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15 June 2004

A Fine Hour

I am confronted by the prospect that I must work five consecutive days in a row.

I am filled with horror at the prospect. The diversions are all gone. I think I have to be in New Jersey toward the end of the week, which means travel and work. There is not enough coffee in this house to get me ready for it. It is so much easier to look back.

There are car bombs and kidnappings to begin the working week and frame my mood. It is far easier to lolok back, and the calendar helps. I was watching a tape of the ceremony for Mr. Reagan at the Washington National Cathedral as I prepared for my last swim of the weekend.

I studied the Reagan family. Nancy looked so tired, and so wise as she gazed at the casket of her husband. Patty Davis stood next to her, and then Ron Junior. They launched into a hymn at the direction of former Senator Danforth, the presiding minister, and while Nancy knew her lines, the kids were clueless.

In an odd moment of timing, the cameras cut to President Clinton who attended with Sen. Medusa (D-NY). I must say that he knew the words to the hymns, and his little cameo on the screen reminded me of what a vital force he remains. In contrast, the Reagan children stumbled or did not sing at all.

Bill and Ron Senior, for all the great chasm of morality between them, had a lot in common in front of the camera. Both of them great communicators, though the messages were different, of course.

It was a cool weekend, warmer in the water than in the air. I was touched by Mrs. Thatcher's eloquence once more, and her commitment to her old friend and ally.

With her health so frail, they must be thinking of what her own ceremony will look like. Since no one since Churchill better embodied the British Lion, it will be interesting to see how it will be done. There are dark rumors that the special relationship, so tried in the fires of Iraq, is essentially at an end. No other Prime Minister will sacrifice himself for The Cousins the way Tony Blair has.

But they say he is likely to be returned in the next general election, his third, and perhaps things will have changed by the time he is done with power.

Today, incidentally, is the anniversary of Mrs. Thatcher's great military triumph, the victory over the Argentineans in the Falklands.

That ten-week war electrified us. I was in Hawaii in June of 1982, and committed to the conflict against the implacable Soviets. Most of our energy was spent on the nuclear submarines that roamed the middle-Pacific, and the intelligence collectors that loitered just outside the three-mile limit.

When the Junta made the astonishing decision to seize the islands they called the Malvenas, it looked like one of those humiliating turns of history. A Latin Dictatorship pumped up on machismo was taking the last refuge of the scoundrel, hoping to deflect criticisms of their autocracy by taking on the tattered Lion.

The U.S. was in an awkward spot, but Mr. Reagan did the right thing, behind the scenes. Logistics and satellite images were provided, and Lady Thatcher directed that military operations seven thousand miles away be conducted immediately to return the government desired by the inhabitants of the islands.

The British had tailored their forces for regional war in Europe. The Royal Navy no longer made a pretense of projecting the Navy Jack so that the sun never set upon it. Negotiations had been conducted and papers had been signed to transfer the aircraft carrier HMS Hermes to the Indians.

But for the luck of timing, Lady Thatcher might not have been able to pull it off. But through force of will and pure resolve she determined the invasion would not stand. On 2 April 1982, she directed that Rear Admiral ‘Sandy' Woodward take the forces he was exercising off Gibraltar and made best speed to the south.

The Carriers Hermes and Invincible were loaded up with Sea Harrier fighters. A motley assortment of amphibious ships and merchant ships was assembled to carry troops. Three nuclear attack submarines escorted the convoys, the biggest Royal Navy expedition since World War Two.

First came the action at desolate South Georgia Island, with helicopters sinking theArgentine submarine, Santa Fe.

The Royal Navy submarines enforced an exclusion zone around the islands. HMS Conqueror sank the Argentine cruiser Belgrano with heavy loss of life. I noted to my Boss that the ship had once been known as the USS Phoenix, and had been present at Pearl Harbor during the Japanese attack.

Some critics held the attack was illegal under international law. The joke of the day reprised the stirring anthem: “Rule! Britannia, Britannia waives the rules….”

But that is the cost of war, and if you are not cheating a little, you are not trying.

As the Fleet approached the Falklands, they came just to the edge of land-based Argentine aircraft. They were mostly surplus A-4 attack jets, a venerable scooter much loved by all who flew her. And the Argentines operated those scooters with elan and great courage.

HMS Sheffield was hit by an air-launched Exocet missile. The losses would have been much worse, but the A-4s were flying so low that their bombs often did not have time to arm, Sea Harriers, armed with advanced Sidewinder missiles inflicted great losses on the attackers.

The courage on both sides, at least by the pilots, was extraordinary. Eventually the British went ashore with SAS commandos in the lead. There were sharp actions at places like Goose Green, and we tracked the movements on giant wall maps covered with plexiglass. It was not our fight and not our business, but we did not want to talk of anything else.

This was real war on the edge, and the outcome was not determined by the ominous deterrence of annihilation.

Given a few months difference, Lady Thatcher might not have been able to pull it off, fierce resolve or not.

But in the long decline from the zenith of Empire, the action in the Falklands stands out as a signal achievement by a proud force. I will not challenge Mr. Churchill on his statement about the Battle of Britain. Those months were perhaps the most astonishing in the annals of history, just like he said.

But I must say that Sandy Woodward and his crisp young sailors, soldiers and marines certainly gave Britain a very fine hour.