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Part 13: The Welsh Guards & Chinese Laundrymen arrive.
As I write this episode this morning we have the builders in fitting a new roof for our extension. The drilling noise is constantly in the background, the power keep going off & the interruptions are endless. The perfect setting to getting back into Uganda thought train & trying to capture this important part of the story. Half way through the episode & a familiar chopper sound went overhead, looking out I see a Chinook, in Belgium! Sometimes you can?t escape your past.
6th June: The Scots & Welsh Guards were trying to get ashore to join the fray. Every daylight hr they were onboard a ship they were at risk of attack from the Air. The Scots on Intrepid managed to get ashore Fitzroy.
7th June: Due to shortage of Landing Craft only half the Welsh got ashore at Fitzroy today, the other half returned to San Carlos Water onboard overnight on the RFA?s Sir Tristrum & Sir Galahad. All the Guards could have been put ashore earlier but as they had just returned from Guard duties & not thought ?match fit? they wouldn?t hack the ?Tab? (Bootnecks Yomp, Squaddies Tab) across the rough wet Falklands terrain. Leaving all their eggs in two baskets was to prove a fatal command decision for the Guards, which changed the course of the war for these ancient & distinguished regiments.
8th Plymouth was hit by four bombs. All failing to explode & she survived to later return home safely, great exercise of damage control by the guys on there. Damage control is an art that had been somewhat neglected since WWII, when many ships limped back under their own steam or under tow, with holes in the side or below the water line which would have meant certain sinking & loss of the vessel, without the skill & bravery of the Chief Shipwright & his crew, working in freezing water, below decks trying to put boxes & supports up, when all natural sailors instincts were telling them to evacuate stat.
That was the only good news on the 8th June. The bad news was that early morning Skyhawks screaming down Bluff Cove found the Galahad & the Tristrum still at San Carlos. Their troop commanders onboard had been crying out to their superiors for their men to be landed but their cries went weren?t answered in time.
Within minutes both ships were ablaze. Fifty one men killed. The lucky ones in the initial impact. The others suffering can be easily imagined if you watch the UTube clip of the burning ships. A raging inferno, black smoke choking, blinding, solid wall smoke filled every space onboard & the surrounding air around the vessels.
Those ashore heard & some witnessed the attacks. Some alarm would have been given by the ships themselves. Soon the rescue attempt was under way.
The Welsh Guards were dressed (everyone in the TEZ slept fully dressed) but weren?t issued Anti-Flash hoods & gloves like the regular crew. This failure in Logistical thinking & supply, led to mass casualties having facial & hand burns that the Falklands conflict quickly became so notorious for. To see the difference check 10 quids worth of kit could have made, check out a photo of Nikki Lauder & compare to Simon Weston.
Another bit of bad luck was that if the guards had been ashore, they would have been issued the Morphine amps to tie around their necks, being onboard they hadn?t yet been issued.
The mighty Seaking pilots earnt their gongs that day, picking up casualties from the ship?s superstructure, the sea & using the aircrafts down draft, blew the liferafts away from the ship, towards the shore; where the injured were helped ashore by those stationed nearby.
The first details Rick Jolly, the Senior Medical Officer in charge of the Red & Green Life Machine received, was a hand written note from CO of 16th Field Ambulance Unit, their Surgical Teams had been onboard & stores not yet unloaded. ?Casualties+ number uncounted, need Fluids & Morphine?.
A doctor was sent by gazelle with IV fluids & morphine to give initial treatment on the beach, they were then ferried back to the R&GLM arriving from dusk onwards.
160 Casualties were received from Galahad & Tristum + 10 from the Plymouth that night. I would suggest that no single hospital in the UK has ever received such numbers of such life threatened injured since at least WWII & probably not then either, as in a disaster the injured are ferried to alternative hospitals. Burns to the head & face means threatened airway, therefore these are life threatening injuries. And the R&GLM wasn?t classed as a Surgical Hospital but Surgical Dressing Station; without the supplies or staff that the former would have enjoyed, as deployed in Iraq & Afghanistan Green Zones. The staff there that night will never know a worse one in this life but let us remember, nothing compare with what their patients had been through. They had surely been through a mortal version of Dante?s inferno, which they could never forget & in some cases never got over.
As part of my research for this episode I saw a new book in Water stones ?Rick Jolly, Doctor for Friend and Foe.? Already having his ?The Red & Green Life Machine,? I was a bit surprised to see he had written about the Falklands but having read the front & back covers I took the book to the till, saying to the girl, There must be a limit to how many pages you can write about the events of three months. Once on Eurostar I found inside that this was an updated version of the original book! Can?t believe they didn?t state that on the cover sounds like a publishers trick on the anniversary yr. I will be passing my thoughts on this matter, as well as my regards onto Mr Jolly.
However, re-reading his book reminded me of other details I?d forgotten. Like the reason we didn?t get these patients the very next morning is that there were no choppers spared for this duty. The generals had the few available choppers flying stores fwd to support the frontline troops & it could be argued that the best way of saving lives was to push on to Stanley & finish the conflict. The longer it dragged on the great the loss of life was likely to be.
The solution came by word of mouth & pilots dropped by en-route to other sorties to take a couple of patients to the Uganda, receive the payments of a bacon roll sarnie, hot coffee & back to the stores sorties. By this method & this alone, all the pts arrived onboard the Uganda within 24hrs. By the time the officials had got around to sorting transport out there TR&GLM was unusually empty.
The Uganda not having Military Comms (due to the Geneva Convention) didn?t have much of a clue what was about to arrive until the first chopper was 15mins way. The first couple of loads were triaged & the powers that be got the idea that additional space was required. More beds were put together in the Wardroom (the officers were reduced to drinking in the immediate bar area, although the patients would be able to hear the glasses chinking & the aroma of beers being poured, coffee being made.
I was pulled away from Sea View Ward to work with the burns. I had nothing more than first aid training & a few lectures on burns on the way down. How were we to cope with burns of such severity? Reading Rick?s book I realise the ancient medical teaching principle of see one do one, had been carried to further extremes ashore. Onboard Medics & nurses did the jobs that RGNs burn specialists would have done at a burns unit. The doctors did jobs of surgeons & the one burns specialist we had, G&T in hand during ward rounds, I suppose did the best he could but he was no hero to me, although he received honours for his work later. This was definitely a case in the tradition of the head being rewarded, for the work of the whole unit. In the R&GLM they had Cooks (who would have been first aiders in the mob) applying the white burns cream to the faces & hands of the injured, whilst the medics & doctors dealt with maintaining airways & analgesia.
We gathered together probably just six of us, to receive the first patients on the burns ward. Our main concern was not to show any shock or disgust, keep clam & carry on dears. As the Bandies carried them through on stretchers, we guided them to the next available bed, helped transfer them onto the bed, leading to the first cries of pain in those affected elsewhere besides hands & face. We took their pitiful passions, if any & checked their Medivac forms to see when they last had morphine.
By this time post injury, most of Guards heads resembled medicine balls; as large & as round. Most couldn?t see anything due to swelling of their eyelids. Some couldn?t speak because of swelling to their neck, throat & lips. This swelling & burnt flesh, meant it was impossible to tell identify the Welsh from the Chinese.
I mentioned the Chinese in the title as their plight was forgotten almost immediately by the press & without the Falklands fund they would have been discharged penniless & pensionless. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this obscure Royal Naval Tradition, all the warships in the RN at that time had Honk Kong Chinese Laundrymen & tailor onboard. They received no money from the RN but lived on money they charged for laundering & mending personnel & military clothing. They had their own cooks & were allowed some space in the galley to cook for their team. Some of these guys would be in their 70?s. With no pension & a strong Chinese gambolling habit they tended to work until they died or became too unfit to carry on.
As this was going on, I became aware of an ancient Welsh army tradition; the men that could speak were calling out for their mates. ?Jones 64, Jones 64, where are you?? They were using the last two numbers of their Army number to differentiate between half a dozen Jones, Williams ect. It seemed really weird to us matelots, we could have several Smiths, Browns & Jones on the same ship they were just given a different nicknames.
We tried to calm things down & get a list of those we had just admitted. We had 40 patients all of whom at least had burns to head & hands. Several had patches where their clothes had been burnt through, those who had been trapped or had burning materials fall on them had larger deeper burns, up to 46%.
We sat them up to encourage their heads to drain & reduce swelling, if they didn?t have an IV drip one was put up, they were given fluids. Then a doctor came around with antibacterial eye ointment, which we were to administer it to all the patients. However the eye lids were so swollen I couldn?t part them enough to see the eyes. When I reported this, I was advised to apply the ointment to the eye lids & the radiating heat would melt the ointment & it would seep down onto the eyes.
Next step was lunch. None of them could feed themselves as their hands were covered in Plastic bags. So we had to feed them, whatever they could manage. I can?t remember but I would imagine it was little more than soup to start with. Afterwards, they all wanted the same thing, a fag. So I stood between two Guards, with a fag in each hand & allowed them to try & puff away. According to Rick Jolly the medics had shielded burning end from their faces as it was too painful. Well they had obviously got past that stage & we didn?t have ht staff for that. After this morning, we went down to the normal number of 3 staff per watch. In a civy burns unit there would be a 1 to 1 ratio.
As I looked at these two tragic young men, I was overcome with empathy; ?Hey Taffy, didn?t the Army tell you that smoke damages your health?? And the friendly interservice banter come right back.
As I write this episode this morning we have the builders in fitting a new roof for our extension. The drilling noise is constantly in the background, the power keep going off & the interruptions are endless. The perfect setting to getting back into Uganda thought train & trying to capture this important part of the story. Half way through the episode & a familiar chopper sound went overhead, looking out I see a Chinook, in Belgium! Sometimes you can?t escape your past.
6th June: The Scots & Welsh Guards were trying to get ashore to join the fray. Every daylight hr they were onboard a ship they were at risk of attack from the Air. The Scots on Intrepid managed to get ashore Fitzroy.
7th June: Due to shortage of Landing Craft only half the Welsh got ashore at Fitzroy today, the other half returned to San Carlos Water onboard overnight on the RFA?s Sir Tristrum & Sir Galahad. All the Guards could have been put ashore earlier but as they had just returned from Guard duties & not thought ?match fit? they wouldn?t hack the ?Tab? (Bootnecks Yomp, Squaddies Tab) across the rough wet Falklands terrain. Leaving all their eggs in two baskets was to prove a fatal command decision for the Guards, which changed the course of the war for these ancient & distinguished regiments.
8th Plymouth was hit by four bombs. All failing to explode & she survived to later return home safely, great exercise of damage control by the guys on there. Damage control is an art that had been somewhat neglected since WWII, when many ships limped back under their own steam or under tow, with holes in the side or below the water line which would have meant certain sinking & loss of the vessel, without the skill & bravery of the Chief Shipwright & his crew, working in freezing water, below decks trying to put boxes & supports up, when all natural sailors instincts were telling them to evacuate stat.
That was the only good news on the 8th June. The bad news was that early morning Skyhawks screaming down Bluff Cove found the Galahad & the Tristrum still at San Carlos. Their troop commanders onboard had been crying out to their superiors for their men to be landed but their cries went weren?t answered in time.
Within minutes both ships were ablaze. Fifty one men killed. The lucky ones in the initial impact. The others suffering can be easily imagined if you watch the UTube clip of the burning ships. A raging inferno, black smoke choking, blinding, solid wall smoke filled every space onboard & the surrounding air around the vessels.
Those ashore heard & some witnessed the attacks. Some alarm would have been given by the ships themselves. Soon the rescue attempt was under way.
The Welsh Guards were dressed (everyone in the TEZ slept fully dressed) but weren?t issued Anti-Flash hoods & gloves like the regular crew. This failure in Logistical thinking & supply, led to mass casualties having facial & hand burns that the Falklands conflict quickly became so notorious for. To see the difference check 10 quids worth of kit could have made, check out a photo of Nikki Lauder & compare to Simon Weston.
Another bit of bad luck was that if the guards had been ashore, they would have been issued the Morphine amps to tie around their necks, being onboard they hadn?t yet been issued.
The mighty Seaking pilots earnt their gongs that day, picking up casualties from the ship?s superstructure, the sea & using the aircrafts down draft, blew the liferafts away from the ship, towards the shore; where the injured were helped ashore by those stationed nearby.
The first details Rick Jolly, the Senior Medical Officer in charge of the Red & Green Life Machine received, was a hand written note from CO of 16th Field Ambulance Unit, their Surgical Teams had been onboard & stores not yet unloaded. ?Casualties+ number uncounted, need Fluids & Morphine?.
A doctor was sent by gazelle with IV fluids & morphine to give initial treatment on the beach, they were then ferried back to the R&GLM arriving from dusk onwards.
160 Casualties were received from Galahad & Tristum + 10 from the Plymouth that night. I would suggest that no single hospital in the UK has ever received such numbers of such life threatened injured since at least WWII & probably not then either, as in a disaster the injured are ferried to alternative hospitals. Burns to the head & face means threatened airway, therefore these are life threatening injuries. And the R&GLM wasn?t classed as a Surgical Hospital but Surgical Dressing Station; without the supplies or staff that the former would have enjoyed, as deployed in Iraq & Afghanistan Green Zones. The staff there that night will never know a worse one in this life but let us remember, nothing compare with what their patients had been through. They had surely been through a mortal version of Dante?s inferno, which they could never forget & in some cases never got over.
As part of my research for this episode I saw a new book in Water stones ?Rick Jolly, Doctor for Friend and Foe.? Already having his ?The Red & Green Life Machine,? I was a bit surprised to see he had written about the Falklands but having read the front & back covers I took the book to the till, saying to the girl, There must be a limit to how many pages you can write about the events of three months. Once on Eurostar I found inside that this was an updated version of the original book! Can?t believe they didn?t state that on the cover sounds like a publishers trick on the anniversary yr. I will be passing my thoughts on this matter, as well as my regards onto Mr Jolly.
However, re-reading his book reminded me of other details I?d forgotten. Like the reason we didn?t get these patients the very next morning is that there were no choppers spared for this duty. The generals had the few available choppers flying stores fwd to support the frontline troops & it could be argued that the best way of saving lives was to push on to Stanley & finish the conflict. The longer it dragged on the great the loss of life was likely to be.
The solution came by word of mouth & pilots dropped by en-route to other sorties to take a couple of patients to the Uganda, receive the payments of a bacon roll sarnie, hot coffee & back to the stores sorties. By this method & this alone, all the pts arrived onboard the Uganda within 24hrs. By the time the officials had got around to sorting transport out there TR&GLM was unusually empty.
The Uganda not having Military Comms (due to the Geneva Convention) didn?t have much of a clue what was about to arrive until the first chopper was 15mins way. The first couple of loads were triaged & the powers that be got the idea that additional space was required. More beds were put together in the Wardroom (the officers were reduced to drinking in the immediate bar area, although the patients would be able to hear the glasses chinking & the aroma of beers being poured, coffee being made.
I was pulled away from Sea View Ward to work with the burns. I had nothing more than first aid training & a few lectures on burns on the way down. How were we to cope with burns of such severity? Reading Rick?s book I realise the ancient medical teaching principle of see one do one, had been carried to further extremes ashore. Onboard Medics & nurses did the jobs that RGNs burn specialists would have done at a burns unit. The doctors did jobs of surgeons & the one burns specialist we had, G&T in hand during ward rounds, I suppose did the best he could but he was no hero to me, although he received honours for his work later. This was definitely a case in the tradition of the head being rewarded, for the work of the whole unit. In the R&GLM they had Cooks (who would have been first aiders in the mob) applying the white burns cream to the faces & hands of the injured, whilst the medics & doctors dealt with maintaining airways & analgesia.
We gathered together probably just six of us, to receive the first patients on the burns ward. Our main concern was not to show any shock or disgust, keep clam & carry on dears. As the Bandies carried them through on stretchers, we guided them to the next available bed, helped transfer them onto the bed, leading to the first cries of pain in those affected elsewhere besides hands & face. We took their pitiful passions, if any & checked their Medivac forms to see when they last had morphine.
By this time post injury, most of Guards heads resembled medicine balls; as large & as round. Most couldn?t see anything due to swelling of their eyelids. Some couldn?t speak because of swelling to their neck, throat & lips. This swelling & burnt flesh, meant it was impossible to tell identify the Welsh from the Chinese.
I mentioned the Chinese in the title as their plight was forgotten almost immediately by the press & without the Falklands fund they would have been discharged penniless & pensionless. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this obscure Royal Naval Tradition, all the warships in the RN at that time had Honk Kong Chinese Laundrymen & tailor onboard. They received no money from the RN but lived on money they charged for laundering & mending personnel & military clothing. They had their own cooks & were allowed some space in the galley to cook for their team. Some of these guys would be in their 70?s. With no pension & a strong Chinese gambolling habit they tended to work until they died or became too unfit to carry on.
As this was going on, I became aware of an ancient Welsh army tradition; the men that could speak were calling out for their mates. ?Jones 64, Jones 64, where are you?? They were using the last two numbers of their Army number to differentiate between half a dozen Jones, Williams ect. It seemed really weird to us matelots, we could have several Smiths, Browns & Jones on the same ship they were just given a different nicknames.
We tried to calm things down & get a list of those we had just admitted. We had 40 patients all of whom at least had burns to head & hands. Several had patches where their clothes had been burnt through, those who had been trapped or had burning materials fall on them had larger deeper burns, up to 46%.
We sat them up to encourage their heads to drain & reduce swelling, if they didn?t have an IV drip one was put up, they were given fluids. Then a doctor came around with antibacterial eye ointment, which we were to administer it to all the patients. However the eye lids were so swollen I couldn?t part them enough to see the eyes. When I reported this, I was advised to apply the ointment to the eye lids & the radiating heat would melt the ointment & it would seep down onto the eyes.
Next step was lunch. None of them could feed themselves as their hands were covered in Plastic bags. So we had to feed them, whatever they could manage. I can?t remember but I would imagine it was little more than soup to start with. Afterwards, they all wanted the same thing, a fag. So I stood between two Guards, with a fag in each hand & allowed them to try & puff away. According to Rick Jolly the medics had shielded burning end from their faces as it was too painful. Well they had obviously got past that stage & we didn?t have ht staff for that. After this morning, we went down to the normal number of 3 staff per watch. In a civy burns unit there would be a 1 to 1 ratio.
As I looked at these two tragic young men, I was overcome with empathy; ?Hey Taffy, didn?t the Army tell you that smoke damages your health?? And the friendly interservice banter come right back.
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