Battle of Mount Harriet
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| Battle of Mount Harriet | |||||||
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| Part of Falklands War | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
 United Kingdom |
 Argentina |
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| Commanders | |||||||
| Lt. Col. Nick Vaux | Lt. Col. Diego Soria | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 600 Royal Marines/Welsh Guards | approximately 400 troops | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 2 killed 26 wounded |
18 killed 50 wounded 300 captured |
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The Battle to Mount Harriet was an engagement of the Falklands War, which took place on the night of 11/12 June 1982 between British and Argentine forces. It was one of three battles in a brigade-size operation on the same night.
The British force consisted of 42 Commando (42 CDO), Royal Marines under the command of Lt. Col. Nick Vaux's Royal Marines (he later became a general) with artillery support from a battery of 29 Commando Regiment, Royal Artillery. The 1st Battalion, Welsh Guards (1WG) and two companies from 40 CDO were in reserve. HMS Yarmouth provided naval-gunfire support for the British forces. The Argentinean defenders consisted of Lieutenant Colonel Diego Soria's 4th Infantry Regiment (RI 4).
On the night of 30 May, K Company of 42 CDO moved forward of San Carlos to secure the commanding heights of Mount Kent—at 1,504 feet, the tallest of the peaks surrounding Stanley—where the D Squadron SAS Troops had already established a strong presence. However, when they arrived at their landing zone, some 3 kilometres (2 mi) behind the ridge of the mountain, the Marines were surprised to see the flashes and lines of tracer ammunition lighting up the night. After a fierce fight at close quarters, the Argentine patrol (Captain Tomas Fernandez' 2nd Assault Section, 602 Commando Company) melted away from the boulders and snow-soaked scrub and grass. By the end of May, Major Cedric Delves' D Squadron had gained Mount Kent, and Tactical HQ commenced patrolling Bluff Cove Peak, which they took with the loss of two wounded.
The attack was preceded by many days of observation and nights of patrolling. Some night-fighting patrols were part of a deception plan to convince the Argentinians that the attack would come from a westerly direction. Other, more covert, patrols were to find a route through a minefield around the south of Mount Harriet. Sniping and naval artillery were used to harass the defenders and deny them sleep.
On 3 June, Lieutenant Chris Marwood's Reconnaissance Troop of 42 CDO, accompanying the 3 Commando Brigade Forward Air Control team commanded by Flight Lieutenant Dennis Marshall-Hasdell, encountered an RI 4 fighting patrol (3rd Platoon of B Company). Rather than continuing with their important covert reconnaissance and air attack mission, Marines from Recce Troop chose to open fire. Two of the conscripts (Privates Celso Paez and Roberto Ledesma) were instantly killed, and an NCO (Corporal Nicolas Odorcic) went down, wounded by a head shot by one of the Marine snipers as he took cover among the rocks. This action drew attention to their exposed forward position, and the Royal Marines were taken completely by surprise when Argentinean reinforcements joined in the movement and a general counterattack developed. The Primary Forward Air Controller, commando-trained Flight Lieutenant Dennis Marshal-Hasdell, remembers:
- We were separated from our heavy bergans with the radios and all our gear. The patrol was spread over quite a large area, with lots of shouting, noise and firing going on. The Marines abandoned all their equipment, and although no one told us, it became clear that we were to withdraw. With no information, and the likelihood of having to fight our way out, Dave Greedus and I decided to abandon our equipment, destroying as much as we could. The two radio sets (HF and UHF) were tough enough, but the HAZE unit of the laser target marker was designed to withstand the weight of a tank! (Hugh McManners, The Scars of War, p. 238, Harper Collins Publishers, 1993)
The Laser Target Designator retrieved in the contact showed that the Royal Marines were seeking to destroy the Argentinean bunkers on Mount Harriet with 1,000-pound Pave Way Laser Guided Bombs.
On the night of 8-9 June, action on the outer defence zone flared when Lieutenant Mark Townsend's 1 Troop (K Company, 42 CDO) probed Mount Harriet, killing two Argentines. At the same time, two platoon-size fighting patrols from 45 Commando attempted the same on Two Sisters Mountain, but the Argentinean Rasit ground surveillance radar there was able to detect the 45 Commando platoons, and artillery fire dispersed the force.
Over a period of a week, the 4th Regiment defended the Harriet-Two Sisters sector from five Royal Marine platoon-size attacks. Every time the Royal Marine Commandos got into the forward platoon positions, the officers, NCOS and conscripts, counterattacked with rifles and cleared them out.
On the morning of 11 June, the orders for the attack were given to 42 CDO by Vaux; K Company was ordered to attack the eastern end of the mountain, while L Company would attack the southern side an hour later, where it—if the mountain was secured—would then move north of Mount Harriet to Goat Ridge. J Company would launch a diversionary attack (code named Vesuvius) on the western end of Mount Harriet.
In the closing hours of 11 June, K and L Companies moved from their assembly area on Mount Challenger (which lay to the west of Mount Harriet) and made their way south, around their objective, across the minefield, to their respective start lines. As they moved around the feature in the dark, J company launched their very loud diversionary "attack" from the west.
[edit] Battle Summary
The battle for Mount Harriet began on the evening of 11 June with a blistering naval bombardment that killed two Argentines and wounded twenty-five. John Witheroe, one of the British war correspondents, later recalled the softening up fire:
- We were involved with one night attack on Mount Harriet, when the Welsh Guards were coming up as a back-up. This involved marching for several hours on a very dark night, through a minefield. Sporadic shellfire slowed our progress tremendously. Eventually we made the base of Mount Harriet, which was coming under incredible fire from a frigate ashore. The whole mountain seemed to erupt in flame. It seemed impossible that anybody could survive an attack like that. This went on for well over an hour, shell after shell whistling over our heads and hitting the mountain. Eventually this was lifted and the Marines went in. To our amazement, there seemed to be an incredible amount of fighting going on. There was a lot of tracer fire. The whole night was being lit up by flares, which cast a dead, unrealistic, pall over the whole scene. (Speaking Out: Untold Stories from the Falklands War, p. 271, Andre Deutsch, 1989)
Captain Peter Babbington's K Company crossed their start line first and proceeded up the mountain undetected, knifing two sentries on the way. They remained undetected until they approached Sub-Lieutenant Mario Juarez' 120-mm Mortar Platoon positions and decided to engage them. They were assisted in the advance by HMS Yarmouth, artillery, and mortars. During the engagement, Corporal Larry Watts was killed. About 150 metres from Soria's HQ, Corporal Steve Newland circled behind a group of Argentines (under First Lieutenant Jorge Alejandro Echeverria, the 4th Regiment's intelligence officer) who were setting up an ambush. Although half a dozen Argentines and a MAG were placed to massacre anyone who broke cover, Newland darted out from under cover to charge the enemy machine gun. He grenaded two of the crew, but reaching the rear of the machine gun position, he was shot through both legs. With the enemy machine gun out of action, Corporals Mick Eccles and Sharky Ward were able to clear the position without losses. The three corporals were awarded the Military Medal. Increasing numbers of Argentine soldiers, mainly conscripts from RI 4's Recce Platoon, began to surrender, but the Commanding Officer and Intelligence Officer and several senior NCOs still fought on, according to their orders. The heavy machine gun teams, to a man, stood in their positions and raked the Royal Marine Commandos with bullets.
L Company crossed their start line shortly after K Company and were almost immediately engaged by effective machine gun fire from Sub-Lieutenant Pablo Oliva's platoon defending the lower southern slopes. These weapons would not be silenced until being hit by several MILAN antitank missiles and six 105 mm artillery guns from Mount Challenger. The L Company Marines contend they took fire from at least seven machine guns that only wounded five men, but as Hugh Bicheno detailed in Razor's Edge (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006), the 4th Regiment's passive night goggles were all with B Company.
Before first light, Lieutenant Jerry Burnell's 5 Troop of L Company proceeded to an outcrop of rocks towards Goat Ridge. As they advanced, the Royal Marine platoon came under heavy fire from a platoon of grenadiers from the Regimiento de Granaderos a Caballo del General San Martín covering the Argentinian retreat and were forced to withdraw. [1] L Company requested artillery fire onto the Argentines, then 4 Troop moved forward and found that the granaderos had withdrawn, along with two rifle platoons. Further fighting went on throughout the morning of 12 June, and a fanatically brave conscript, in a position just below the summit, held up L Company with accurate shooting until killed by an 84 mm antitank rocket fired at short range.
The battle was a textbook example of good planning and use of deception and surprise, and a further step towards their main objective of Stanley. British casualties were two killed and twenty-six wounded. Eighteen Argentinean dead lay around the defences. Lance Corporal Koleszar had the surprising experience of finding that two 'dead' Argentine soldiers, whose boots he was trying to remove, were very much alive and jumped up to surrender. Some British reporters were thus misled into depicting the Argentinians as hapless teenage conscripts who caved in after the first shots were fired, but Royal Marine Warrant Officer 2 John Cartledge, who served with L Company during the battle, corrected them, saying the Argentineans were good soldiers who had fought properly:
"They used the tactics which they had been taught along the way very well, they were quite prepared for an attack. They put up a strong fight from start to finish. They were also better equipped than we were. We had first generation night sights, which were large cumbersome pieces of equipment, while the Argentines had second-generation American night sights that were compact and so much better than what we had. The one deficiency which we exposed was that they had planned for a western end of the mountain attack and therefore had not bothered to extend their defensive positions to the eastern end, where we ultimately attacked." ([2])
One British general put their success down to his Marines' skill and professionalism:
- "What was needed was speed but not being bloody stupid. The Israelis would have done it much faster, but with many more casualties." (Robert Fox, Eyewitness Falklands, p. 296)
42 Commando captured 300 prisoners on Mount Harriet, and for the bravery shown in the attack, the unit was awarded one DSO, one Military Cross, four Military Medals, and eight men were mentioned in dispatches.
[edit] External links
- A Brilliant Success: The Battle for Mount Harriet
- Mount Harriet: The Argentinean Story
- [3] A British officer goes in search of 4th Regiment veterans
[edit] References
- An article written by the CO of the 4th Infantry Regiment
- A 42 Commando Company Commander's Perspective
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