Ghost Force

Labour Ministers Stunned at Navy's Accusations

The London Telegraph, a Tory and military stronghold, had talked to General Robin Brenchley:

TOP ARMY GENERAL LAMBASTES GOVERNMENT 'STUPIDITY'

Brenchley's Warnings in New Falklands War

The following interview had nothing to do with the ability of the soldiers or their commanders. It had to do with equipment, air cover, missile defenses, and ordnance. What he called the 'criminal neglect of our requirements.' Without fear for his own career, General Brenchley described this British Prime Minister and this British government as 'the worst I have ever known, and, hopefully, the worst I ever will know.'

And his views were echoed over and over, in all the newspapers, and in all the television news programs, as if toadying up to Labour politicians was a thing of the past. It was as if the government had become a meaningless impediment to the gallant fighting men who would soon be sailing south to fight for the honor of Great Britain.

It was as if every chicken in the coop had somehow come home to roost. The media gloated, slamming into a Labour government that had thought it might somehow be able to wing it, feigning financial competence by increasing taxes and capping military budgets at well below required levels.

They had then handed over all of the saved money to state hospital bureaucrats, social security, disadvantaged gays, lesbians, the homeless, single-parent families, the unemployed, the unemployable, the weak, the impotent, the helpless, and the hopeless. Not until this day had they truly realized the stark naivete of those policies.

And now the Prime Minister's cronies sat packed into a tightly grouped little enclave of nervousness, while their leader stood before the House and tried to explain how Great Britain's naval and military powers were not in any way weakened. And how the armed forces were absolutely ready to obey the will of the House, and head south to fight the jackbooted aggressors from the land of the pampas.

'I tell you now,' he said in his customary, shallow, cocksure way, 'in our many years in government we have prepared the Navy and the rest of the military to fight a modern war. We have reduced numbers of personnel, but today we are more prepared for the kind of war we now face in the twenty-first century. Our professionalism is greater, our commanders have been given free rein to train our people to the highest standards.

'Our warships have state-of-the art weapons systems, and no one would dispute our aircrew are the finest in the world. I have spoken personally to all of our service leaders. I have explained the will of the House of Commons, expressed in this place on Monday afternoon, must prevail.

'And, Honorable Members, I can say with enormous optimism they were completely in agreement with our decision. Indeed, several of them thanked both me and my government for the farsighted changes we had made to the Navy — by that I mean the two new, state-of-the-art aircraft carriers, and the superb new Typhoon fighter jets, which will soon be developed to launch from their flight decks.

'I received nothing but gratitude from the Army for the new streamlining of the regiments, the foresight of our Secretary of State for Defense, Peter Caulfield, and the new twenty-first-century professionalism that we now enjoy.

'Honorable Members, the forthcoming conflict in the South Atlantic will be hard, as all wars are hard. But I have the utmost confidence in our commanders, and feel quite certain they will return victorious.

'We are at war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. And at this stage I see no reason to extend that state of war to the Argentinian mainland. If, however, that day should come, then I am assured by all of our commanders that we are ready, capable, and certain that we shall prevail.

'But, like another Prime Minister, a lady from the opposite benches, who stood in this very place twenty-eight years ago, I say again to the House, we in government cannot tolerate a brutish, unprovoked attack on our islands. We cannot and will not put up with it.

'As in 1982, the Royal Navy will sail to the South Atlantic. The Admirals have told me personally of their total optimism. And they will bear with them a mighty Task Force. And either the Argentinians will surrender, or we will blast them asunder on the land, in the air, and on the waters that surround the islands. But they will not get away with this…'

At this point, the entire House erupted with a roar that must have been heard outside in Parliament Square. Members stood up, waving their order papers, cheering lustily, in perfect imitation of the football crowd, baying for revenge, as described by Peter Caulfield in Downing Street on Sunday night.

There was absolutely no political advantage for any Member to stand up and challenge the validity of the Prime Minister's words. No one wished to hear them. This was an afternoon of the highest emotion, the hours of doubt were long gone. Britain's naval and military commanders had told the government they would go and win back the Falkland Islands. Rule Britannia.

So far as the MPs were concerned, this was Super Bowl II in the South Atlantic. Older Members could somehow recall only the triumph, as Admiral Woodward's flagship Hermes came steaming home to Portsmouth. There was the memory of the big Argentinian cruiser General Belgrano listing, sinking, in her death throes.

There were the pictures of the Argentinian surrender, thousands of troops lining up, laying down their arms. And of course the timeless vision of the men of Britain's 2 Para, marching behind their bloodstained banner, into Port Stanley, their commanding officer, Colonel Jones, slain, but their victory complete.

Who could forget those distant days of pride and conquest? And who could resist a faint tremor of anticipation as once more the sprawling, historic Portsmouth Dockyard revved up for another conflict?

Not the veteran MPs of the House of Commons. Because the onset of battle seemed somehow to give them stature, to add to their sense of self-importance, if that was possible. But they left the great chamber that afternoon with their heads high, chins jutting defiantly, upper lips already stiffening. They were men involved with a war, a real war. They were men involved in life-or-death decisions.

But if the military were to be believed, it would be mostly death. After all, none of the MPs had sailed with Admiral Woodward into a gusting, squally Levanter off the Gibraltar Straits in the spring of 1982. None of them saw the entire ship's company of a home-going British warship lining the port-side rails to salute the warriors heading south. None of them heard the singing, as Woodward's armada sailed by…the achingly prophetic notes of the hymn that morning, 'Abide With Me.'

None of them witnessed the paras, raked by machine-gun fire, fighting and dying on the flat plain of Goose Green. They never heard the cries and whispers of the injured and dying in shattered, burning warships. And they surely never saw the shocked faces of the doctors and nurses in the hospital on board Hermes as the horribly burned seamen and officers were carried in.

They didn't. But Admiral Mark Palmer did, and the memory of lost friends stood stark before him as he stared at the television, listening to the hollow words of the Prime Minister. The Admiral winced at the sight of the ludicrous, complacent grins on the faces of the government ministers, nodding earnestly as their leader spun and distorted the naval and military picture to the House of Commons.

Admiral Palmer was sixty years old. He had served in the first Falklands War as a twenty-two-year-old Sub- Lieutenant in HMS Coventry before she was hit and sunk just north of the islands in the late afternoon of May 25, 1982. He recalled the helplessness, the desperation, as they tried to maneuver the ship, with its long-range radar on the blink, not knowing from which way the Argentinian bombers would come.

Twenty-eight years later, he still awakened in the night, trembling, his heart pounding when he heard again, in his dreams, the blasts of the bombs smashing into his ship, the screams of the injured. And he felt again the searing pain in his own burned face as the bomb blast hit him while he tried to supervise the 20mm gun on the upper deck.

Admiral Palmer was not afraid. His grandfather had fought at the Battle of Jutland in World War I. In truth Mark Palmer was a modern-day Roope VC. He'd have rammed an opponent when all was lost; he would most certainly have died for his convoy; and if required, he would have died to save this benighted British government, which, like all of his colleagues, he secretly loathed.

It was not a lack of courage, skill, or daring that in his mind doomed this new operation in the South Atlantic.