The last untold story of the Falklands War

I usually write on energy but I recently read this extraordinary book about the Falklands and thought I ought to write about it. I have no military experience although I am the son, grandson and great-grandson of army officers so I know what a 1980s standard-issue ration pack looks and tastes like. I have always been interested in the Falklands because the conflict provides some of my earliest childhood memories and because, as wars go, it’s a relatively easy one to understand in terms of why it happened and what happened.

Last year we celebrated the 40th anniversary of Britain’s victory in the Falklands War. Despite the overwhelming success for Britain, myths about the conflict have arisen. One of them is that the disaster at Fitzroy, where 38 Welsh Guardsmen lost their lives when their ship, the RFA Sir Galahad, was attacked by Argentinian aircraft, was largely the fault of the Welsh Guards themselves. It is this myth that Lt-Col Crispin Black MBE has sought to tackle in his book, Too Thin For A Shroud released earlier this year to a storm of acclamation from Welsh Guardsmen, who thought their story had never been told, and a storm of criticism from Royal Navy and Royal Marine officers who thought Black’s account unfortunate at best and deliberately fallacious at worst.

Black is well-qualified to tell the story: he was a 2nd Lieutenant and a platoon commander in the Prince of Wales Company, 1st Battalion, Welsh Guards and was on the Galahad when it was attacked. 22 out of 30 of his men were either killed or wounded. After the Falklands, he served in Cyprus and Northern Ireland and was the lead subject of a 1990s documentary that can still be seen on YouTube about the Prince of Wales company in Northern Ireland when he was the company commander. He ended his career working in intelligence and left the army in 2002 at the age of 42. 

The story he tells is the product of a dinner of all the junior Welsh Guards officers that were on the Galahad and are still alive where he was detailed by the others to get the truth out there: in short, ask what happened at Fitzroy on 8 June 1982 and who was to blame. At the same time, Black and his fellow officers wanted to explode a legend that has tainted the Welsh Guards ever since: that they were bad soldiers and pilferers to boot. Had they been fitter, tougher and better lead, they would, like the Royal Marines and the Paras, have walked to battle and would never have been on the Galahad at all.

Black then takes the story onto the Galahad and this point the story hinges on three key questions. Why was the Galahad in the wrong location? Why was the Galahad totally undefended? Why, having arrived at 8am in the morning on a clear day, did the Welsh Guards not disembark as a matter of urgency as ordered by Major Ewen Southby-Tailyour, a senior and experienced Royal Marine who was in command of the landing craft in the area? Of those three questions, the first two are the responsibility of the Royal Navy while the answer to the third question is not as simple as many Royal Navy and Royal Marine officers, including Southby-Tailyour have made out over many years. In fact, so bitterly does Black feel about Southby-Tailyour, presumably both because of the latter’s actions during the conflict but more importantly because of how he has portrayed the tragedy at Fitzroy since, that Black cannot bring himself to mention the Royal Marine by name throughout the whole book.

Black is rigorous in his analysis which comes from newly released documents uncovered by him in the National Archives at Kew and he lays the blame firmly at the feet of the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines. It’s not always 100% convincing, and a better writer and a better editor would have really helped here, but Black has clearly touched a very sensitive nerve within Royal Navy and Royal Marine circles. Even before this book was published, former senior Royal Navy officers, especially Rear Admiral Jeremy Larken (captain of HMS Fearless during the campaign), were complaining about it and making dark threats about revelations that the Welsh Guards would not enjoy. They are presumably referring to a sealed report within the National Archives about the Welsh Guards in the Falklands which would likely make for very uncomfortable reading for any Welsh Guardsman.

In fact, we already know what this report says because the Amazon reviews of Black’s book are either 5 stars (Welsh Guards and named) or 1 star (Royal Marines and anonymous). Within those 1-star reviews are accounts from individuals who claim to have served in the Royal Marines or Royal Navy in the Falklands and they talk of a unit that was unfit, ill-disciplined, unprepared, poorly led and, most damaging of all, full of thieves who thought nothing of pilfering kit and equipment on the ships on which they travelled both before and after the Galahad disaster. These must be the details to which Larken and others are alluding and how credible those anonymous accounts are is in the eye of the beholder. For myself, I can say only that anonymous, online graffiti is anonymous online graffiti but that does not mean it’s wrong.

Of course, even if all these allegations are true, it doesn’t erase the errors that the Royal Navy and Royal Marines made nor the right that the Welsh Guards have to answers they have never been given: after all, the task force commander, Admiral Woodward, blamed himself for the tragedy (“I could have stopped it; I should have stopped it”) but somehow, over the years, this has become anathema to senior Royal Navy and Royal Marines officers who are dazzlingly quick to rebut any claims of culpability and continue to pin the blame on the Welsh Guards. They’re also breathtakingly inconsistent: on the one hand, Southby-Tailyour writes to the Telegraph to tell General Sir Michael Rose, commander of 22 SAS in the Falklands, to keep his beak out as he wasn’t at Fitzroy after Rose suggested on national TV that there had been a cover-up of events at Fitzroy. Just a few months later, however, Major-General Julian Thompson (commander of 3 Commando Brigade) and Admiral Larken are ready to weigh in, also in the Telegraph, on Black’s book and the Galahad despite both officers being many miles from the disaster when it happened. 

All this leads to an anomaly that Black points out at the end of his book: that Royal Marine recollections of the Falklands War have a sourness to them in contrast to other memoirs of the conflict. I have read many books about the Falklands and somehow this point resonates although I can’t explain exactly why. Black’s own theories about this are where this former intelligence officer lets himself down with some unworthy but possibly understandable attacks on the Royal Marines’ war in the Falklands. Overall, though, Black’s message is clear: for 40 years, the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines establishment have aggressively protected their own reputation at the expense of both the Welsh Guards and their parent unit, 5 Infantry Brigade and it’s time that the full truth was revealed. Because what those Royal Navy and Royal Marine officers have failed to realise is that, for the Welsh Guards, it would be better to be damned by the world knowing what actually happened because nothing could be worse than that being damned by the half-truths and whispers they have endured for over 40 years.

Too Thin for a Shroud: The Last Untold Story of the Falklands War by Crispin Black
Gibson Square £20 pp224

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