COPING WITH THE CONFLICT WAS HARD FOR ALL THOSE
FORTY years ago, before the advent of mobile phones, Wi-Fi and social media, the loved ones left at home relied on daily newspaper reports and radio or TV news bulletins as their only sources of information about what was happening in the Falklands.
When the servicemen said goodbye in early April 1982, their partners and families had only the bare minimum of information about where they were going and no idea what they would be facing.
At the time, photographer Pete Holdgate was attached to 40 Commando at Stonehouse in Plymouth and living with his then wife, Mary, and their two children, aged five and eight.
“I think it was tougher for the families left behind because we knew what we were doing down there and they didn’t,” he recalls. “Prior to going, I couldn’t tell Mary anything. She knew something was going on because I came home with all my kit and I had my weapon in the car. I was back and forth to London driving around collecting films and pictures of the Falklands. As far as Mary was concerned, I was doing some PR work.
“Our wedding anniversary was on April 1 and we were meant to be having a special meal. When I sat down for that meal, she was making plans for us to go away on holiday… three days later, I was sailing down to the Falklands.
“Once they realised we were going into a conflict, the wives and partners were glued to the TV and the newspapers to find out what was happening. Communication was so different in those days. We could only write home on what we called ‘blueys’ – like a lightweight airmail letter. We couldn’t even write about where we were or what we were doing in letters because they were heavily censored – all opened with razor blades and a lot of the text obscured.
“These flimsy things would arrive in the post and tell them virtually nothing. Mary used to say that the war was worse for them because they couldn’t get any information.”
Meanwhile, in their slit trenches on the Falklands, the commandos could listen to British news on their little pocket radios for a limited period each day, and realised the reports were being sanitised.
“The Argentinians were bombing our ships relentlessly twice a day. On the British news, they said reports of HMS Antelope being hit were completely unfounded, but we had watched it happen! It was literally a few hundred yards away from where we were.
“HMS Sheffield (pictured, right), they couldn’t deny. That was when we really realised we were actually going to war. We had just left Ascension Island and we didn’t see anything, but heard reports of casualties. Nothing was coming back from London in radio messages. The MoD in London sanitised it again.”
The first time Pete was able to speak to his wife was at the end of the war, after the Argentinian surrender, when he was sailing back with 4,000 fellow commandos on board the SS Canberra.
“We were allowed one radio phone call for one minute each on the way back. We had to queue up, put on headphones and the calls went through Portishead. We were just off Gibraltar when I got my chance to call Mary, and I said: ‘Book a holiday’.”
It took about three weeks to get back to England and the commandos had absolutely no idea how they would be received on their arrival.
“When we arrived just off Portsmouth, the shoreline was just this mass of humanity, with all the families waiting for us. There were so many people, all holding banners.
“There was a fleet of 40 buses to go back to Plymouth and as we drove along the A35 there were people lining the country road on the main drag through Dorchester. The buses were being stopped and girls were coming out with bottles of wine and sitting on our laps! And as we came on to the A38, there were people hanging over the barriers. It’s another thing I will never forget.”
Arriving home at the cul de sac in Elburton where he lived at the time, Pete’s neighbours had even organised a street party to welcome him. “A few days later, Mary booked for us to go to Rhodes on holiday and we took the kids for ten days,” recalls Pete.