“After the initial landings it did not take long for the first air raid hit us, the noise, intensity, violence and ferocity of the attack gave us an indication of what it was to come. Welcome to living in a war zone without air superiority in ground zero of the primary targets.

We continued to fortify our trenches combined with working parties in a race to unload stores from that rickety pier and consolidate the beachhead, thus followed days of total chaos as wave after wave of Shite Hawks and Daggers absolutely smashed us.
An acknowledgement to the bravery shown by the Argentine pilots with their low flying passes into walls of tracer, blowpipe and SeaCat .

The daily attrition of “Ajax Bay Airshow” took its toll on both sides, success of the raids was evident as Battleships backs broken exploded turning night into day with casualties filling “The Red and Green life machine” aid station, it was fortunate those opportune bursts of 30m cannon into hill positions had little effect. This success came at a heavy price as the amount of aircraft I witnessed being shot down is still vividly etched in my mind, however despite the huge and obvious losses undeterred those pilots kept coming, and coming and coming.

We had all been issued small vials of morphine, for ease of use they were taped to our dog tags. Great idea, you are hit everybody knows where they are, rip it off inject the upper third of the thigh (if it is still there) paint an M on forehead and crack on.
This particular raid came from a different direction, a curious skyward observation we quizzically thought “oh look parachutes” attached to the canopies were 500lb bombs. As they floated down on realisation Eric legged it quicker than an Olympic sprinter from open ground towards his trench diving in head first. A few minutes later he stood up smiling, no wonder really as he had the morphine vial sticking out of his neck. during the tumble he had smashed the cover and injected himself. After mainlining morphine he spent the rest of the afternoon raids on Planet Mongo fending off Ming the Merciless.

There was a certain crazed euphoric hysteria at surviving those huge explosions, a wide eyed high of elation and adrenaline that suddenly turned to a massive gut wrench as the news came through.
RIP Mac and Goosey.”
– Colin Adams. Royal Marines. San Carlos. Bomb Alley, Falklands 1982.
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This interview was gathered and conducted by Battles and Beers.(TM) As we always say here: Every soldier has a story, and every story deserves to be told.