the war from the London end Northwood, Whitehall and Number Ten — which comes up with most new informa- tion. Gotcha! provides excellent light relief, the Sunday Express book by far the fullest selection of often superb pictures (most welcome as an aid to visualising events described verbally elsewhere). Tarn Dalyell's account only seems thin and irrele- vant because his warnings of disaster were not quite borne out, although his warnings that the political mess over the Falklands has only been made worse by the war become more valid every week that passes.

In a special category are the two most personal books. His father's account of the life and death of David Tinker is a deeplY moving reminder that it was quite possible to be one of those splendid young men who fought such an inspiring war, and yet become increasingly disenchanted with the ultimate absurdity of it all (I cannot think of a single war in Britain's history which has been so pointless' Tinker wrote in one letter just before his death, and although he never lost his sense of humour, his rage with Mrs Thatcher and the jingoistic press knew no bounds). The other book I found outstanding was Robert Fox's, not just because he conjures up what he saw so vividly, intelligently and humorously, but because he always sees it in the human terms of individuals who were going through one of the most intense experiences of their lives. The Falklands enabled a great many people to discover important things about themselves they had never known before. Fox himself was obviously no ex- ception, which is why his book is more than just a journalist's detached account of a 'story', however dramatic. In a way perhaps the best summing up of the whole affair was the entry which Maio!. Guy Sheridan of the Marines made in his diary the night after he had led the retaking of South Georgia: 'we embarked on a hor- rific series of events which divine pro- vidence somehow influenced'. It could have served as a salutary motto for Mrs Thatcher or for the entire task force. Just why divine providence should have served the British so well is another matter.