Michael Rose: Self - Commander, 22 SAS

Quotes 

• Tom Hardy - Narrator : In 3 Commando Brigade's wake would come a second force, 5 Infantry Brigade, to provide reinforcements after the landings. In April, it was put through its paces by its commander, Brigadier Tony Wilson, on a training exercise in Wales.

  Brigadier John Waters : So I thought I'd better go and have a look at this lot. And my first impression was "God, what a bloody shambles this lot is. Surely they're not thinking of sending them abroad to fight a real war."

  Lieutenant Colonel Mike Scott : We were sitting in the Brecon Beacons, and the Brigade Commander appeared and said "We're going to do a brigade attack tonight, and I want you all to make a plan". And we thought "Hang on, *he* should be giving *us* the plan".

  Lieutenant Colonel Michael Rose : Brigadier Tony Wilson had come out as so indecisive and so incompetent in Wales that they decided that he should be removed from his command. General Bramall, who was the Chief of Defence, over-ruled that decision because he thought it would be bad for the morale of the brigade to have its brigadier removed. Bramall told me that it was the worst decision he had taken in 45 years of soldiering. And it was.

  Brigadier John Waters : I would have sacked the Brigade Commander then and there, just on the evidence I saw on this test exercise, let alone what he got up to when he got to the Falklands.

• [talking about Northwood Command and Control Centre] 

  Lieutenant Colonel Michael Rose : It was a good decision that the Royal Navy should be in the lead, but what Northwood didn't do was turn itself into an integrated *joint* headquarters - it had no military or air force input. It was inevitable that it was going to be a command and control muddle from the start.

  Lieutenant Chris Parry : The whole command chain was utterly dysfunctional. Throughout, there was this feeling of "who's in charge of this bit?". You were never sure at any one point who was driving bits of the campaign.

  Lieutenant Colonel Michael Rose : We very nearly lost the war because of some extraordinarily bad decisions that were taken by Northwood with regards to the land battle.

• Tom Hardy - Narrator : The advance to capture Mount Kent was about to stall, due to the biggest logistical disaster of the war.

  Lieutenant Chris Parry : I remember thinking and saying to all my fellow officers, "25th May is Argentina's national day. It is inconceivable that they won't conduct a big strike." And we were all thinking to ourselves "We've just got to get through until sunset and things will be fine."

  Tom Hardy - Narrator : The biggest British supply ship, Atlantic Conveyor, moved in with a naval escort to unload its cargo.

  Lieutenant Chris Parry : I have to say that I wasn't aware that Atlantic Conveyor was coming in in daylight.

  Tom Hardy - Narrator : Unlike the Royal Naval vessels, the civilian container ship had no anti-missile protection. When the convoy was attacked by Exocet missiles, the warships fired aluminium strips, known as chaff, to attract the projectiles away from their targets. But behind the curtain of chaff lay the Atlantic Conveyor.

  Lieutenant Chris Parry : And then we heard that the Atlantic Conveyor had been struck by one, maybe two, Exocets. At the time we thought it was criminal that the Atlantic Conveyor was brought in before sunset on that day. And even today, I don't know who made that decision.

  Tom Hardy - Narrator : The ship's supplies were essential to the land forces.

  Lieutenant Colonel Michael Rose : Four Chinooks, a lot of Wessex helicopters, all our combat supplies, rations, tents, had all gone down in the Atlantic Conveyor.

  Brigadier Julian Thompson : The whole game was changed hugely.

  Brigadier John Waters : I remember thinking "Oi, oi, this is all getting a bit serious."

• Tom Hardy - Narrator : With marines and paras now advancing across the north part of East Falkland, Julian Thompson and his team still favoured a swift strike on the capital. But the arrival of Jeremy Moore and Tony Wilson's 5 Brigade at San Carlos put a stop to that.

  Brigadier Julian Thompson : I was about to give orders for our attack when I was told to move round to the south, and I stopped it.

  Tom Hardy - Narrator : Moore proposed a new plan, moving 5 Brigade along a separate southern route, a so-called 'great leap forward', allowing them to catch up with the Marines and Paras. Now scant resources would have to be shared between two brigades.

  Lieutenant Colonel Ivar Hellberg : I didn't for the life of me think that I would have to look after the logistics of 5 Brigade as well. But I had to divide my very slim resources twice as much as before. I did get over and see the commander of 5 Brigade, to try and bend his ear a bit, and I came away empty-handed. I think that's as far as I dare go.

  Brigadier Julian Thompson : I perceived that Tony was engaged in some sort of race with 3 Commander Brigade to get his chaps there first. The thing about military setups is, everyone thinks about their own side. Even people on your own side that aren't part of you are the enemy.

  Brigadier John Waters : One of the principles of war is to concentrate your force, and we were spreading ours out.

  Lieutenant Colonel Michael Rose : The idea that we should attack from coast to coast with inadequate combat and logistical resources, and most of all an inability to communicate from the headquarters round to the southern flank... I was shocked when I heard, and I even tried to argue with General Jeremy Moore, who wasn't in a listening mode. And it was the first time I felt during the entire war that we might actually lose this war.

• Lieutenant Colonel Michael Rose : Because we hadn't moved to Mount Kent when we should have done on 25th May, the Argentines had already flown in some special forces units to knock us off the top of Mount Kent. By the time we got there the Argentine Special Force were almost up onto the ridge from which they could have brought direct fire down onto the landing helicopters. Then, as Julian Thompson said, it would have been game over.

  Lieutenant Sergio Fernández : [speaking Spanish]  If our operation had started 10, 15 minutes earlier, possibly we would have had a superior force in place. And the British forces would have arrived when they were most vulnerable inside their helicopters subjected to our ground fire.

  Lieutenant Colonel Michael Rose : So it was down to ten minutes that we might well have lost the war.

• Lieutenant Colonel Michael Rose : The truth certainly needs to be told about some of the things that went wrong. The Board of Inquiry into the loss of the Tristram and the Galahad turned out to have been a complete whitewash by saying it was necessary to open up a southern flank. Actually the opposite is true by 180 degrees. But that remains in the public record today that the southern flank was necessary to the retaking of Port Stanley. Wrong! It was not. It nearly cost us the war.

  Brigadier Julian Thompson : The order to attack and capture Goose Green - well, it slowed the whole thing down. I thought it was a stupid thing to do. We wouldn't have lost so many people. Maybe 'H' would be alive today.

  Tom Navin : These lessons *do* need to be learned so it doesn't happen again. It's not about catching people out and slagging people off, or anything like that. It's about making a difference in the future, isn't it.