Pte Neil Grose had turned 18 on 11 June, the day 3 Para launched an assault on the Argentinian positions on the mountain north-west to Port Stanley. On what would have been his 48th birthday, his family and colleagues are re-dedicating a memorial to Pte Grose at his former school, St Vincent's College, Gosport.
His mother, Ann Townsend, recalled how her son had originally wanted to be a gamekeeper. She said: "He loved the outdoors, liked to fish, anything to do with nature and sport. He had hidden depths perhaps other people were aware of and we weren't. Having joined the army in , he was part of the task force dispatched to liberate the Falklands from Argentinian occupation in As British forces closed in on Port Stanley on 11 June, under the cover of darkness, 3 Para launched a "silent assault" without artillery bombardment on Argentinian positions.
However, when one of the Paras stood on a landmine, the Argentinian soldiers were alerted. He had a large circle of friends who trusted his actions and decisions implicitly. His cool head and caring nature are recognised as only two of his great characteristics. Additionally his humour in abundance often lightened the tiring, painful workload we all shared.
Having spoken recently to other veterans I can qualify that this is not my isolated opinion, more a widely held understanding amongst all that knew him that Neil Grose was a true hero throughout his short life. Stanbridge, his place of birth, can be truly proud to have a son such as he. JB, B coy, 3 Para Want to read more During his school years he was a keen Cub and Scout.
On leaving, he did a number of different jobs in and around Aldershot, including time as a barman in the Royal Exchange public house, where he met and made friends with a number of young soldiers from the Parachute Regiment. This prompted his decision to join up in September , the same month in which his father hung up his own beret on retirement. Peter's pre-induction haircut was a major sponsorship event, supported by the regulars and staff of the Royal Exchange!
On completion of his training, which was completed without incident or injury, Private Peter Hedicker was posted to 3 PARA, then in Aldershot, but which was subsequently moved to Tidworth. Peter then took part in the epic "tab" from Port San Carlos to Estancia House, and subsequently across the Murrell River to the start line for the battle of Mount Longdon.
His name is also recorded on the nearby granite memorial to the members of the Parachute Regiment and Airborne Forces who gave their lives in the cause of Freedom.
Peter is survived by his mother, Rita, and by his brother Stephen and sister, Nicola. Pte Tim Jenkins At the end of our time in depot we were posted to 3 Para, Stewart went to A company and I went to B company, again Stewart was very popular in A company and stayed there till After the battalion came back from Northern Ireland, he and I both applied to do an anti tank cadre and joined Support Company, where Geordie made lots of close friends like Pat Harley, Kev Connery, Johno, Mushrooms, Terry Martin, Charlie Hardwick, and many more, too many to mention, We went to Canada and had a ball!
Then came April , off we sailed on the SS Canberra and we as a platoon and we drank our fill. Stewart died on Mount Longdon doing what he always did, "helping a friend" He will always be remembered by those us who knew him, not a day goes by that we don't think of him, and the other members of the anti tanks who died that night and the rest of the battalion, Whenever I think of him its always with a big smile on his face, he was a great loss.
To contact Jimmy please click here. Pte Philip West Cpl Scotty Wilson Cpl A. Spr W. Wayne attended primary school in Hilton, followed by a secondary education at Hatton School. Here he began to develop a yearning for a career in the Armed Forces.
He was a keen sportsman, playing for a local football team with aspirations of playing for Liverpool, his favourite club, and he was also a member of the Marston Church choir though not renowned for his singing voice!
Wayne was always interested in people around him and the part time pocket money jobs he undertook reflected his interest in the village and the surrounding community - a Butchers lad for the local butcher, paper rounds and a variety of jobs at the Hilcrete Company. However his long-term career path was to join the Army and work towards a trade.
After completing his training he qualified as an Engineer and was posted to Maidstone in Kent to 36 Royal Engineers Regiment. He made many friends most of whom came home every weekend and made use of the hospitality offered by his family and friends. Fried egg sandwiches were definitely the order of the day! The Squadron was then transferred to a smaller vessel to reach San Carlos Bay.
This mission was aborted due to bad weather conditions. The men were dropped off on land and picked up by the Sir Galahad.
Wayne was listed as missing in action. The Sir Galahad was later scuttled as a war grave in Falklands Water. John J. Joe trained as a Radio Operator and joined the Squadron in He was Cpl by the time he re-trained to Radio Telegraphist in With knowledge of amateur boxing as a lad, Joe was very useful in the training of a successful Sqn boxing team. Thanks to Richard Hamilton who provided photos and a small bit of John's life with On the 5th of June , Joe and the OC were flying to visit a hilltop Rebro site, when their Gazelle helicopter was shot down by a sea-to-air missile, fired from a patrolling RN warship.
Joe was a particularly popular member of ; fit, enthusiastic, and hard as nails, but approachable and friendly in every aspect of his work and life. He was a good soldier and a great friend to many. Joe was married to Freda, they had two children. A memorial stone to Joe and Mike Forge has been erected in the grounds of the old church at Caythorpe in Lincolnshire, from where the 1st Airborne Divisional Signals deployed to Arnhem in Both in memory, and in fact, Joe is in good company; he lies buried in the Falklands beside other members of the Taskforce, who lost their lives during Operation Corporate.
Below is an article about Mr Terry Peck Cancer has taken the life of Mr. Terry Peck , a Falklands hero of the conflict with Argentina. He passed away on the morning of Saturday, 30 December I thought that you should know about him, and his name should be recorded.
He was made an honorary member of 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment. Terry was sworn back in as Special Constable the day before Argentina invaded and at one time was considered by the Argentine occupiers as a candidate for Chief of Police; they could not have considered a more unsuitable candidate. He immediately began to do his utmost to undermine the occupying forces. His behaviour after the invasion caused consternation amongst the locals as he appeared to be wandering around Port Stanley clutching a length of drainpipe.
In reality this disguised a telephoto lens, with which he photographed Argentine preparations for the defence of the town. The photographs he had taken were smuggled out of the Falklands by British contract workers taking the opportunity to leave the islands, providing valuable intelligence for British Forces. The Argentine military police, led by Major Patricio Dowling, arrived on the islands with detailed files on many islanders, particularly those known for their anti-Argentine views.
Dowling, an Argentine of Irish origin who hated all things British, frequently over-stepped his authority, ignoring instructions to treat the islanders with respect and quickly became known for his tendency to resort to violence. Constable Anton Livermore had been asked to stay on with the police force to defuse potentially serious clashes between locals and the Argentines. Increasingly unhappy in the role he found himself in, when he heard Dowling discussing the imminent arrest of Terry Peck he took the opportunity to warn his former boss.
Having prepared a possible escape plan for some time, Terry armed himself with a pistol, borrowed a motorbike from the garage of an expatriate and fled Stanley. This was nearly his undoing as the party did not hear the approach of a Puma helicopter till too late and the house was already surrounded by Argentine soldiers. Fortunately the search of the house was half-hearted and he escaped detection with the simple expedient of locking himself in the toilet. He left for Green Patch to find the locals expecting him, there he acquired cold weather gear and rations left there by a party of Royal Navy sailors from HMS Endurance, He then spent ten miserable days camping in a remote part of the islands known as Geordie's Valley, where he had fished before the occupation.
Eventually the cold sapped his morale and he risked a fire for the chance of a hot meal, unfortunately just as it was ready he accidentally knocked it over.
Sir Rex Hunt Rex Masterman Hunt, diplomat and colonial administrator, born 29 June ; died 11 November Falklands governor who defiantly refused to shake Argentinian general's hand after invasion dies aged Sir Rex Hunt was considered a hero in the Falklands.
Sir Rex Hunt, who was governor of the Falkland Islands during the Argentine invasion, Sir Rex, who was considered a hero in the Falklands, will be remembered for his 'courage and dignity' in facing the invasion, the island's government said. The Yorkshireman took up his post in and was ousted as governor of the British overseas territory by invading Argentinian forces on April 2 , when he was taken prisoner and expelled to Uruguay. After refusing a plan to hide in the hills and outnumbered after a fierce gun battle, Sir Rex took the painful decision to surrender.
The islands were recaptured by British forces on June 14 that year after then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher deployed a naval taskforce to the South Atlantic ocean. He returned as Governor following the day war and remained in his post until During the weeks of the war, Sir Rex stayed in London while his wife and son were in a house in Kent. He also served for many years as chairman of the Falkland Islands Association and as president of the UK Falkland Islands Trust and was granted the freedom of the island capital, Stanley, in Many Argentine soldiers, and most particularly those of the Special Forces Unit known to have been operating on Longdon, could have been educated in America.
They may even have held US passports. The conviction of many of the Paras, however, is that the presence of US mercenaries in the Falklands was covered up to prevent a souring of the 'special relationship' between President Ronald Reagan and the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. The paratrooper who encountered the 'mercenaries' 'My life's regret is that I used the American passport to wipe my arse, and then threw it away' , described to me the destruction of the corpses.
The order was to completely destroy every single trace of the bodies, every scrap of evidence that they'd ever existed. And the order came from the top. In the years since the Second World War, the regiment has seen action in a series of post-colonial 'bush-fire' engagements in Aden, Borneo, Oman, Kenya, Cyprus, Jordan and the Falklands and has carried out regular tours of Northern Ireland.
The regiment's. The incident has never been satisfactorily resolved, and until the Falklands War the Green Eyes of 1 Para taunted the other battalions with the words: 'We shot one, we shot two, we shot 13 more than you. In , in a bizarre incident which has never been reported, a group of paras is said to have 'mutinied' in Belize. Aggrieved by harsh barrack-room discipline and subjected to what they considered to be pointless exercises - '.
Bulling jungle boots, section attacks in full NBC nuclear protective gear in the middle of the night. What were they expecting, a tank attack from Guatemala? Several days later they gave themselves up. Even the regiment's detractors admit that, in full contact with an enemy, the 'Toms' are unrivalled for ferocity and endurance.
Of the two battles it is Goose Green, fought and won by the 2nd Battalion at a time when overall victory was by no means certain, which has remained in the British consciousness. The battle for Longdon, just one part of the 'push for Port Stanley' and followed immediately by the capitulation of the Argentines, was denied the close press attention applied to the earlier, daylight engagement. For this reason, Bramley's account of events on Longdon was seen by the 3rd Battalion as a long-overdue correction of the imbalance.
The 'Toms' of 3 Para felt, too, that the book represented the private soldier's as opposed to the officer's experience, and for the 18 months between the publication of the book and the beginning of the inquiry, Vincent Bramley was one of the most popular men in Aldershot.
Twenty-three paratroopers had been killed and 48 wounded. Bramley had survived unhurt, but Dominic Gray had been hit, shot through the head. Gray had remained on the mountain, blood freezing at the entry and exit wounds, face spattered with burning phosphorus, and had fought on for a further two hours until ordered to the Regimental Aid Post.
Despite a grave back wound exposing both his spine and his lungs, he had refused to leave the battlefield and his men, and had continued to fight, finally to be killed by a direct hit from a mortar round. Argentine wounded and dead lay everywhere; several with their ears severed. Several of the enemy were being beaten and bayoneted by paratroopers.
I thought it was just a matter of fact, the bayonetings. And the ears? I thought at the time the ears had been blown off by shrapnel.
It is the suggestion that British troops not only killed their prisoners but mutilated the dead which has appalled public opinion in Britain. Such acts subvert any notion of the 'fair play' which is, even if somewhat hazily, assumed to govern the Army's dealings with its enemies. To date the press, with only Bramley's book to go on, have no more than implied that deliberate mutilations took place. A former member of 3 Para, however, has confirmed their occurrence to me. It was never my thing particularly, but I remember one bloke, we'd overrun a bunker, and he bayoneted this Argy through the throat and as the guy fell back dead he grabbed him and sawed his ear off with the bayonet.
It was very much a personal thing, though. One particular Para who was killed in the battle, he continued, was felt by the men to have deserved a decoration for exceptional valour. Any such award, I was told, was vetoed when an officer discovered that the dead soldier's ammunition pouch was filled with ears and other Argentine body-parts.
On the summit of the mountain, according to Bramley, and in the daylight aftermath of the battle, a number of Argentine prisoners and wounded were executed by junior-ranking paratroopers.
Oscar Carrizo, an Argentine survivor of a failed execution attempt, told the Independent earlier this year how he was stripped by paratroopers and then shot in the head. Eileen Vidal, a Falkland Islander, told me a soldier whom she met at the liberation of Port Stanley had described a similar incident to her: 'He said horrific things had happened.
He had seen a Para make an Argentine dig a grave and then shoot him into it. One of his mates had apparently been killed.
One murder, witnessed by Bramley and several officers, appears to have been particularly blatant. Bramley describes the scene to me. Below us and to one side, about 80 metres away, was a burial party. We heard a scream, 'Mama, Mama]', I heard a bang, and saw a man topple from the cliff. It wasn't really a cliff, really, just a rock ledge about three feet off the ground. Then everyone was running around, there were three or four on the burial party below the cliff, a few above. Dennison was up and gone, his eyes full of fury, he was over there immediately.
I looked over, but Mason said to forget that, to go over the ridge and start looking for intelligence. An NCO was arrested by Dennison, and an accompanying report despatched to his superiors. The NCO was separated from his unit and returned to Britain, where he was posted to another battalion.
He is still in the regiment, reportedly untroubled by the investigation. Such treatment seems to stand in stark contrast to that meted out to Bramley when in , having left the Parachute Regiment for the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, he was convicted of illegal possession of three 'Thunderflashes' simulation grenades, used on military training exercises , a smoke-grenade, and a CS pellet.
Although Bramley was in Germany at the time of the offence, the paraphernalia was linked to his signature at the RAOC depot. Bramley returned to Britain, was handed over to a civilian court and sentenced to three years' imprisonment. Peter Cuxson, an ex-Para Foreign Legionnaire who was convicted with Bramley and admits his own guilt , told me: 'I can absolutely confirm that Bramley didn't steal the above pyrotechnics. It is common practice for a good MTI to retain such things rather than hand them in; they have no conceivable criminal appplication.
Vince Bramley is one of the most trustworthy instructors I have ever served with. To date, his description of the clifftop shooting remains the only first-hand account of the incident.
I gave my word, though, that I would never mention his the alleged killer's name. Bramley, I may say, had no business whatsoever discussing this with you. Dalyell had taken no immediate action, but in admitted:'Some five years ago I heard from someone in 3 Para roughly what had happened, but I did not pursue the matter because it was no part of my case to denigrate the British services. However, now that it has been given prominence, sleeping dogs can be allowed to lie no longer.
Bramley was one of the first combatants to be questioned last autumn. He was told that a total of 21 charges could be brought on the basis of Excursion to Hell - including several of murder - and that he himself could be indicted. On the advice of his solicitor he declined to comment, although, as he now admits 'I really wanted to sit there and get on my knees and say: cover it up, cover it up, we don't need this. I don't need this, the British public don't need this, the Parachute Regiment certainly doesn't need this.
At the regimental depot, suspicion and distrust now divide the older members of 3 Para. Those who were privates and junior NCOs 11 years ago now hold positions of considerable responsibility, with several on Special Forces or overseas 'consultancy' attachments. If implicated in atrocities or the covering-up of atrocities, they have much to lose. Nobody is absolutely sure how much the police know. Among the non-commissioned ranks there is concern that certain officers, seeing themselves as more vulnerable to accusations, might have 'blubbed' their men to the police.
Bramley himself is appalled by the inquiry. He never intended, he maintains, that his book should represent any kind of accusation against his fellow Paras. He bears no grudge against the army for his dishonourable discharge. He is proud to have been a Para. His best friends are all Paras or ex-Paras. Phosphorus isn't allowed, for example, but we had phosphorus grenades. They were issued to us. It's not the Joe Bloggs I know, throwing grenades into bunkers, his eyes are the size of a bulldog's bollocks, for God's sake.
You're not all there. None of us was.
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