Standing solemnly in silent contemplation at the Aldershot Military Cemetery, soaking in the summer sunshine, eternity faces me carved in stone – a reality so far removed from the bravado of war or the romance of its poets that it jolts.
Here, as close to that poetic earth referred to as “forever England” as I ever care to get, the grass grows like memories, obscuring the past. But remember, and remember we must. So this, the same day every year, is what I do.
There is an old birthday card joke that graces countless cards about ageing being far better than the alternative. I agree. Today, of all days, the sixtieth anniversary of my birth, I’m acutely aware of that. Conscious that I’ve been granted a gift in growing old, aware that others have not been so fortunate.
For years, I laboured under the absurd yet innocent misapprehension that nothing awful could happen to you on your birthday. Until that day, I discovered how naive I’d been with the tale of one young man. I remember well the shiver sent down my spine when I first read the date on the headstone.
24576855, Private Neil Grose, B Company, 4th Platoon, 3rd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, was born on the 11th of June 1964, the same day as me.
In 1980, when we were both just sixteen, he joined the Parachute Regiment as a boy soldier. Soon he became a Junior Sergeant and a junior Platoon Commander. His records read “Excellent material for the Parachute Regiment, exceptionally well disciplined, leads by example, the mark of a good soldier and always in command of the situation.”
He offered the Army so much, and it promised him the same in return. However, on March 19th, 1982, a group of Argentinean scrap merchants landed in South Georgia. After establishing a camp, they raised the Argentine flag, an event that precipitated the Falklands War, ultimately leading to Neil’s death on a freezing mountain nearly 8,000 miles from home.
Today marks the forty-second anniversary of the Battle of Mount Longdon, one of the bloodiest; costliest and longest engagements in the Falklands War, an engagement regarded by many as the war’s forgotten battle as it was overshadowed by the fall of Port Stanley and the Argentine surrender a few days later.
Neil and his teenage band of brothers landed in the freezing Falklands shallows during the amphibious landing at San Carlos Water on May 21st. And that’s the way it stayed: freezing and wet for the entire campaign, with no chance to dry their kit.
It had been planned to fly the troops by helicopter from the beachhead; however, as they say in war, “no plan survives first contact.” Thus, the sinking of the container ship SS Atlantic Conveyor, with the loss of all but two of her helicopters, meant the troops had to make their way on foot, carrying their equipment to Port Stanley, the island capital.
Neil now endured a difficult and treacherous march across the island’s uncompromising terrain. The shoddy issued DMS boots made the legendary 50-mile TAB (Tactical Advance to Battle) across the islands unnecessarily unpleasant. By the time of the battle, Neil had endured three weeks in the open, exposed to the dreadful Falklands weather and freezing arctic conditions. He battled not only the Argentineans and the cold but also the British Army’s then-notoriously poor equipment
His part in the attack on Mount Longdon started silently in the dark on the night of our 18th birthday the 11th of June 1982 when he and the rest of 3 PARA, fixed bayonets and were ordered to take the high ground.
For the next twelve hours, automatic weapons and machine guns chattered as riflemen and snipers duelled. Neil fought amongst the rocky terrain in an old-fashioned blood, guts, bayonets and bravery brawl.
By the end of the battle, one VC (Victoria Cross) had been won. But Neil and twenty-two other PARAS lay dead, among them the youngest British casualties of the whole war: Privates Ian Scrivens and Jason Burt, who were just seventeen, and Neil, who died the day after his eighteenth birthday.
So, Ladies and Gentlemen, as I do every year, please be upstanding. And raise your glass in a toast. Saluting a hero who died this day. He is forever young, though this is his 60th year. Age never had a chance to weary him. He died not old enough to drink in the pub or even vote for the politician who sent him to war.
Shot by an Argentine heavy machine gun on his 18th birthday, just one young paratrooper killed in the bloody battle for Mount Longdon that night, 11th and 12th of June 1982. For at the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.
In memory of Pte Neil Grose 11th June 1964 – 12th June 1982