laststandonzombieisland

Happy National Tea Day!

The old Bootneck maxim: whenever possible brew up.

Falklands Campaign. A Royal Marine Commando pictured “brewing up” in the mountains around Port Stanley, June 1982. His weapon, a 5.56mm Armalite, indicates that he may well be a member of the Mountain and Arctic Warfare (MAW) Cadre.

Experts in operating in cold and rocky environments, it made absolute sense to tap the Mountain Leader Training Cadre instructors under Captain Rod Boswell and recently-graduated students from the RM’s MAW center at Stonehouse Barracks when 3 Commando was heading to liberate the Falklands.

The 36-man provisional MAWC, operating as sort of an LRRP unit in the space between the British and Argentine battleline, participated in several missions during the conflict including reconnaissance patrols, observation post establishment, and the skirmish at Top Malo House on 31 May 1982– where a 19 member det tangled with 13 Argentine special forces operators from their 602 Commando Company.

Via Royal Marines – From Sea Soldiers to Special Forces by Julian Thompson:

As he crawled forward over the bare landscape, Captain (Rod) Boswell tried to make himself as inconspicuous as possible, conscious that his and his companions’ green disruptive-pattern camouflage uniforms stood out on the snow-covered ground. The dark window on the upper floor of the house where an enemy Special Forces patrol was holed up was like an eye watching them as they inched forward. When Boswell judged they were close enough to the house and in full view of their own fire group out to a flank supporting them, he ordered, ‘Fix bayonets,’ and fired a green mini flare, the signal for the fire group to fire 6 66mm light anti-armor rockets at the house. At the first bang, a sentry appeared in the window on the upper floor. Corporal (Steve) Groves shot him with a sniper rifle. The house burst into flames as the 66mm rockets slammed in.

Boswell and his assault group charged forward, halted, fired two more 66s into the house, and charged again. Their quarry ran out of the house into the small streambed nearby, firing as they ran. Sergeant (Terry) Doyle fell, hit in the shoulder, followed by Corporal (Steve) Groves, wounded in the chest. Ammunition in the building exploded, the assault group momentarily recoiling in the blast, before running forward, now shielded from their opponents in the stream bed by smoke billowing from the burning building. The enemy commander, trying to make a break for it, was killed by two 40mm projectiles fired from M79 grenade launchers by Corporal (Matt/Barney) Barnacle and Sergeant (Mac) McLean.

Their adversaries stood up and threw away their weapons. Five enemy dead, and twelve prisoners, including seven wounded, was the score for a morning’s work by the Mountain & Arctic Warfare (M&AW) Cadre, in its wartime role of the Reconnaissance Troop for 3rd Commando Brigade, Royal Marines.