Scram! (47 page)

Authors: Harry Benson

BOOK: Scram!

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After the war, we moved our base from Port San Carlos to Navy Point, opposite Port Stanley. I spent three months there. The bombed-out ship
Sir Tristram
had been towed around from Port Pleasant. Wandering onboard for a shower posed a real dilemma. The showers were brilliant but the smell of burning was sickening.

The third and worst memory concerned an appalling accident at Port Stanley airport a month after the war. A group of Welsh Guards were clearing snow from the airfield when a taxiing Harrier inadvertently released two Sidewinder air-to-air missiles. Sidewinder has only a small explosive charge in its head; it's the expanding wire, designed to cut through the controls of the target aircraft, that does the damage. The missile flew straight at the Guardsmen, causing terrible injuries to eleven. Within minutes my colleagues were casevacing the dreadfully wounded soldiers to field hospitals and hospital ships, our aircrewmen trying to staunch the flow of blood en route.

The following day I was sitting in my cockpit on the deck of SS
Uganda
. A stretcher was brought out with one of the casualties, a healthy-looking Welsh Guardsman, wrapped under a silver survival blanket. I was about to take him to the airport to be flown home in a Hercules. The downdraft from my Wessex lifted his blanket to reveal that both his legs had been amputated. The war had finished and I had relaxed my guard. I simply wasn't ready for the shock. I retched.

On my final day in the Falklands, I flew gratefully out to the troopship MV
Norland
, which had brought my 845 Squadron colleagues to relieve us. As I sat in the hover alongside the ship in San Carlos Water, my air-speed indicator read fifty-five knots of wind. I was very pleased indeed to be going home. Three months after the war ended, I flew the 8,000 miles back to UK via Hercules to Ascension and VC-10 to Brize Norton and a wonderful but small family reception.

After a few weeks leave, most of my colleagues rejoined 845 Squadron, having discovered that 847 Squadron had been disbanded. We were promptly despatched to Northern Norway for Arctic training. It would be my third winter in a row. At least Hector had returned to the warmth of Ascension. But if you can't take a joke, went the well-known military refrain, you shouldn't have joined.

June 2007. A bunch of us arranged to meet up in a Whitehall pub the night before the twenty-fifth anniversary parade down the Mall. I was looking forward to it but also felt apprehensive. I had been out of the
junglie
loop since completing my first tour on 845 and 847 Squadrons at the end of 1983. I'd spent my second tour as flight
commander
of the frigate HMS
Apollo
flying an 829 Squadron Wasp. It was a responsible job for a young pilot. But it put me totally out of contact with the rest of the Fleet Air Arm.

After flying a Wessex, my second job was flying this Wasp helicopter from the frigate
HMS Apollo
. The Wasp is the naval version of the Army Scout. During the Falklands War, three Wasps like this one fired several AS12 missiles in a vain effort to sink the Argentine submarine
Santa Fe
in South Georgia. Unfortunately the fin of a submarine is hollow.

After these two tours, I left the Royal Navy altogether to pursue a career in business in the Far East. Now I was back in the UK running a charity. I'd only kept in touch with a few former
junglies
who told me about the parade and the meet. I felt a little unsure of my welcome. As I walked in, I could see someone at the far side of the pub wearing a baseball cap. âSparky?'

âHarry!'

It was bloody brilliant to see an old friend. He'd been even more apprehensive than I was about meeting up again. Having been court-martialled and kicked out of the Navy after his crash in Norway, he thought he might be shunned. No chance.

In walked some of the other guys. I wasn't sure if anyone recognised him. âDo you know who this is, Hector?' He shook his head. âIt's Sparky.' Tears welled up for all of us. The three of us had been in the same house at Dartmouth together. It was a great moment. Then the beer flowed and we were off, sharing an extraordinary array of war stories.

I suddenly realised that between us we'd been involved with almost every major incident of the war, barring the
Belgrano
sinking. Pete Manley told us about his AS12 strike on the police station with Arthur Balls. Whatever happened to Arthur, we asked? Another lovely man. No one knew. I was astonished to hear Hector's amazing story about his Mirage strafing and
Ardent
rescue on D-Day. I had no idea. Jack Lomas reminisced about the FOB at San Carlos and Oily Knight's brush with two Tigercat missiles and a bullet through the windscreen. So that was what happened to Yankee Tango, I thought. We laughed until it hurt when we heard that Oily had got his comeuppance just before going home. He lost the very last game of âspoof' at Port San Carlos and was made to eat
a
giant ration pack tin of greasy cold steak-and-kidney pudding, charmingly known to all as âbaby's heads'.

I told my own story about coming under fire on Mount Longdon with Andy Pulford. I learnt that he was now Air Vice-Marshal Pulford RAF â Wow! Everyone agreed with Jerry Spence when he admitted he had found flying in the hills at night far worse than being shot at. And Mike Tidd talked about his amazing crash and rescue on Fortuna Glacier.

The war seems to have affected us all in different ways. Most of us are fine about it. I think either the long journey home by sea or the long stint as garrison in the Falklands gave us time to process what we had seen and done. Several found it harder than they expected being interviewed for this book.

A few colleagues still feel aggrieved about management. Even if Jack Lomas did a great job as senior flight commander, there was no Wessex squadron commanding officer or senior pilot on the ground in the Falklands until a week from the end, when
Engadine
turned up. Even if we did a huge amount of useful work, Wessex tasking was impromptu to non-existent at times. We often arrived for an assigned task only to discover some other cab was already on it. On occasion, valuable crews and aircraft sat unused and frustrated in San Carlos Water. Some of the early operating practices, such as routinely exceeding power limits, were questionable. Had the burnt-out remains of a Wessex and its crew been found some distance from its rotors and gearbox, these practices would not have seemed so wise.

Amongst the
junglie
Wessex crews, Jack Lomas and Mike Booth were each awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for their leadership of 845 and 847 Squadrons respectively, to a large extent on our behalf. Apart from
Pete
Manley and Arthur Balls, who especially deserved their Mentions in Despatches â an oak leaf to go on top of their Falklands campaign medal and rosette â no other Wessex crews or maintainers received bravery awards.

The
Sir Galahad
incident still sparks discussion. Flipper Hughes and Bill Tuttey missed out where other helicopter crews who did near-enough identical work were recognised for their courage. I and most other Wessex colleagues are pretty sanguine about this and unreservedly congratulate the 825 and 846 Squadron Sea King aircrews, who did receive awards. The prevailing view at the time was that we were just doing our job. Frankly the troops on the ground were vastly more heroic.

I wear my own Falklands campaign medal and rosette with great pride. My award ceremony was unexpectedly informal. It was a shout down the corridor from the 845 Squadron staff office at Yeovilton. âOi, Benson! Come and get your gong. It's in your pigeon hole.' I awarded my medal to myself.

After satisfying the immediate interest in the war when I returned home, I found I didn't want to talk about it to anyone again for many years. I buried the whole subject away until the twentieth anniversary, when I suddenly felt compelled to revisit it all. I watched TV documentaries and read books. I cried a few times, all in private. What was that all about? I really don't know. Maybe it was what I'd done: the strange paradox of the exhilaration of flying in a war as a young man, doing a job I was really good at, and the shocking fact of facilitating violence between my fellow men. Maybe it was what I'd seen, the explosions and bodies and wounds. Loud bangs still scare the living daylights out of me. Others experienced far worse. I rang up a former colleague to talk it all through because he would understand. He didn't at first. He told
me
years later he felt bemused about the whole thing. Five years later, he rang me in a flood of tears himself, desperately needing to talk. It had finally hit him.

After almost all of the forty-five interviews I did for this book, I heard similar views expressed. Telling the story felt cathartic. For many it was the first time they had let it all out. As I arrived at one colleague's house, his wife told me she would leave us alone; after all she'd heard all his war stories before. After three hours of being interviewed, he told me this was the first time he'd ever told anyone the whole story. Some of the individual stories have never been told to anyone at all. I felt privileged to hear them for the first time.

My job today is far removed from flying a Royal Navy
junglie
helicopter. I teach couples and new parents how to stay together. I've run hundreds of relationship courses. I get to read a great many research papers. One of the most striking findings from research into military families is that it's not the long periods of separation that make couples more likely to split up. It's the experience of combat. If you've been in battle, you're far more likely to split up than other comparable families. I can well understand why.

It makes me wonder how the troops on the ground have coped. They experienced battle at close quarters. Our aircrewmen also came face to face with appalling wounds and human suffering. But we pilots just acted as glorified taxi-drivers. I wonder what kind of mental health time-bombs we have in store from our vastly more shocking forays into Iraq and Afghanistan. They used to be called honourable wounds.

Nobody talks. That's why I wanted to tell our story.

List of Illustrations

1
. Harry Benson after the war Â© Harry Benson

2
. Fortuna Glacier crash Â© Stewart Cooper

3
. Gazelle Â© Harry Benson

4
. Wessex 5 Â© Stewart Cooper

5
. HMS
Antrim
Â© Stewart Cooper

6
. Flight deck of HMS
Antrim
Â© Stewart Cooper

7
. 847 Squadron badge Â© Harry Benson

8
. Deck hockey Â© Harry Benson

9
. Argentine Pucara aircraft Â© Mark Brickell

10
. Arthur Balls Â© John Ryall