Girding for the Big One

By George Russell

After a sharp setback, the British attack "with all we've got

At last, the climactic battle for the Falklands was on. Just ten weeks after Argentina seized the desolate South Atlantic islands, the 9,000 British troops encamped on the hills above Port Stanley launched an all-out assault on the 7,500 Argentines dug in around the capital. The intention was, as an official in London put it, to hit the Argentine garrison "with all we've got."

In what British Defense Minister John Nott described as a "brilliant surprise attack," Royal Marine commandos and paratroopers overran Argentine positions just before daybreak, coming to within five miles of Port Stanley. Many of the young Argentine defenders were asleep in their foxholes as the British struck. The first things they saw, said Nott, "were the blackened faces of the British troops in the trenches with them."

Warships had begun shelling Argentine positions prior to the attack, while Harrier jets bombed the garrison in, as the British Defense Ministry put it, a final "softening-up operation." Interrupting the broadcast of a Mass being celebrated by Pope John Paul II (see following story), Argentine, television broadcast a communique that accused the British of "indiscriminately" bombing Port Stanley. It said that two civilian residents of the island capital had been killed and four others wounded.

The attack came after an unnerving pause of more than one week. The delay may have been partly tactical (to allow time to move in additional men and materiel), partly wishful thinking (the hope that Argentina would avert a bloodbath by capitulating), partly humanitarian (to forestall casualties among the civilian residents of Port Stanley). The pause may have served its purpose. British intelligence reportedly overheard an unscrambled conversation last week between Brigadier General Mario Benjamin Menendez, commander of the Argentine troops on the islands, and his superiors on the mainland. Menendez is said to have described the low morale of his troops, adding, "If things go on like this, our situation could crumble rapidly."

Still, the failure to attack sooner cost Britain's fighting men dearly. With no warning, Argentina's air force roared across the skies southwest of Port Stanley last week to deal the British their worst casualties of the campaign. Demolished on that disastrous Tuesday were two landing ships, the Sir Galahad and the Sir Tristram, carrying members of the Fifth Infantry Brigade who were establishing a second British beachhead only 17 miles from Port Stanley. That brought to seven the total of major British ships lost since a Royal Navy task force reached the wintry South Atlantic archipelago on April 29. Defense Secretary Nott somberly refused to disclose to the House of Commons the number of casualties on the ground that the information "could be of assistance to the enemy." Finally, British officials privately disclosed that 60 men had died and 120 were wounded, which would bring the war's toll to some 195 British and 670 Argentine dead.

The losses did not affect Britain's resolve. In the House of Commons, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher last week insisted that "if the Argentines tell us that they are prepared to withdraw, we shall enable them to do so with safety, dignity and dispatch." Otherwise, she said, "we shall now have to take back by force what the Argentines would not give up." Even Britain's monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, whose second son, Prince Andrew, is a helicopter pilot aboard the aircraft carrier Invincible, made a rare and direct comment on the issue. Using the banquet at Windsor Castle for President Ronald Reagan as the occasion, she personally denounced "naked aggression" in the Falklands. In the port of Southampton, meanwhile, cheering Britons gave a rapturous welcome to her namesake, the Cunard luxury liner Queen Elizabeth 2, returning safely from the Falklands with 629 injured and wounded, plus crewmen from the lost British ships.

In Buenos Aires, the military junta led by President Leopoldo Galtieri defiantly portrayed Argentina as the ultimate win ner of the conflict despite the precarious position of the embattled garrison at Port Stanley. Declared Galtieri: "We will fight for weeks, months or years, but we will never give up sovereignty over the is lands." He seemed to be warning that even if his soldiers were eventually driven off the Falklands, he would wage a long-term war of attrition against the British.

As the world's attention shifted to an even bloodier conflict in the Middle East, the Falklands war naturally receded in the priorities of U.S. policymakers. But in his historic address to Britain's Houses of Parliament last week, President Reagan won warm applause for his declaration that British soldiers in the Falklands were "fighting for a cause, for the belief that armed aggression must not be allowed to succeed and that people must participate in the decisions of government under the rule of law." Privately, both the President and Secretary of State Alexander Haig continued to worry over Thatcher's rejection of a negotiated solution that would, by ultimately involving Argentina in the future of the Falklands, help repair the damage in U.S.-Latin American relations.

U.S. concerns were amply shared by other NATO allies. "Ridiculous overreactions, and typical of a woman," said a senior West German official about Thatcher's determination to pursue the military offensive in the South Atlantic. At last week's NATO summit in Bonn, the alliance's newest member, Spain, opposed a joint declaration of support for Britain. Spanish Prime Minister Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo declared that "a military conflict is tearing the Western world apart and threatening to open up a profound rift of extremely serious political and historic consequences."

The change of tempo in the the war following stood in sharp contrast to the speed of British successes following the landing of 5,000 Royal Marine commandos and Parachute Regiment troops near Port San Carlos. Slogging across the boggy ground, they had captured 1,600 Argentine troops near the settlement of Goose Green (see map). Then, in a combination of rapid marches and bold helicopter assaults, they secured the commanding height of Mount Kent, overlooking Port Stanley. Encountering almost no Argentine resistance, they set up forward observation posts on hills known as the Two Sisters, only six miles from the capital.

With the high ground under their control, the British immediately began to rain artillery fire down on the 7,500 Argentine troops, which were entrenched in a defensive horseshoe around Port Stanley. Harrier vertical-takeoff jets pounded the area with 600-lb. cluster bombs, while 4.5-in. guns on Royal Navy frigates and destroyers added their drumbeat of fire. As the week began, the dense, rain-filled clouds that shrouded Port Stanley seemed to be the only barrier to a full-scale attack. But Rear Admiral John ("Sandy") Woodward and Major General John Jeremy Moore, the two commanders to whom Prime Minister Thatcher had entrusted the final decision on how to take Port Stanley, were apparently also eager to avoid a military bloodbath. They were especially worried about the safety of the 250 to 400 Falkland Islanders still believed to be living in the capital. (Of the original population of 1,050, the remainder had taken refuge elsewhere.)

Consequently, the commanders opted for a pause that would allow them to pick off the softest points on the Argentine perimeter--radar posts, ammunition dumps and artillery concentrations--while trying to draw enemy troops out of their prepared positions onto open ground, where they could be surrounded. About 1,000 of the occupying troops in Port Stanley were believed to be elite marines, the best fighters Argentine Commander Menendez had at his disposal. The remainder were relatively untrained conscripts who might prove to be vulnerable to such tactics, although, as one British paratrooper said, "a gun in the hands of a boy can kill you just the same."

While the tentative skirmishing continued around Port Stanley, the 3,500 troops of the Fifth Infantry Brigade began to make their moves ashore. The brigade, composed of the Scots and Welsh Guards and a battalion of the legendary Nepa-lese-born Gurkhas, landed at the Port San Carlos beachhead two weeks ago. The Gurkhas were assigned the task of mopping up pockets of Argentine resistance that were bypassed by Britain's fast-moving Parachute Regiment as it raced toward Goose Green and Port Stanley. Daily, after a ritual unsheathing of their curved kukris, they flew out in Scout helicopters on search and destroy missions in the southern part of East Falkland known ss ASSOCIATION as Lafonia. The British feared that the stragglers, if not found, could be reinforced by a paratroop drop from the Argentine mainland.

Meanwhile, the unit of the Fifth led by Brigadier Tony Wilson was moving south from the beachhead to Goose Green, and then east toward Port Stanley. At the minuscule settlement of Swan Inlet, 35 miles from the capital, Wilson suddenly had a time-saving idea. Learning that the Argentines had left telephone lines intact, he stopped at a house and phoned ahead to Fitzroy, the next sizable settlement. To Wilson's amazement, someone answered. "Any Argies there?" asked Wilson. "Yes," replied Farmer Ron Binnie, "but they're not here today." Said Wilson: "In that case, I think I'll join you." Binnie's reply: "That seems a good idea. You'd be welcome."

Wilson ordered about 100 members of his advance party to rush ahead in helicopters, securing both Fitzroy and the nearby settlement of Bluff Cove. The small British contingents held the position for about two days, while other units of the Fifth boarded the Sir Galahad and the Sir Tristram at Port San Carlos to join them. When the ships reached Fitzroy, they began unloading men and equipment. In effect, the British had a second beachhead on East Falkland.

Then calamity struck. Two Argentine A-4 Skyhawk bombers and two Mirage fighter-bombers suddenly swooped down over the 5,674-ton landing ships, anchored only 400 yds. from the Fitzroy beach. The attack was particularly unexpected because for well over a week bad weather had kept Argentine flyers away from the British fleet. There had even been speculation that the air force had been too badly crippled by losses to re-enter the fray. The British claimed to have downed about 70 aircraft. But according to U.S. sources, the Argentines had also received reinforcements: ten Peruvian Mirages flown from Lima early last week.

British radar failed to spot the low-flying Argentines. The Rapier surface-to-air missiles that British ground forces had used with great success at the Port San Carlos beachhead were already ashore at Fitzroy, but they had not yet been set up on hillsides overlooking the estuary. Although both ships would have been unloaded in another hour or so, at the time of the attack the Sir Galahad was still packed with most of its full complement of 68 crewmen and, according to some accounts, as many as 500 troops waiting to go ashore. Those on board had no time at all to react; those on land could only watch helplessly as the bombs fell on the two vessels.

At least two bombs hit the Sir Galahad. The Sir Tristram was raked with cannon and rocket fire. According to Michael Nicholson, a British television correspondent who witnessed the attack on the Sir Galahad from ashore, "boxes of ammunition aboard exploded, shaking the ground beneath us, and soldiers crouched as bullets from the ship whistled past." Hundreds of men rushed along the decks of both ships, pulling on life jackets and leaping into water that was sometimes aflame with burning oil. Bright orange life rafts were thrown into the sea; some immediately burst into flame as they were hit by debris from the explosions, while others were blown by fierce winds back into the inferno. The winds whipped up huge flames aboard the landing vessels, and then, as fuel tanks exploded, the ships were enveloped in black, acrid smoke.

Nicholson watched men dive into the burning waters with life jackets to rescue their comrades. Helicopters ignored the fire and smoke to hoist men out. Spotting life rafts drifting back into the blaze around the Sir Galahad, four helicopter pilots flew behind the vessel and turned their aircraft into gigantic fans: flying low, they used the downdraft of their rotor blades to push the rubber rafts to the safety of the beach. Ashore, all was chaos as casualties were brought to a makeshift field hospital and then flown by a continuous helicopter shuttle to the main British medical center at San Carlos Bay. Said an army doctor at Fitzroy: "I've seen some pretty awful injuries, but nothing as horrifying as this. All we can do is put on special burn dressings and get them back as soon as possible to a warm, sterile unit."

Two hours later, Mirages attacked and sank a small British landing craft in Choiseul Sound; London said that four men died and two were wounded. Another wave of Argentine aircraft swept toward the Port San Carlos beachhead. They hit the 2,800-ton frigate H.M.S. Plymouth, one of the older vessels of its type in the 40-ship British task force. The Argentines claimed that the Plymouth exploded, but the British Defense Ministry insisted that while the ship had been damaged, it was still in service. According to the British, five men were wounded. The British said they shot down seven Argentine aircraft in the various attacks and damaged four others. Argentina admitted losing two planes.

The British losses at Fitzroy once again highlighted the major weakness of their task force: the lack of an effective airborne early warning system similar to the AW ACS used by the U.S. The Falklands conflict erupted only a few months before the British were scheduled to install a comparable radar system in their Nimrod Mark 3 reconnaissance aircraft. About six weeks ago, London asked Washington for the loan of an AW ACS to repair that important deficiency, but the Reagan Administration refused. The reason: Washington's insistence that American servicemen, who would be necessary to operate the system, not become involved in the South Atlantic battle.

The British have also been hampered by the poor performance of the Sea Dart and Seaslug antiaircraft missiles aboard task-force ships. The guidance radar of those weapons has failed to respond properly in the harsh realities of combat. For the first time since the Falklands conflict began, some experts in London have begun to murmur that Task Force Commander Woodward may have taken too many chances in committing his warships to support of the British invasion forces.

Another attack at sea produced no casualties, but a mystery. Some 500 miles northeast of the Falklands, the 220,117-ton U.S.-owned but Liberian-registered supertanker Hercules was steaming south with her oil tanks empty. Her eventual destination: Alaska. The ship was far from the 200-mile blockade limit, which both Britain and Argentina have declared around the Falklands, when it was attacked by a four-engine aircraft, probably a C130. Bombs were pushed out of the aircraft cargo door; one hit the Hercules but failed to explode on board. None of the 29 crewmen was injured. According to the British Defense Ministry, the ship was ordered by radio to head for an Argentine port within 15 minutes or face attack. Argentina denied any knowledge of the incident, but on June 2 an Argentine C-130 made a similar attack on a British oil tanker within the 200-mile zone, causing little damage.

News of Argentina's aerial successes lifted the gray mood that had enveloped Buenos Aires when a humiliating defeat at Port Stanley had seemed inevitable. Blared a headline in the daily newspaper Conviction: LONDON ADMITS GETTING A BEATING. Under the eyes of a beaming President Galtieri, thousands of chanting, banner-waving Argentines gathered in the central Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires to celebrate Malvinas Day, the anniversary of the appointment of the first Argentine governor of the contested islands known in Spanish as Las Malvinas. As Galtieri waved his hat in salute, the crowd chanted, "Be strong! Don't back down!" and unfurled national flags of sky-blue and white.

The Buenos Aires rally was yet another sign of how the Falklands struggle has brought a degree of unity to Argentina, a country of 28 million, traditionally riven by factionalism. Says Francisco Manrique, 63, president of the country's suspended Federal Party: "Whatever happens in the Falklands and whatever mistakes the government made are secondary. The fact is that Argentines now have a sense of pride and nationhood as never before." The war was also bringing about a realignment of Argentine foreign policy. Staunchly Roman Catholic, anti-Communist and pro-Western, Argentina has responded to U.S. and Western European support for Britain in the Falklands battle by threatening to turn to the Soviet Union for military aid. Last week Argentina announced that it was closing its consulate in West Berlin and considering opening new embassies in Mozambique and Angola, two African countries dominated by Marxist-led regimes.

The message was not lost on Washington. Despite President Reagan's firm words of support for Britain in Westminster, the U.S. remains deeply concerned about the effects of the Falklands war on hemispheric, as well as NATO, unity. Behind the scenes, the U.S. was continuing to prod Britain to adopt a more flexible stance toward the future of the Falklands after a military victory. According to the British, one U.S. plan, reportedly floated last week by Washington Special Envoy Vernon Walters, offered a four-part solution: 1) British repossession of the Falklands to be followed by installation of a multinational administrative authority including the U.S., Britain, Brazil and Jamaica; 2) British sovereignty to continue for the time being, but with London considering at least a partial transfer of authority in the not too distant future; 3) a pullback of Argentine forces to be immediately matched or followed by a withdrawal by Britain of its task force; and 4) ultimately, direct negotiations between Argentina and Britain on the islands' long-term future.

In private talks with President Reagan and Secretary of State Haig in both London and Paris, Thatcher and her Foreign Secretary, Francis Pym, rejected such a compromise as "totally unacceptable." Argentina's continued military resistance, they said, ruled out any involvement in the Falklands' administration in the foreseeable future. The British warned that their position would further harden if President Galtieri carried out his threat to continue the battle from the Argentine mainland after a British military victory.

Meanwhile, Thatcher pressed the U.S. to take part in a postwar Falklands peace-keeping force. Haig responded noncommittally that Washington's position "would depend very much on the conditions establishing such a force, its mandate and the political framework under which it was set up."

Thatcher was under far less pressure in Britain to search for a solution that would restore permanent peace to the South Atlantic. Opposition Leader Michael Foot renewed his standing plea that the government try once again to reach a negotiated settlement through the U.N. The most passionate argument against continued fighting came from Labor M.P. Leo Abse, who asked in Commons that Thatcher "stop playing at being a warrior queen."

As the attack was launched on Port Stanley last weekend, it became possible that a complete British victory was at hand. But the consequence of that for Thatcher was likely to be an even more demanding challenge. As London's respected Economist noted, Thatcher's allies, including the U.S., "will be looking for certain civil greatness from Britain to match its military prowess." That must eventually mean a willingness to discuss with anyone what British soldiers are now dying to defend: guaranteed security for the Falklands, a measure of self-determination for an isolated and declining Falklands population and the use of peaceful negotiation to settle international disputes. The ultimate test of British strength was not just its ability to win the war in the South Atlantic but its ability to reach an accommodation with Argentina that would avoid the need for another battle at Port Stanley.

-- By George Russell. Reported by Marsh Clark/Buenos Aires and Arthur White/London

With reporting by Marsh Clark, Arthur White

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