Dawn on Monday 14 June 1982: a damp, gloomy morning in the South Atlantic. On the hills above Stanley, the tiny capital of the Falkland Islands, the gunfire had finally died down. After hours of savage fighting overnight, Major General Jeremy Moore’s troops had broken through the Argentine lines on Wireless Ridge and Mount Tumbledown. At last, 10 weeks after the Argentines had seized the Falklands, the drama was approaching its climax.
On Wireless Ridge, the journalist Max Hastings trudged past the abandoned Argentine positions and sat down to type his latest despatch for The Standard. Of all the reporters embedded in the task force, none had identified more closely with Britain’s fighting men. Now Hastings paid a tribute to the paratroopers celebrating their latest victory. “Their morale is sky-high,” he wrote. “Their certainty that they have won and that the enemy is collapsing is absolute. They are very cold, very dirty, but in their mood this morning, they could march to London.” Then he heard shouting: “They’re running away! It’s on the radio! The Argies are running everywhere! Victory!
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