Showing Spearhead Assault: Blood, Guts and Glory on the Falklands Frontlines by John Geddes

On May 21st, 1982, nearly four hundred soldiers from the 2cd Battalion Parachute Regiment under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Herbert 'H' Jones, landed with a British Task Force at San Carlos Bay on the Falklands. Their mission: to take the strategic position at Goose Green where military intelligence reckoned there were a couple of hundred Argentine troops guarding an airstrip. The intelligence was wrong and when they attacked on May 27th, they were confronted by a 1,500-strong regiment of Argentine soldiers dug in with so much machine-gun ammunition they stood on the ammo boxes to keep their feet dry. Some of the enemy soldiers were Special Forces; some were Guarani Indians, a proud warrior race; a few even were Welsh-speaking members of a community founded in Patagoina in the nineteenth century. What they had in common were two .50 calibre machine guns in every position. It was going to be a hard and dreadful fight. Fourteen hours later when the smoke had cleared on the most ferocious battle in post-war British history, nearly 250 Argentine soldiers were killed, scores more were wounded and another 1,300 had been captured.Goose Green would cost 2 Para the lives of seventeen men, including 'H' Jones, who was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for his role in the action. This is a no-holds barred account of what it was really like to walk into the storm of lead the Argentines hurled at their attackers.