Radley and the Falklands War – 40 Years On

A letter from 1982 dated simply ‘Trafalgar Day’ written by Rear Admiral Ian Balfour D.S.C. to Tony Money of the Radleian Society:

‘David’s death was a bitter blow to us but the job had to be done and it was a very remarkable operation. Much water has flowed under the bridge since they both (David & Patrick) joined Radley but at least his 1st VIII blazer is still there as we sent it back to Jock Mullard via Henley this year.'

On Tuesday 3rd May 2022, the Chaplain led a service of commemoration for Old Radleian, Lt Cmdr David Balfour, RN. It was the fortieth anniversary of the sinking of H.M.S. Sheffield, in which twenty crew members, including David, were killed in action. The service was attended by his brother, Patrick Balfour, and formed part of a series of talks organised by current boys to explore the legacy of the Falklands War.

The Falklands War in 1982 was the first conflict to engage all three UK armed services since the end of the Second World War; the loss of the Sheffield was the first naval casualty in those nearly forty years. Its resonance both at the time and its legacy has polarised political opinion, but support for those who fell in the conflict, and their families, can be summed up in a letter from Sam Salt who wrote an obituary for David Balfour:

A Memorial to those killed on active service between 1945-2005 was dedicated by the Radleian Society in 2008. It contains four names, including David Balfour. It was created by the Kindersley Workshop and is located in the Cloisters, opposite the World War 2 commemorative wall. ‘I enclose a small piece about David which I was delighted to write because I genuinely felt that he was a very fine person. I too knew his brother Patrick – he was with me in HMS Dreadnought for a year; they are a marvellous family. ... May I say on behalf of us all who took part in the Falklands Operation how much we appreciate your kind words. The depth of feeling and degree of national response that we have all experienced has been at times overwhelming.’

Many Radleians were involved in that Falklands Operation. The cross-service nature of the campaign can be seen in this brief list: among the naval officers serving alongside David Balfour was Lt Cdr Robert Guy (1961, D) who survived the destruction of H.M.S. Antelope on 24th May 1982; Captain David Willis (1964, D) commanding a company of Gurkhas; Air Marshal Sir John Curtiss (1939, C/H) who was appointed Air Officer Commanding No. 18 Group in 1980 and served as the Commander of the Air Component during the conflict; and the most senior of all, Field Marshal Sir Edwin Bramall, who oversaw the entire campaign and was appointed Chief of the Defence Staff in October 1982. He had served on Radley College Council since 1979.

Alongside the military personnel were the civilians who came with them such as the war correspondents, Charles Laurence (1964, D) for the Sunday Telegraph and Richard Savill (1969, E)

David Balfour (middle row, second from right) with the 1st VIII in 1962. This crew won the Princess Elizabeth Cup at Henley Regatta, one of only three occasions that the College has done so.

of the Press Association. And then there were those who lived on the islands or had long-term family connections there: Tony Hunt (1978, G) the son of the Governor, Sir Rex Hunt, was in the Sixth Form at Radley – he wrote a vivid eye-witness account of the evacuation and subsequent deportation of the Governor’s family; while Edmund Carlisle (1936, G) was a farmer with close links to family and businesses in Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Edward Shackleton (1925, B), whose father, the Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, was buried on South Georgia, had recently been commissioned by Parliament to write a long-term economic report on the future of the Falkland Islands. He was asked to revisit his report after the war and in 1988 he was awarded the Freedom of Stanley for his services to the Falkland Islands.

The speed at which the conflict escalated is reflected in the House of Commons reports. On Saturday 3rd April 1982, the House of Commons and the House of Lords held emergency sittings. The session was called to debate Britain’s response to the landing of Argentinian forces on East Falkland. Already there was conflict about the war: Lord Carrington, the Foreign Secretary, resigned immediately after the sitting. At home on the Falklands, Old Radleian Edmund Carlisle was in Stanley on 2nd April 1982. He saw at first hand the restrained behaviour of the Argentine Command which did not fire a shot. His account of the war from the point of view of a civilian whose family business had been based in Argentina since 1830 was published in 2006 – 7 as The Dishonourable War: Falkland Islands 1982. He and others travelled to London representing 100,000 AngloArgentinians, one week after the invasion, to persuade the British Government to reach a non-military and diplomatic solution. Tony Hunt had also witnessed the invasion:

‘At 7.30 on the 1st April 1982 I was at the Smith’s house. I rang home to tell Mum I would not be home for supper only to get a sharp order of recall. I left the Smiths with sinking premonitions of doom, thinking “What have I done now?” Having parked my motorbike outside the house I walked in to find Mum standing by the fire with very red eyes. She turned to me and said: “Tony, your father has just come through from the office and told me that the Argentines are going to invade tomorrow morning!” I could not believe my ears. The main topic of conversation for the two years my parents had been there had become a reality. Stunned, I sat down. Mum poured me a drink and we stared at the fire.

… Everything seemed so peaceful and unreal until about 5.30 a.m. when the first shots were fired. From the Bakers’ house I could see tracers and explosions going off all around. I kept recording messages being phoned in from couples from all round Stanley. Some people said their homes had been wrecked, others could see fighting at the airport, others said the Argentines had come over Sappers Hill – behind Stanley.

… At about 11.30 a.m. my father came around to the Bakers’ house. He looked shattered. He had dark smudges under his eyes and a pale, unshaven face. Collapsing into a chair, he pushed his thumbs into his eyes and asked for a beer. He then told us how he had been shot at by snipers through all the windows, how he had sat in his chair with a pistol ready to shoot the first Argentinian who came through his office door. He said he had been prepared to die to demonstrate the British determination to keep the Islands British. Thank God he didn’t have to use the pistol.’

A portrait of Field Marshal Sir Edwin Bramall. The full account can be read online at www.radleyarchives.co.uk.

The first task force ships sailed from the UK on 5th April. On 3rd May, H.M.S Sheffield was hit by an Exocet missile which destroyed the control room and the galley below it, killing the officers in the control room, and most of the ship’s cooks. The Daily Mail led its news story with a quote from the girlfriend of one of the cooks – ‘Why the Sheffield? Why the Sheffield?’

Her questions about the war were, in part, answered in 1985 when James Sharp (1980, C) and Andrew Bentley (1981, G) interviewed Lord Bramall, then Chief of the Defence Staff for The Radleian. They asked, what lessons do you think the services learnt from the Falklands conflict? He answered, ‘Funnily enough I don’t think that once the fighting started there were a tremendous amount of new lessons to be learnt. What was comforting to us was that the things which we always considered to be important turned out to be important on the day. The Navy learnt certain technical lessons about war at sea under missile threat. The first thing that must be remembered is that deterrent is all important. If, as we did, you give the opposition reason to think that you do not wish to defend a place you tempt them to take action against you.’

And did he think it was worth the cost in lives and money?

‘We didn’t fight the war for the Falkland Islands, we fought it for the very important principle that people cannot steal what is not theirs. I do not think that we cannot make a settlement because we fought for the Islands and lost lives. The root of the problem lies in who has the most right to them. If I was a magistrate come down from Mars and asked to adjudicate, it would be a very difficult judgement to make. We must try and normalise the relationship with Argentina, encourage trade, for example, and if that is done perhaps the problem will sort itself out. I don’t actually believe that because there was a fight for the Falklands a settlement cannot be drawn up.’

The question about how the relationship between the two countries had collapsed so far, the rights and wrongs of waging war, and the

A REFLECTION - BY ROBERT GUY (1961, D)

HMS Antelope, of which I was second in command, was positioned near the entrance of San Carlos Water at dawn on 23rd May 1982; we had only just arrived in ‘bomb alley’ having been on other tasks. The previous holder of our new role, sister ship HMS Ardent, had been sunk two days before with significant loss of life: it was obvious to all of us that we were in for a busy day.

We were hit by two bombs, neither of which went off immediately and one of which killed, on impact, my steward. One of the bombs came to rest very near to me. We gave a good account of ourselves and shot down, I think, two or three Skyhawks, one of which was flying so low that it flew into our main mast; the Argentinians, all cousins of Fangio, flew with great daring. After dark, bomb disposal experts tried to defuse our unexploded bombs but one of them blew up and the subsequent fire spread rapidly. We had no fire main and, after about 90 minutes of struggle, there seemed to be little alternative but to abandon ship. I ordered the 190 men on the flight deck to leave her and was last off. The missile magazine blew up rather dramatically about 5 minutes later. In addition to our Steward and an Army Bomb Disposal Officer who were killed, we had seven wounded. be important both before and after. None of us had been in action before and the initial shock of the experience was considerable. The noise was terrific: bombs, jets, helicopters, guns, missiles, commentaries (those between decks needed to know what is going on), orders, reports – and then flames, ready-use ammunition cooking off and more loud orders – all contributed. Molten aluminium falling – the need to make decisions and to make oneself understood above the racket. Discipline and training proved to be invaluable. A source of great pride remains the resilience and steadiness of our very young ship’s company. None of us, that I am aware of, were offered counselling, and the need did not occur to us. The Navy was very understanding but firm: after survivors’ leave most of us went back to sea, where we were needed. Memories can distort, however, and I am glad that I got every man to write down, on the day after we were sunk, on two sides of foolscap, what had happened to him.

I have been back to the Falkland Islands twice since 1982. Later in the same year, I was the second in command of a destroyer for a three-month patrol and then, a few years later, I was Senior Naval Officer, Falkland Islands. I agree with the ever-grateful islanders that it was all worth it.

Most of the 200-man ship’s company had been together in various operations for some months: comradeship proved to No dictator, after all, should be allowed to get away with just invading his neighbour.

(Left): Edward Shackleton (1925, B) as part of the B Social Tug-of-War team, 1930; (Right) Major David R d’Anyers Willis (1964, D) as a prefect in 1969.

continuing cost of a garrison, particularly so far away from the UK, was the remit of the Franks Report set up by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher immediately after the end of the Falklands War. Another Old Radleian was involved in this, Sir Patrick Nairne (1935, G) who was a Privy Councillor and served as one of the five members of the Falkland Islands Review Committee. The Franks Report was extremely controversial when it was released - ‘No British official publication this century has disclosed so much so soon of that forbidden realm where the security classification is king: the process of foreign and defence policy-making and the working of the intelligence community.’

The war has not ended. There is still no agreement between the UK and Argentina over the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands. In 2007, Edmund Carlisle was still urging the British Government to re-open negotiations with Argentina towards the transfer of sovereignty. ‘Only thus will the vast expense of garrisoning these far away islands be brought to an end and our traditional good relations with that country re-established.’

And it never ends for the families of the fallen. David Balfour left a young widow and a three-year old daughter. The fiancée of the Sheffield’s cook had to rebuild her life a few months before her wedding. Commemoration is important. In 2003, Anthony Hudson, formerly Tutor of F Social, was awarded the MBE for services in creating the Falkland Islands Memorial Chapel at Pangbourne. The Chapel is the national memorial to all those who fell in that war. It records the names of 258 casualties, most of whom were lost at sea in the sinking of five ships and severe damage to a further eight. The Chapel at Pangbourne also houses the most complete library about the Falklands War collected in Britain.

a reflection - by david willis (1964, d)

The Foreign Office, fearing Nepalese objections (Gurkhas are citizens of Nepal), initially opposed the deployment of a British Gurkha battalion to the Falklands. Au contraire, Nepalese officials were reportedly astonished, slighted even, that Gurkhas were not included in the Task Force. What was the problem? So, the 1st Battalion 7th Gurkha Rifles, in which I commanded 100 men of A Company, went to war. Later, on the night of 13/ 14 June in a blizzard of snow, and under sporadic artillery fire, we bore ridiculously heavy loads of weapons and ammunition along the five-kilometre approach to assault Argentine positions on Mount William. Come H-Hour, however, the enemy had fled: such an anticlimax. Pondering what might have been we rested, brewed tea, and from our high rocky perch (my company was on Tumbledown) watched Paras and Marines in the valley below race to Stanley. Fortune let our battalion off lightly: a dozen casualties, one subsequent fatality. Was victory worth the overall loss of life? I believe casualties were inescapable unless we had capitulated to the demands of the criminal Galtieri regime (incidentally, its downfall a beneficial result for Argentina) and abandoned the Islanders, our people, but I am deeply saddened when reflecting on the personal tragedy that befell families of the dead.

Being able to visit a memorial is important to survivors and families. Edmund Carlisle was instrumental in persuading the British Government to arrange for the burial of the Argentinian dead in a military cemetery, for which he offered a site at San Carlos, where relatives could visit undisturbed. The veterans of H.M.S. Sheffield have been raising funds for a memorial to the ship at the National Memorial Arboretum for the 40th anniversary of its sinking. There is already a cross and cairn rising above Sea Lion Island, the closest spot to where the ship went down, which is permanently tended by HM Forces. And at Radley, the memorial to the four ORs who fell serving in HM Forces between 1950 and 2005 stands quietly in the Cloisters.

Captain David Willis in a shelter at Darwin settlement, East Falkland, on or about 5th June 1982.

Clare Sargent Archivist

Journalist Charles Laurence (1964, D) died on 23rd October. A section of his obituary from The Telegraph can be read on page 130