Captain Steve Hughes
Medical officer of 2 Para who saved lives on both sides during the fierce battles of the Falklands war
CAPTAIN STEVE HUGHES, who has died aged 60, was the Regimental Medical Officer of 2nd Battalion the Parachute Regiment (2 Para) during the Falklands war.
Argentine forces mounted amphibious landings on the Falkland Islands on April 2 1982. The British government dispatched a Task Force to reclaim them and, on April 26, 2 Para, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Herbert (“H”) Jones, sailed in MV Norland.
Hughes’s medical unit, the Regimental Aid Post (RAP), consisted of six professional medics, a signaller and an admin sergeant. Hughes realised that if there were a lot of casualties, his unit would find it difficult to cope. On the voyage south, therefore, he instructed as many soldiers as possible in what he termed “battlefield resuscitation”, with particular emphasis on the treatment of gunshot and blast injuries.
Hughes and his RAP landed during the night on May 21 as part of the first beach assault group. The landing was unopposed, but a firearm had accidentally been discharged on one of the landing craft, so Hughes and his team were kept busy straightaway.
Over the next week, 2 Para having established itself on Sussex Mountains, there were regular Argentine air attacks against the beach-head and shipping. In the early hours of May 28, the battalion was ordered south to engage the Argentine garrison on the Goose Green peninsula. The medics were carrying more than 80lbs of equipment over rough ground, and in the darkness and steady drizzle there were many falls.
The first two company attacks had no losses, but casualties mounted as resistance stiffened. Chris Keeble, the battalion second-in-command, asked Hughes to take his RAP forward, adding a warning to “look out for the sniper on the right flank”. The medics ran for 400 yards, keeping low. A tracer round cracked past Hughes, inches over his head.
It was about 0600 hours and there were still four hours of darkness when the CO arrived to check on the casualties. He and his adjutant joked about a shell that had landed between them but left them unscathed. Hughes used captured tents to provide treatment and shelter for British and Argentine casualties until they could be evacuated by helicopters to the field surgical teams operating in a makeshift warehouse at Ajax Bay.
The RAP was about 200 yards behind the Paras’ forward line. Enemy shellfire was getting heavier and a battle was raging, with ferocious close-quarter fighting. Hughes was listening to the battalion command radio network when he heard the message: “Sunray is down!” “H”, who was with “A” Company, had been hit.
Hughes called for helicopters and led part of his team forward to locate “A” Company. On the way they had to dive for cover as two enemy fighters appeared overhead. They found the company on Darwin Hill.
Hughes learnt that “H” and two brother officers – both good friends of his – had been killed. The wounded had been assembled at the foot of a hill. Their injuries had been dressed and the medics gave them painkillers and antibiotics and did their best to keep them dry and warm while keeping up a continual reassuring banter.
Of great concern to Hughes were the men with severe head injuries. He was struggling to prevent them falling into a coma, and medical supplies were almost exhausted.
At that dark moment, as Hughes said later: “Over the hill there came what for me will always be the arrival of the 7th Cavalry.” It was a Scout helicopter clattering over the crest bringing vital medical resupplies. His team got the casualties on board, including some of the more seriously wounded prisoners. All told, they had treated 33 British wounded and more than twice that number of Argentines.
Steven James Hughes was born at Newport, Gwent, on June 12 1957. He was educated at Gowerton Boys’ Grammar School near Swansea, and joined the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1977. Having been granted a short service commission, he was attached to 144 Field Ambulance RAMC.
In 1980 he moved to Charing Cross Hospital as a house surgeon and, subsequently, to King Edward VII Hospital, Windsor, as a house physician. This was followed by a postgraduate medical officers’ course involving attendance at Sandhurst, RAMC Training Centre, Aldershot, and RAM College, London.
In January 1982 he joined 2 Para as regimental medical officer. He had already qualified for his “wings” as a military parachutist, and was responsible for the medical training and equipping of the battalion for a six-month tour in Belize.
In the battle for Goose Green, after Lt Col “H” Jones was killed, Major Chris Keeble assumed command. By last light on May 28 almost the whole of the peninsula had been taken and negotiations the next day resulted in the surrender of the rest of the garrison. The battle had cost the British and Argentines 65 soldiers killed and 190 wounded. As a result of implementing Hughes’s system for the management of battlefield trauma, no casualty who reached the medical teams subsequently died.
On June 2, elements of 2 Para took Bluff Cove and Fitzroy. On June 8 the Royal Navy vessels Sir Tristram and Sir Galahad were unloading in Fitzroy harbour when they were attacked by enemy Skyhawks and badly damaged. Hughes led his team of medics into the freezing water.
Large areas were on fire and the air was thick with smoke from burning oil. The killed and wounded numbered about 200. He and his team steeled themselves once again and in horrific conditions set about rescuing and treating the casualties.
When 2 Para took Wireless Ridge and reoccupied Port Stanley, Hughes led his team close behind the battalion’s forward troops. He became the only medical officer to have served in both land battles. He was recommended for an MC but received a Mention in Despatches.
After the debriefing that followed the conflict, he took part in a sixmonth tour in Belize. In 1984 he was posted to Cambridge Military Hospital, Aldershot, as senior house officer in General Surgery. In 1985 he moved to the British Military Hospital, Rinteln, Germany. He was the registrar in Surgery and Orthopaedics at this hospital for six months before retiring from the Army in 1986.
Hughes served in Britain as a general surgical registrar and an orthopaedic surgeon, in Australia as a consultant in hand and microsurgery and in America as a trauma surgeon. From 1999 to 2012 he was an orthopaedics consultant with the Heart of England NHS Trust. He retired from the NHS in 2013 but practised in Abu Dhabi for some years.
After his military service, Hughes, despite all reassurances to the contrary, suffered from a deep sense that he should have done more for those in his charge. Like many of his comrades, he was troubled by nightmares and flashbacks associated with post-traumatic stress disorder. As well as doing a lot of research into the condition, he helped to raise funds to support veterans with PTSD and wrote about his experiences in the British Medical Journal.
In 2017, he was diagnosed with end-stage liver disease. When he was in hospital and his medical team were searching for a living donor transplant, his daughter, Amy, said to him: “Well, we will have to find out how to give you some of my liver.” Hughes said that it was the proudest day of his life.
He married, in 1994, Dr Carol Millar, a consultant paediatric anaesthetist, who survives him with their daughter and two sons.
Steve Hughes, born June 12 1957, died May 4 2018