MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

1982 A commander's story.

IN April 1982 a British Task Force began its journey South tasked with liberating the Falkland Islands from its Argentine invaders.
Sailing with that force was Julian Thompson, Commander of 40 Commando Royal Marines and 3 Commando Brigade.
He was joint Commander of the amphibious landings and overall Land Commander until the arrival of Major General Jeremy Moore in the Islands at the end of May.
Julian Thompson's brigade saw action in most of the battles of the 1982 Falklands campaign.
During his recent visit to the Islands (his third since the Conflict) Major General Julian Thompson, now retired, spoke at length to Lisa Riddell about the part he played in the Falklands Conflict.

LR: Many people here know much of the latter part of the Falklands campaign; the battles of Longdon and Tumbledown, Wireless Ridge and Two Sisters, but details of the early days of planning and later the landings are less well known. You were involved from the very beginning - tell me how you first came to hear the news that the Falklands had been invaded by Argentina and a little of what happened in terms of initial planning - because you moved to Jeremy Moore's HQ didn't you?

JT: That's right, I was woken up about 3am at home in bed and Jeremy Moore said 'you know those people down south they're about to be invaded.' The reason he spoke in those terms was because he was talking over an open line and at that stage the Argentines hadn't invaded. That was three in the morning our time and before midnight your time and this came as a bit of a surprise because only two days before we had been told that my brigade would not be required. All my staff were in Denmark planning a NATO exercise and lots of the brigade were on leave. In fact one company was doing jungle training in Brunei which is not actually the right sort of preparation for fighting in the Falkland Islands. I got in my car and went straight to Jeremy Moore's headquarters (although I had my own not far away) because it seemed a good idea to be together from the very beginning rather than trying to speak to each other over the telephone over a distance of half a mile. Regarding the initial planning, the first thing to do was to get South because we were told by the government through Sir John Fieldhouse to get loaded and go south. There was no mission given to us and we were not told why we were going south but of course we could guess. But the thing to do was to load the ships because the Prime Minister was very keen to send a signal to Argentina, in the form of sending a task force, that we meant business. If we hung around and spent days loading it would not have sent a signal of the kind she wanted. It was a very busy time; they invaded the Falklands on a Friday and on Saturday and Sunday we were loading all of our kit. Ships were being requisitioned hourly and the size of the force was increasing hourly. So