Page 35 - History of War - Issue 10-14

FALKLANDS: THATCHER’S WAR

defence staff Admiral Terence Lewin. While
Argentine soldiers were
she’d take counsel from all her advisors, again
keen to conscript, but their
it was the military man to whom she paid most relative inexperience was to
attention. Lewin, like Leach, was a WWII vet be their downfall
with a powerful sense of duty, and a fi rm belief
in the ability of Britain to triumph against the
odds. “The only thing which will make us lose,
is if you lose your nerve,” he told the politicians.
The War Cabinet was essentially Thatcher’s
inner court, never a committee, but it was
Lewin who also inadvertently set its agenda.
Like all good military leaders, he knew that for
a mission to succeed, its objectives must be
clear from the outset and insisted they were
defi ned early. By the time Haig arrived, the War
Cabinet was entirely focused on the ‘liberation
of the Falkland Islands and the removal of the
occupying army’. The Argentinian army would
leave or it would be removed – it was a goal
Thatcher refused to be distracted from.
The Argentinian army, meanwhile, had
even less intention of leaving than it did of
compromising. Documents released in 2012
show just how far the US was prepared to go in
appeasing Galtieri, with minutes from a meeting
on 30 April revealing the extent of Haig’s
exasperation with the regime. “Our proposals – the Junta didn’t know what it was doing. As “ AS THE TASK FORCE EDGED
there’s a third, more unsettling explanation
are a camoufl aged transfer of sovereignty,” he
told colleagues. “The Argentine foreign minister US diplomat Jean Kirkpatrick later recalled CLOSER, THE FALKLANDS
knows this, but the Junta won’t accept it.” of the Argentine position: “There was a lack
Had the early military success gone to of seriousness, as though they didn’t have a BEGAN TO FILL UP WITH
Galtieri’s head? Possibly. Did he think the sense of what war would be like. No sense
Junta’s newfound popularity would unravel if of the tragedy of it, or the loss of life. They YOUNG CONSCRIPTS”
he suddenly put his guns down? Probably. But simply had no experience of war.”

The British troops arriving at the
Falklands were some of the best
Britain had to offer

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