The attack was launched on 13 June, with the Scots Guards moving closer to the Mount, with assistance from the Royal Marines Mountain and Arctic Warfare Cadre. I ran back to my position and ordered my men to open fire. There the group observed virtual and live firing demonstrations using rifles and pistols, before spending a night under the stars to try out night vision devices. I can remember saying some type of prayer hoping the British wouldn't shoot me in the back. Adding to the other-worldliness of the scene was a surprise blizzard that sent snow swirling around the silhouetted fighting figures. The Battle of Mount Tumbledown was an engagement during the Falklands War. Our troop then cleared a safe line through the minefield. [28], No Harriers were shot down on 7 June. The project is a joint enterprise between Oxford University, Glasgow University, the veteran well-being charity Waterloo Uncovered and the Falkland Islands Museum and National Trust. Due to their proximity to the capital, they were of strategic importance during the 1982 War. An Air Force mobile Westinghouse AN/TPS-43 long-range radar had been positioned on Sapper Hill in April. In June, Lieutenant Reynoso's Recce Platoon reportedly exchanged small arms fire with a British patrol (possibly G Squadron from the SAS, who had commandeered a yacht at Bluff Cove Settlement to operate behind Tumbledown[25] and had also sent men forward in a helicopter[26]) infiltrated near Sapper Hill, prior to the final land battles. The road to the capital was open, the war virtually over. Our commanding sahib was shouting. Eventually, we got the artillery and started blasting away with everything else we had as well. The Guardsmen traded 66mm rockets and 84mm anti-tank rounds with the Argentinians, who were armed with anti-tank rifle grenades and protected in their rock bunkers. Captain Timothy Simon Spicer (School 1966-1969 . "It's been emotionally very hard and enjoyable and a pleasure all at the same time - just like the four seasons in one day of weather in the Falklands.". By 9:00a.m., the Scots Guards had gained the high ground east of Tumbledown Mountain and the Gurkhas commenced deploying across the heavily shelled saddle from Tumbledown south to Mount William, which they took with the loss of eight wounded. [10] The 5th Marines worked their way back into Stanley, leaving M Company to cover the retreat. Offshore, frigates including Active and the Avenger were also offshore to offer covering fire if and when it was needed in the fight against Argentinas 5thMarine Infantry Brigade. A Scots Guardsman. From there 2 PARA was ordered to attack the Argentines at the Goose Green settlement. But Was He Drugged Into Confessing? In the first phase, G company would take the western end of the mountain. The fight for the Falklands officially commenced on May 1, when a long-range Royal Air Force Vulcan bomber dropped its payload on Port Stanley Airport, and Royal Navy Sea Harrier FRS1s shot down three Argentine aircraft. Tumbledown: Directed by Richard Eyre. They were held by the Argentine 5th Naval Infantry Battalion (BIM 5), a reinforced, cold weather trained and equipped, Marine battalion. They came on us fast, and we fell back We eventually got through to Stanley, through what I would like to say was a perfect barrage fired by the Royal Artillery. Flix Roberto Aguiar and Francisco Cervo. Argentine Panhard armoured cars were moved forward to the edge of Stanley to cover the retreating troops. A Royal Marine had stepped on a mine, followed by another a few minutes later. The attacking British forces consisted of the 2nd Battalion, Scots Guards (2SG), mortar detachments from 42 Commando, Royal Marines and the 1st Battalion, 7th Duke of Edinburgh's Own Gurkha Rifles, (1/7 GR) as well as support from a troop of the Blues and Royals equipped with two Scorpion and two Scimitar armoured vehicles. The operation was initially planned as a daytime assault, but the climb was long and steep, over and around treacherous escarpments, and the soldiers would have made easy targets. I took a rifle grenade and fired at where I had seen the first three men. They who made that lonely sacrifice I hadn't fired directly at a British soldier, as they had been too hard to get a clear shot at. He is the only conscript soldier in his nation's recent history who has received this honour. The Scots Guards, a regiment of the British Army, suffered significant casualties during the 1982 Falklands War while fighting on Tumbledown Mountain. It was the Guardsmen of the Crown Mount Tumbledown, Mount William and Sapper Hill lie west of the capital. Proved British armed forces were still powerful. "The long-term exposure to their feared stimulus, the battle, during the trip reduced levels of anxiety. The bodies of 30 Argentine Army and Marine soldiers were found in and around the 5th Marine Battalion perimeter. At 2:30a.m., however, a second British assault overwhelmed the Argentinian defences. The Battle of Mount Tumbledown was an engagement in the Falklands War, one of a series of battles that took place during the British advance towards Stanley. The initial advance was unopposed, but a heavy firefight broke out when British troops made contact with Argentine defences. Only the personal intervention of Colonel Flix Aguiar, the 10th Brigade Chief of Staff, brought the fighting to an end. By 9:45 a.m., some 12 hours after the first shot rang out, the firing ceased. I went up through the roof and the vehicle went up and was turned right round by the explosion, recalled Major Brian Armitage who was shortly evacuated to receive medical treatment.[48]. While the British boasted nearly three times as many ships, the Argentines held a 3-to-1 advantage in combat aircraft. Lance-Corporal Graham Rennie of 3 Platoon in the book 5th Infantry Brigade in the Falklands (Pen & Sword Books, 2003) later described the attack: Our assault was initiated by a Guardsman killing a sniper, which was followed by a volley of 66 mm anti-tank rounds. In the most ferocious fighting of the battle, seven guardsmen died while trying for the summit. The 2nd Bn Scots Guards' Reconnaissance Platoon, commanded by Major Richard Bethell (a former SAS officer), and supported by four light tanks of the 'Blues & Royals', clashed with the Argentine O Marine Company under Marine Captain Quiroga in a blocking position on the lower slopes of Mount William. Major Simon Price sent 2 and 3 Platoons forward, preceded by a barrage of 66mm rockets to clear the forward RI 6 platoon. It was absolutely horrific. This close-quarters night battle was later dramatised in the BBC film Tumbledown. Major Jaimet later recalled: I heard the cries of the wounded calling for their comrades, twelve men wounded before nightfall. The Battle of Mount Tumbledown was an engagement during the Falklands War. Read about our approach to external linking. Teaching sessions combining archaeology and art in the community's museum and schools were also led by the project's artist - Sergeant-Major (Retired) Douglas Farthing MBE. At the time of the battle, N Company held Mount Tumbledown. Seeing an enemy soldier on the ground to his front, he bayoneted the man, later noting, He spun wildlyand my bayonet snapped. Using the only weapon he had, Lawrence recalled, I stabbed him and I stabbed him, again and again, in the mouth, in the face, in the guts, with a snapped bayonet. I left six men in a line with one machinegun to cover our retreat, but really we were fighting all the time; we could not break contact. By that time British forces had taken nearby Mount Harriet, Two Sisters Ridge anddespite prolonged Argentine artillery fire and heavy casualtiesMount Longdon. Major Oscar Ramon Jaimet's B (Bravo) Company, 6th Army Regiment was in reserve behind N Company. After colonial conflicts with France and Spain over the islands, Britain claimed sovereignty in 1774, landed troops to reassert its dominion in 1833 and formally established the Falklands as a Crown colony in 1840. The Argentinian sniper (in fact Private Luis Jorge Bordn or Walter Ignacio Becerra, according to La Madrid[18]), armed with a FAL rifle, had helped cover the Argentinean retreat, firing shots at a Scout helicopter evacuating wounded off Tumbledown and wounding two men (including Guardsman Kenny Mains). The fighting was hard going for Left Flank. I reorganized and found that I was down to sixteen men. "The models and the surveyed data also act as a digital archive of the condition of the battlefield and the remains, before they deteriorate and are lost forever," Dr Eve said. [22] The Westinghouse radar was also damaged, and would remain out of service for several days. I was shooting, doing my work. During the recovery, the aircraft caught fire on Hermes flight deck, owing to a fractured reaction pipe. Meanwhile, the United States, concerned Argentina might draw the Soviet Union into the fight as an ally, tried to stem the conflict diplomatically. Three Shirburnians serving with the 2 nd Battalion Scots Guard were involved in the Battle of Tumbledown Mountain during the Falklands Conflict, which was fought on 13-14 June 1982 and resulted in the British troops capturing the heights above Stanley :. To Guardsman Tracy Evens, the Sapper Hill positions looked impregnable: During the battle, Guardsman Philip Williams was knocked unconscious by an explosion, and left for dead. Mount William was just south of Tumbledown and the Marine battalion's O Company under Marine Captain Ricardo Quiroga was on its lower slopes. The engagement was an attack by the British Army and the Royal Marines on the heights over-looking Stanley, the Falkland Islands capital. It was rugged going, over scree that gave way under the soldiers boots. The CO sahib and the anti-tank Milan Platoon commander and the FOO were just going up and they got a rifle shot. We ran forward in extended line, machine-gunners and riflemen firing from the hip to keep the enemy heads down, enabling us to cover the open ground in the shortest possible time. [33]), On 13 June, a Welsh Guards messenger, bringing forward food supplies to Major Christopher Drewrywe's Number 2 Company (1WG), was killed when his motorbike ran over a mine. The attack was supported by naval gunfire from HMS Active's 4.5 inch gun. Theres been no update to these figures over the last 13 years, or assessments of the numbers of Argentine veterans who took their own lives over what combat veteran Robert Lawrence remembers as a short, bloody, wet and dirty war, fought on the edge of the world.. At 2:30a.m., however, a second British assault overwhelmed the men of the 4th and 12th Regiments but the survivors of Vazquez's 4th Platoon would continue fighting till about 7:00 am. Here was a golden opportunity being missed. [4] The barrage lasted for about forty minutes and more British casualties would have been inflicted if the mortar bombs had not landed on soft peat, which absorbed most of the power of the explosions. It was, Lawrence wrote, out-and-out battle, the fullest possible fighting. Throwing himself into the thick of the fight, Major John Kiszely, Left Flanks commander, shot two enemy soldiers and bayoneted a third. At 750 feet, the most challenging objective was Mount Tumbledown, a collection of crags, slabs and boulders that constituted an ideal defensive position. Close to the heart of any Scots Guardsman, a battlefield study of Mount Tumbledown saw the party given an overview of the famous 1982 battle. [40], Marine Privates Roberto Leyes, Eleodoro Monzn and Sergio Ariel from M Company were killed protecting the Argentine retreat. I decided that the only thing was to keep fighting this battle with artillery, otherwise, we were just going to have a lot of shit knocked out of ourselves." Carlos Robacio, BIM5 commander, was awarded the Argentine Nation to the Valour in Combat Medal and the battalion itself was decorated by the Argentine Congress in 2002 [13], Due to his actions on both Two Sisters and Tumbledown, Private Oscar Ismael Poltronieri of La Madrid's platoon was awarded the Argentine Nation to the Heroic Valour in Combat Cross, Argentina's highest military decoration. The Falklands presented a more daunting challenge. Battle of Mount Tumbledown. The Argentinians, later learned to be of company strength, directed mortar, grenade, machine gun and small arms fire from very close range at the British company, killing three British soldiers. In the second phase, Left Flank (company) would pass through the area taken by G company to capture the centre of the summit. It was snowing and we were tired. In argenteenish, "diversin" means "fun." But there was no fun in any of it. They skirmished on, numbed by shock. To see victory by dawn's first light. On the eastern half of the mountain the platoons of conscripts of La Madrid and Mio platoon, were attempting to renew their advance, having already wounded six Guardsmen, so Colonel Scott ordered Right Flank to push on to clear the final positions. What's he waiting for? After two hours of hard fighting, the company withdrew to its main defences on William and the British secured the position. [50], After the battle, Pipe Major James Riddell of 2 SG stood near the top of the mountain and played his bagpipes. Lieutenant Robert Lawrence led 3 Platoon around to the right of the Argentinian platoons, hoping to take the Argentinians by surprise. The battle started at about 830 pm on 13 June, beginning with a diversion, since the argentines are fond of diversion. List of aircraft of the Malaysian Armed Forces, (The Sinking of the Belgrano, Arthur Gavshon and Desmond Rice pg. By 8 a.m., after what one British soldier referred to as hours of struggle inch by inch up the rocks, using phosphorous grenades and automatic weapons, Tumbledown was, for the most part, in the hands of the guardsmen. At the foot of the hill, there was an enormous minefield. [49], Due to his actions on both Two Sisters and Tumbledown, Private Oscar Ismael Poltronieri of La Madrid's platoon was awarded the Argentine Nation to the Heroic Valour in Combat Cross, Argentina's highest military decoration. They have also recovered personal items and equipment to try to understand better what happened in the conflict. The 2nd Battalion Scots Guards had lost eight dead and 43 wounded. They fired all around it so that it would run into the bullets, it tilted, began to smoke and was lost at sea. [3] Two men were wounded covering the withdrawal and four more were wounded by mines. 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