I have taken a number of small liberties with history here, this being fiction after all. I apologise if any of the real folk who were involved in this feel I have wronged them in any way. This tale is offered in the deepest respect. And of course I affirm copyright, 2010, in both my real name as held by the site operators and the name Cyclist.

CHAPTER 2
The bastards came over at night as well. They weren’t that effective, but having to dive off your basha into a trench doesn’t help with fatigue. We had a bit more room now to play with our toys and avoid those of the Argentines, as the paras had been pulled off to do something else.

What that was intended to be was announced quite openly and calmly by some arsehole on the BBC well before they started. I heard their colonel was threatening to prosecute them for treason. What the hell were they thinking? I did not envy the redtops at all. It was one thing making an assault at night, another thing entirely doing it after sending them a written bloody invitation.

We were catching some crap ourselves as the Rock Apes finally got their little babies up and running. A Pucara had tried to slide in and make a bit of mischief, but the jimpy crew had scared them, just before a Rapier punched a hole right through it. Stewie and I watched that from the bottom of our increasingly-damp hole, as there wasn’t much point in us being up. You don’t bring a plane down with an SLR.

Rain, more rain, and the constant sight of waterspouts in Bomb Alley, as we were now calling San Carlos Water. I wondered how the hell the Navy pilots were able to keep going back up, the weather was hard enough without having to bloody fly in it. We heard that the attack had gone in, and reports were scary. Real WWI stuff, assaulting trenches with the bayonet. I always thought that a bayonet was there just in case you couldn’t shoot straight, and to be honest I didn’t want to find out. Just let me and Stewie get out of this one intact.

“Stevens, McDuff, get here!”

“Yes, Corp?”

“Got a job for you and a couple of others. J-Coy needs a few extras for a bit of fun with the paras”

Oh fuck.

“Get yourselves a combat load, and make sure you take a good supply of grenades. The bean-eaters have dug themselves in and are being a bit cuntish about coming out. You’re going to give 2 Para a bit of a hand, things are moving”

“What’s doing?”

“I hear the paras’ Rupert has demanded that the Argies surrender!”

Balls of brass, balls of brass.

If you thought that riding in an LCU was bad, then don’t even think about helicopters. We were airlifted to the battlefield. Sounds fun. What it actually means is getting into a big, booming tin box with an extremely noisy engine overhead and a lot of draughts, and then being flung around the sky in it by a pilot with a high regard for anti-aircraft missiles and a very healthy desire not to meet any. He fired flares off a couple of times, but we made it to somewhere I was told was Darwin. An ominous name…

There were bodies, in our DPM camouflage rather than Argie olive green. Too many of them. One of the Juliets muttered to me.

“I told them not to make themselves too comfortable, said we’d be back soon”

I realised he was one of the Moody Brook boys, the party of Marines who had been here when the invasion took place, who had been captured and then sent back to the UK.

“Got a score to settle then, mate?”

“Too fucking right. And it starts here”

A para was brought down to the helicopter with a wound dressing on his shoulder, his jacket and shirt pushed down to his waist to leave his upper parts bare. He was swearing quietly as two others helped him to a rock to sit while the aircrew sorted their flight plan. He looked up at us, weary, eyes filled with pain.

“They got the boss. He’s not supposed to be charging fucking trenches”

Something very big started banging away at the other side of the hill. The para grimaced.

“Anti-aircraft gun, 40mm or something like that. They’re using it on the lads. Oh fuck this hurts”

Into the chopper he went, along with two more who arrived as we sat, their mates heading back up the hill. The Juliet’s Company Sergeant Major came along the line of us sat behind our little knoll and listening to the moan of rounds passing overhead and the sharp rattle of small arms.

The CSM was brief, concise and bloody terrifying.

“Johnny Dago is dug in on the next hill there. He doesn’t want to leave. Our friends here have taken a bit of a hiding, but they are not Marines so we will have to show them how to do it. There is going to be a stonk from the gunners just to make a bit of noise and then we are going to assault the hill just beyond the airfield. We have a couple of the boys from the MILAN section with us, so here’s the score. Fire and movement as ever, boys. If you can’t get close enough to a trench to get some grenades into it, the Milan boys will donate an anti-tank rocket for your amusement. And you will fix bayonets.”

Was he fucking mad? He really seemed to be enjoying himself. You want me to walk up a hill into a machine gun with my pockets full of high explosive…

Stewie summed it up.

“How far between your legs can you get your head, Mike?”

“What the hell are you on about, mate?”

“If you can reach your arse you can kiss it goodbye!”

We formed up in open order and made our way down to the airfield. This was what I had trained so hard for, but it was not something I actively wanted to experience. As we walked down through the gorse and the Argentine trenches,I saw more death in one place than I ever imagined. There were smells, too. Burnt grass, burnt flesh, burnt explosives. Blood, so much of it, a thick metallic stink, as well as an overpowering stench of human excrement.

So many of the dead had fouled themselves. A glorious end, I don’t think so. Empty eyes filled with rain.

I dragged myself back to reality. This wasn’t going to be like one of those Hollywood films, where the bullets throw up spurts of dust and you dive for cover. No, here was how it actually happens, something smashes into you and knocks you over, or maybe tears part of you away, and then you hear the shot. And if t was one of those 40mm shells, what it tore away was half of your body.

Please God, if you are there, get Stewie out of this intact. Me if you can spare the time, but look after the man I love.

Concentrate. The first rounds should be falling shortly.

The ground shook, and we were off, hitting the lower slopes at speed to grab cover as the jimpy crews opened up on trenches already quivering under the impact of 105mm shells Once we were there we opened up with the SLRs as the machine gunners rushed up with the MILAN team. The CSM was waving his hands at me…oh, four of us, break left for the little gully. I took Stewie and two of the Juliets at a stumbling, splashing scramble through the wet grass and patches of bog until we were looking up the hill, and rounds started hissing past my head.

Bullets make different sounds depending how far away they are. Overhead, and far way, they moan, but close to they give a little short “wheet”, like a short hissing whistle, and they’re past before you can hear any more. That was the sound from that gully. Shit.

Stewie started crawling downhill, where there was a fold of ground. If he could get in there he might be able to cross their field of fire out of sight in the dead ground.

One of the great things about the SLR is that it can be fired from either shoulder, left or right, because there is no bolt to mess up your face. I popped the rifle round the edge and banged off a few left-handed shots to distract the enemy boys. Stewie was down, and across unharmed (honest, I’ll go to church some day) and he worked his way round to another bit of dead ground not far from the trench. I couldn’t see him, but I saw the grenade in the air, quickly followed by another. As soon as they went off, I was on my feet and sprinting as well as I could through long grass, uphill, stupidly firing off all the rounds left in my magazine There were four of them in the trench, one clearly dead, two more screaming and writhing as the fourth hammered at the cocking lever on his jammed gun.

He looked up at me just as I slid the bayonet into his belly.

Half twist, to release it from the grip of the muscles down there. Pull it back, and in again. And again, screaming in rage and terror.

Stewie grabbed me and pulled me down.

“You’ll get fucking slotted standing up”

He grimaced.

“Good job that grass was so wet. Now nobody can tell….I pissed myself”

I was panting like a steam train, hyperventilating, and so glad to see him whole. I couldn’t help it, I hugged him. He hugged me back.

“People will talk, Mike, but thanks for that”

We were joined by the Juliets, and then the MILAN crew came up. This was a commanding position, but why had they not sited some riflemen in support? Bad, bad tactics. I spotted another position about fifty yards away, and the MILAN crew gave it a present of one of their rockets. Firing around us intensified sharply, and then began to tail off. One of the Juliets’ sergeants slid into the trench, hardly sparing a glance for the dead but casting a careful eye over the two wounded.

“Get them down the hill when you get relieved. Nice one, boys. Looks like they want to stop for a bit, but eyes open, heads down, OK?

I covered my dead man’s face with his cap comforter. I would see him again, as the years went by, every night as he came to say “Hello, remember me?”

Stewie got the hexi going and soon we had a brew. We weren’t relieved, they simply sent a stretcher party for the wounded, one of whom died as we waited.

It got dark. We didn’t really sleep, just catching odd moments slumped in the trench, trying to avoid the stains and keeping as dry as possible. It actually stopped raining towards dawn, and as full light came on we saw a small party coming forward with a white flag. I found out later that this was the new commander’s instruction to the enemy. After Colonel Jones had died, Major Keeble had taken command and had demanded the Argentineans surrender. It seemed like they may just have chucked it in. Thank fuck for that.

And that was exactly what had happened, but what happened next astonished me. At least 1,000 men came out of cover in a long column, laying their weapons down as they came. What the hell were they going to say when they saw how few we actually were?

Years later, I saw an interview with the two commanders. Keeble was calm, measured. He had realised that he was in a nasty spot, and had gone for a walk to put his mind straight. He had even prayed a bit, trying to avoid any more unnecessary deaths, and had then decided to go for broke and demand they surrender. I was impressed.

Then, the Argentine commander gave his version, of glorious death for the Motherland and other such complete bullshit. Young men lay in holes, empty eyes filled with rainwater, because of idiots like him

So we rounded them up and herded them off to some wire enclosures till the tail troops could sort out some tents for them, and we stacked their weapons and helmets. They were a right mixture, some obviously country boys, very young, and terrified we were going to kill them out of hand, some nasty, hard-looking city boys who seemed to be doing their level best to conform to stereotype.

The helicopters had done most of the shuttle work with the wounded, and Stewie and I managed to cadge a lift back to D-Coy.

As we walked back to our unit, Stewie stopped me by a vehicle park, and pulled me out of sight behind a Landrover.

“Now, Mike, don’t get this wrong, but you might want to wash up”

He pointed my face at the Landy’s mirror, and I realised it was almost completely covered in young Argentine blood. That was it, I started to tremble, and, to my disgust, weep.

This time Stewie hugged me. I muttered

“What will people say?”

“Fuck ‘em”