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Time to give a little more background to this tale & introduce a few more players, where appropriate names have been changed. Light up a P.C. & we are ready to begin.
I had been with the girlfriend (GF) for 6/12; she was a wee buxom brunette, with a soft Welsh accent & was a senior
in the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Naval Nursing Service (QARNNS). We lived in the hospital, in separate quarters. Even though NHS hospitals at that time would have allowed visitors overnight in the nurse’s accommodation, the RN still believed in their role in loco parentis & all you could do was watch TV in the nurse’s communal TV room, until 2200. So we used to go away for weekends to Southsea & stay in rented lets. These are flats that would be rented out to holiday makers in the summer but mostly empty during the winter. This arrangement suited us as we were still in the bloom of a physical relationship that had yet to develop into a more romantic liaison. We saw several couples from the hospital there; some of whom we didn’t know were seeing each other & some who shouldn’t have been seeing each other!
When working in the RNH Haslar as trained staff, our rota was 6 wks days, 2wks nights & then 2wks leave. That was made up of 1wk night leave & 1wk’s annual leave. So whereas 95% of service personnel only got 6/52 annual leave, we could get 12. Nights were a 12 hr shift, starting at 1945 with handover & getting off some time after 0800. On your first wk your partner on the ward would be on their second. So when you did the drug rounds at least one of you should have been awake enough to prevent any errors. At the time NHS nurses were doing a maximum of 3 nights on wards.
I can’t remember how many days I was into my fortnight when the Invasion took place on the 2nd April but it can’t have been more than a couple. I had read of the escalating tension in the Daily Mail, which the Government had ignored & unlike the Labour Government in a previous era to tension, had decided not to send a submarine down to act as a deterrent. So I wasn’t so surprised when the news, that Argentine commandos had landed on the Falklands. I had another reason to follow the story, my mate Terry Bradford.
About a yr before I had been based at Royal Naval Air Station Culdrose, in Helston Cornwall; it’s a Search & Rescue centre covering the Channel & out into the Atlantic. There were two squadrons that provided this cover one of Wessex helicopters that covered the nearer areas & the Seakings, which covered the further, with their greater fuel endurance. We had been there for a couple of yrs, going out as medical cover, when injured yachties or trawler men needed evacuating. Terry had been promoted to Leading Medical Assistant (LMA) & was now due a draft.
One day Terry came to me with a draft, he had been ordered to the Falkland Islands, for 1yr tour as Blue Beret medic. ‘So Simon, you have done geography, where are the Falklands?’ It may seem strange now but most of the British public thought the Falklands were somewhere off Scotland! I told him they were off the Argentine coast & being posted there would be just like being on my dream draft, Diego Garcia (British Indian Ocean Territory B.O.I.T. the other lonely little rock that LMA’s could get drafted too) but opposite. He frowned. Well D.G is hot & sunny; the F.I.’s are cold & wet. DG has donkeys & F.I,
& penguins. D.G. is an overnight flight to the nearest hospital in Singapore & F.I.’s are even more remote from serious medical aid. But if you want to prove you can cope on your own in a remote environment, to achieve your goal of being LMA on a warship, this is the draft for you.
Well dear readers Terry took my advice & accepted the draft. He probably could have got out of it, as there was a system to swap drafts & there was always someone desperate to get out of the hospital. He had to do 6 months training before his new draft: including abseiling canoeing & a beat up so he could participate in the RM activities i.e. actually keep up & be on the scene if an injury or incident occurred to one of his fellow 20 Royal Marines, affectionately know as Bootnecks.
I was surprised they didn’t put him through the Green Beret Course, as 6 months would have been long enough to do this but that would have meant being stuck in the RM & Terry was happy with that as he wanted his ship. One point he probably didn’t consider is that as a blue beret, you are a ‘crap hat’ to the Bootnecks & never accepted in the same way. After his training Terry went down with the 20 RM he would spend the next yr with, he was just 21yo (I was 22yo). It was during their handover week with the previous incumbents when an Argentine naval force arrived to this lonely British outcrop & the invasion started.
There was a fire fight & the RM did injure & kill some of the Argentines but I believe the Argentines wanted as bloodless takeover if possible & by shear force of numbers overwhelmed the situation. Rex Hunt the British Governor told the RM Major to surrender & famously refused to shake hands with the Argentine commander, as he had not acted in a gentlemanly fashion by invading.
Enoch Powell (he of the Rivers of Blood speech) stood in the House of Commons & decried the RM for not fighting to the last man, ‘What was the point of having the RM there if they weren’t prepared to die to the last man?’ Because they are not the French bloody Legion would have been my answer! All their most famous battles were ‘glorious’ defeats of expendable men. I suspect Powell never got another serviceman’s vote after that. The RM were always a token deterrent, 20 men can’t be expected to hold off an army. They were there to give visible proof of our sovereignty, with HMS Endurance Arctic survey ship (the Red Plum) as the sole naval ship permanently stationed in the area. And the area of F.I.’s, South Georgia & down to the Arctic, is extremely large, check it out on a map. They had raised the alarm through to London & fought until ordered to lay down their arms; their deaths would have been pointless & would have left al lot less manovering for the Governments to sort the situation out diplomatically. It was of course a massive humiliation for the troops & the when the Argentines photographed them lying in the dirt & then walking through the streets with their hands raised, the British public demanded action & therefore that sorry episode backfired on the Argentineans. Marines_surrender_at_Government_House.jpg
surrender1.jpgPhotos taken from the internet.
Terry was engaged to a young navy nurse, Claire. I knew Claire from our time in RNH Stonehouse in Plymouth. I think she had just finished her training when I went down there for my part three training, work experience on the wards. Knowing both of them meant that I worried about both of them, how would I explain my brilliant advice to Claire if anything happened to Terry?
Whilst I was sleeping during the day, ready for my next night shift, I was rudely awoken by a bashing on my cabin door. RNH Haslar was probably the only naval accom in it’s day that offered single cabins to junior rates, so hopefully not too many others were disturbed. ‘Come out here Dove, I want a word with you!’ I believe this is an acceptable civilian translation. When I carefully opened the door it was Terry, just having arrived back in the country. The RM team had been sent to Montevideo & flown back by the RAF. He was just in Haslar to collect his ‘Survivors’ leave pass (something usually given to shipwrecked survivors) & disappear for a few wks. ‘You & your bloody ideas, you said it was a forgotten back water, a boring yr of isolation that would get me a warship’. ‘Glad to see you back mate, sure your ship will come.’
I met Terry later in the bar before going on shift
. I know in these non-smoking, non-drinking days this will sound strange, but it wasn’t against the rules to have a pint before going on nightshift. I didn’t do it usually to avoid falling asleep in the wee hrs. Those on the psychiatric ward used to do it on principal. They used to enjoy breathing on the senior rates, who were on the ‘Basket Weaving Course’ drying out from their alcohol abuse, aimed at returning them to the service, as more acceptable functioning alcoholics. Ah, wicked is the service sense of humour!
Terry had the last laugh of course, he was off on leave & his parting words were, ‘you’ll be off next mate, say Hi to Port Stanley for me!’ I went to the ward & once we had handed out the coco, drugs & bedded the patients down, I discussed his prediction with the nurse on with me. Her name was Sindy & I knew her from RNH Stonehouse as well. I think she was still doing her training when I was down there. We hadn’t spoken two words there; she was a pretty attractive blonde & got a lot of attention elsewhere. Anyway when stuck together for a week, the fact we had met before broke the ice a little. She wasn’t very talkative (some people never really adjust to nights), but we discussed & were both aware we could get the call once we had finished nights.
Well being on nights kept us from being sent to SS Canberra (which was later fired upon). The first unit to leave the Hospital was the Surgical Support Team. This was a bunch of medical personnel who were on 48hrs notice to go anywhere in the world where an incident blew up. They had to do extra training & exercises away from the hospital, which must have been a real drag, especially when no one could remember the last time the team had been called to action. So I can understand when the nursing officers (all female in the RN in those days), were so upset when none of them were taken. They had done the time but weren’t to be put in harms way. They never forgave those of us who did go down & gave us all a hard time for yrs about it.
Well I finished my nights & was due to go home on leave, when I went to collect my leave pass the Master at Arms (chief policeman) told me to report to Matron’s office. I was told I was on 48hrs notice to fly to Gibraltar to join a school ship the SS Uganda, which the Government had taken up & was converting to a hospital ship. I was to be confined to the hospital. I asked if I could have permission to go home that night, as my grandmother was visiting & we all had tickets for the theatre in Guildford to see Oscar Wilde’s ‘The importance of being Ernest’. She didn’t know me from Adam, the nursing hierarchy never bothered with the medics at all, but I guess didn’t look like the sort of guy who would do a runner & desert so she gave me a special 24hr pass. That afternoon I rode on my 100cc Honda the 60 miles to my parents, saw my grandmother & the play, an excellent production. Lady Bracknell's phrase ‘in a Handbag!’ was to be heard in surprising situations throughout the journey down South.
The next morning there were no emotional scenes; my Father had been in the RAF & his little conflict was the Suez crisis, we shook hands like English father’s & sons have done for centuries, as one leaves another for an uncertain future. I guess my mother & sister were more worried but no one really thought it would come to all out war at this stage & no one wanted to be seen as being overly dramatic. We weren’t hysterical Sun readers after all. We all thought the politicians would sort it out before we got to Ascension Island. Perhaps I thought this might be the last time I’ll see my elderly & frail grandmother; perhaps she thought the same? I at least needn’t have worried as she lived another 15yrs!
I returned to Haslar on time & couple of days later after saying goodbye to the GF
who promised to write, our group were on a bus to RAF Lynham to board a Hercules to Gib. I noticed as we waited Sindy buying a pack of fags. ‘Didn’t know you smoked’ I commented. ‘I haven’t since I was 18 but I need one today’. She smoked most of the pack whilst we were hanging around. On the fight the nurses got their first taste of real service life. The toilet was a bucket behind screen of hessian sacking. We were strapped into parachute seats, most uncomfortable for a 3hr+ fight. There were several young guys with long hair, lying on top of the freight getting shut eye, no safety belts for them; Secret Squirrels en-route to some fun. And we were looking fwd to some fun in Gib, after 4yrs service this was to be my first foreign run ashore; our adventure had begun.
I had been with the girlfriend (GF) for 6/12; she was a wee buxom brunette, with a soft Welsh accent & was a senior
in the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Naval Nursing Service (QARNNS). We lived in the hospital, in separate quarters. Even though NHS hospitals at that time would have allowed visitors overnight in the nurse’s accommodation, the RN still believed in their role in loco parentis & all you could do was watch TV in the nurse’s communal TV room, until 2200. So we used to go away for weekends to Southsea & stay in rented lets. These are flats that would be rented out to holiday makers in the summer but mostly empty during the winter. This arrangement suited us as we were still in the bloom of a physical relationship that had yet to develop into a more romantic liaison. We saw several couples from the hospital there; some of whom we didn’t know were seeing each other & some who shouldn’t have been seeing each other!When working in the RNH Haslar as trained staff, our rota was 6 wks days, 2wks nights & then 2wks leave. That was made up of 1wk night leave & 1wk’s annual leave. So whereas 95% of service personnel only got 6/52 annual leave, we could get 12. Nights were a 12 hr shift, starting at 1945 with handover & getting off some time after 0800. On your first wk your partner on the ward would be on their second. So when you did the drug rounds at least one of you should have been awake enough to prevent any errors. At the time NHS nurses were doing a maximum of 3 nights on wards.
I can’t remember how many days I was into my fortnight when the Invasion took place on the 2nd April but it can’t have been more than a couple. I had read of the escalating tension in the Daily Mail, which the Government had ignored & unlike the Labour Government in a previous era to tension, had decided not to send a submarine down to act as a deterrent. So I wasn’t so surprised when the news, that Argentine commandos had landed on the Falklands. I had another reason to follow the story, my mate Terry Bradford.
About a yr before I had been based at Royal Naval Air Station Culdrose, in Helston Cornwall; it’s a Search & Rescue centre covering the Channel & out into the Atlantic. There were two squadrons that provided this cover one of Wessex helicopters that covered the nearer areas & the Seakings, which covered the further, with their greater fuel endurance. We had been there for a couple of yrs, going out as medical cover, when injured yachties or trawler men needed evacuating. Terry had been promoted to Leading Medical Assistant (LMA) & was now due a draft.
One day Terry came to me with a draft, he had been ordered to the Falkland Islands, for 1yr tour as Blue Beret medic. ‘So Simon, you have done geography, where are the Falklands?’ It may seem strange now but most of the British public thought the Falklands were somewhere off Scotland! I told him they were off the Argentine coast & being posted there would be just like being on my dream draft, Diego Garcia (British Indian Ocean Territory B.O.I.T. the other lonely little rock that LMA’s could get drafted too) but opposite. He frowned. Well D.G is hot & sunny; the F.I.’s are cold & wet. DG has donkeys & F.I,
& penguins. D.G. is an overnight flight to the nearest hospital in Singapore & F.I.’s are even more remote from serious medical aid. But if you want to prove you can cope on your own in a remote environment, to achieve your goal of being LMA on a warship, this is the draft for you.Well dear readers Terry took my advice & accepted the draft. He probably could have got out of it, as there was a system to swap drafts & there was always someone desperate to get out of the hospital. He had to do 6 months training before his new draft: including abseiling canoeing & a beat up so he could participate in the RM activities i.e. actually keep up & be on the scene if an injury or incident occurred to one of his fellow 20 Royal Marines, affectionately know as Bootnecks.
I was surprised they didn’t put him through the Green Beret Course, as 6 months would have been long enough to do this but that would have meant being stuck in the RM & Terry was happy with that as he wanted his ship. One point he probably didn’t consider is that as a blue beret, you are a ‘crap hat’ to the Bootnecks & never accepted in the same way. After his training Terry went down with the 20 RM he would spend the next yr with, he was just 21yo (I was 22yo). It was during their handover week with the previous incumbents when an Argentine naval force arrived to this lonely British outcrop & the invasion started.
There was a fire fight & the RM did injure & kill some of the Argentines but I believe the Argentines wanted as bloodless takeover if possible & by shear force of numbers overwhelmed the situation. Rex Hunt the British Governor told the RM Major to surrender & famously refused to shake hands with the Argentine commander, as he had not acted in a gentlemanly fashion by invading.
Enoch Powell (he of the Rivers of Blood speech) stood in the House of Commons & decried the RM for not fighting to the last man, ‘What was the point of having the RM there if they weren’t prepared to die to the last man?’ Because they are not the French bloody Legion would have been my answer! All their most famous battles were ‘glorious’ defeats of expendable men. I suspect Powell never got another serviceman’s vote after that. The RM were always a token deterrent, 20 men can’t be expected to hold off an army. They were there to give visible proof of our sovereignty, with HMS Endurance Arctic survey ship (the Red Plum) as the sole naval ship permanently stationed in the area. And the area of F.I.’s, South Georgia & down to the Arctic, is extremely large, check it out on a map. They had raised the alarm through to London & fought until ordered to lay down their arms; their deaths would have been pointless & would have left al lot less manovering for the Governments to sort the situation out diplomatically. It was of course a massive humiliation for the troops & the when the Argentines photographed them lying in the dirt & then walking through the streets with their hands raised, the British public demanded action & therefore that sorry episode backfired on the Argentineans. Marines_surrender_at_Government_House.jpg
surrender1.jpgPhotos taken from the internet.
Terry was engaged to a young navy nurse, Claire. I knew Claire from our time in RNH Stonehouse in Plymouth. I think she had just finished her training when I went down there for my part three training, work experience on the wards. Knowing both of them meant that I worried about both of them, how would I explain my brilliant advice to Claire if anything happened to Terry?
Whilst I was sleeping during the day, ready for my next night shift, I was rudely awoken by a bashing on my cabin door. RNH Haslar was probably the only naval accom in it’s day that offered single cabins to junior rates, so hopefully not too many others were disturbed. ‘Come out here Dove, I want a word with you!’ I believe this is an acceptable civilian translation. When I carefully opened the door it was Terry, just having arrived back in the country. The RM team had been sent to Montevideo & flown back by the RAF. He was just in Haslar to collect his ‘Survivors’ leave pass (something usually given to shipwrecked survivors) & disappear for a few wks. ‘You & your bloody ideas, you said it was a forgotten back water, a boring yr of isolation that would get me a warship’. ‘Glad to see you back mate, sure your ship will come.’
I met Terry later in the bar before going on shift
. I know in these non-smoking, non-drinking days this will sound strange, but it wasn’t against the rules to have a pint before going on nightshift. I didn’t do it usually to avoid falling asleep in the wee hrs. Those on the psychiatric ward used to do it on principal. They used to enjoy breathing on the senior rates, who were on the ‘Basket Weaving Course’ drying out from their alcohol abuse, aimed at returning them to the service, as more acceptable functioning alcoholics. Ah, wicked is the service sense of humour! Terry had the last laugh of course, he was off on leave & his parting words were, ‘you’ll be off next mate, say Hi to Port Stanley for me!’ I went to the ward & once we had handed out the coco, drugs & bedded the patients down, I discussed his prediction with the nurse on with me. Her name was Sindy & I knew her from RNH Stonehouse as well. I think she was still doing her training when I was down there. We hadn’t spoken two words there; she was a pretty attractive blonde & got a lot of attention elsewhere. Anyway when stuck together for a week, the fact we had met before broke the ice a little. She wasn’t very talkative (some people never really adjust to nights), but we discussed & were both aware we could get the call once we had finished nights.
Well being on nights kept us from being sent to SS Canberra (which was later fired upon). The first unit to leave the Hospital was the Surgical Support Team. This was a bunch of medical personnel who were on 48hrs notice to go anywhere in the world where an incident blew up. They had to do extra training & exercises away from the hospital, which must have been a real drag, especially when no one could remember the last time the team had been called to action. So I can understand when the nursing officers (all female in the RN in those days), were so upset when none of them were taken. They had done the time but weren’t to be put in harms way. They never forgave those of us who did go down & gave us all a hard time for yrs about it.
Well I finished my nights & was due to go home on leave, when I went to collect my leave pass the Master at Arms (chief policeman) told me to report to Matron’s office. I was told I was on 48hrs notice to fly to Gibraltar to join a school ship the SS Uganda, which the Government had taken up & was converting to a hospital ship. I was to be confined to the hospital. I asked if I could have permission to go home that night, as my grandmother was visiting & we all had tickets for the theatre in Guildford to see Oscar Wilde’s ‘The importance of being Ernest’. She didn’t know me from Adam, the nursing hierarchy never bothered with the medics at all, but I guess didn’t look like the sort of guy who would do a runner & desert so she gave me a special 24hr pass. That afternoon I rode on my 100cc Honda the 60 miles to my parents, saw my grandmother & the play, an excellent production. Lady Bracknell's phrase ‘in a Handbag!’ was to be heard in surprising situations throughout the journey down South.
The next morning there were no emotional scenes; my Father had been in the RAF & his little conflict was the Suez crisis, we shook hands like English father’s & sons have done for centuries, as one leaves another for an uncertain future. I guess my mother & sister were more worried but no one really thought it would come to all out war at this stage & no one wanted to be seen as being overly dramatic. We weren’t hysterical Sun readers after all. We all thought the politicians would sort it out before we got to Ascension Island. Perhaps I thought this might be the last time I’ll see my elderly & frail grandmother; perhaps she thought the same? I at least needn’t have worried as she lived another 15yrs!
I returned to Haslar on time & couple of days later after saying goodbye to the GF
who promised to write, our group were on a bus to RAF Lynham to board a Hercules to Gib. I noticed as we waited Sindy buying a pack of fags. ‘Didn’t know you smoked’ I commented. ‘I haven’t since I was 18 but I need one today’. She smoked most of the pack whilst we were hanging around. On the fight the nurses got their first taste of real service life. The toilet was a bucket behind screen of hessian sacking. We were strapped into parachute seats, most uncomfortable for a 3hr+ fight. There were several young guys with long hair, lying on top of the freight getting shut eye, no safety belts for them; Secret Squirrels en-route to some fun. And we were looking fwd to some fun in Gib, after 4yrs service this was to be my first foreign run ashore; our adventure had begun.
during the 
close season.
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