Spearhead Assault: Blood, Guts and Glory on the Falklands Frontlines - Tapa dura

In the last great hand-to-hand battle of the twentieth century, the men of 2 Para bit off more than they could chew...but they chewed it anyway.

On May 21st, 1982, nearly four hundred soldiers from the 2cd Battalion Parachute Regiment under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Herbert 'H' Jones, landed with a British Task Force at San Carlos Bay on the Falklands. Their mission: to take the strategic position at Goose Green where military intelligence reckoned there were a couple of hundred Argentine troops guarding an airstrip.

The intelligence was wrong and when they attacked on May 27th, they were confronted by a 1,500-strong regiment of Argentine soldiers dug in with so much machine-gun ammunition they stood on the ammo boxes to keep their feet dry. Some of the enemy soldiers were Special Forces; some were Guarani Indians, a proud warrior race; a few even were Welsh-speaking members of a community founded in Patagoina in the nineteenth century. What they had in common were two .50 calibre machine guns in every position. It was going to be a hard and dreadful fight.

Fourteen hours later when the smoke had cleared on the most ferocious battle in post-war British history, nearly 250 Argentine soldiers were killed, scores more were wounded and another 1,300 had been captured. Goose Green would cost 2 Para the lives of seventeen men, including 'H' Jones, who was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for his role in the action.

Now, John Geddes, a former 2 Para close reconnaissance corporal, SAS hero and veteran of a fistful of hard wars tells the uncut story of the Battle of Goose Green, the decisive battle of the Falklands War. He tells it as he saw it. This is a no-holds barred account of what it was really like to walk into the storm of lead the Argentines hurled at their attackers.

“We have to recover those islands, we have to recover them for the people on them are British and British stock and they still owe allegiance to the crown and want to be British. We have to do what is necessary to recover those islands.”

Margaret Thatcher, 8 April 1982.