27 December - Darwin and Goose Green

Today we visit Darwin and Goose Green which are on the west side of East Falkland Island, the island on which Stanley is located. Goose Green was the site of the first real ground battle during the conflict of 1982, famous for the battle in which Col ‘H’ Jones was killed. 

I had been to these settlements before. Last time was during winter with snow on the ground and we had been flown in by helicopter. This time it was a clear and bright day, albeit windy, and we were going by car and it took nearly two hours of gravel track driving before we arrived. We first visited the small Argentinian cemetery just outside the settlement. Simple small white crosses, neat and uniform, are surrounded by a white piquet fence. I recall last time thinking how poignant the simplicity of it was then - made more so by those basic crosses being lit brightly by the sun while against the backdrop of a thunderous, black winter sky like some 'hope in death' symbology rendered by nature - and nothing of that simplicity has changed. Now however there are names on what had been largely anonymous graves; a recent initiative to DNA match the remains with families back in Argentina.

After visiting the monument to Colonel H Jones VC of the parachute regiment - with a walk over the ground and description from Nigel of the battle and circumstances behind his death - we moved on to Darwin, a handful of houses nestled by a small stretch of water. At this time of year it is a beautiful setting with its white houses with red and green roofs spaced amongst the green grass and against a backdrop of blue skies and blue water. We had tea and biscuits in Darwin House, a local residence cum guest house, and then headed a mile further along the road via the parachute Regiment memorial to Goose Green. The views brought back memories and apart from the weather nothing seemed to have really changed from three decades ago.

The red and white houses of Goose Green are spaced around a grassy isthmus and its ninety or so inhabitants make up the biggest population centre on the islands after Stanley. Again nothing much seemed to have changed. We wandered the length of the settlement, chatted to a local who was from Stanley at his weekend retreat - a tiny portacabin affair with an old bus attached and neatly converted into a wood lined conservatory - and then headed off. A brief stop at the nearby war grave of a naval pilot shot down during the battle, small and isolated but clearly tended for by the local community, and it was then time to return to Stanley.

That evening we walked to the second of the two restaurants in Stanley. Also the main hotel, it had the functional anonymity of many business hotels back home but on a small scale. I had tooth fish, some deep sea fish caught in these parts and termed 'fish gold'. It was like a not too tasty cod. Fishing makes up some sixty percent of the nation's GDP but interestingly fresh fish seems impossible to get hold of here; it all seems to be frozen for export.

We returned home and shared drinks and conversation while watching the film 'An Ungentlemanly Act' from 1992 with Ian Richardson which tells the story of the initial invasion in a style that is hard to characterise; certainly not comical but on the other hand neither a serious piece of high drama. 'That awful film' is how a local described it to me but it was fun to watch and, having been filmed on location, it was interesting to see the things that had and had not changed in Government House and around Stanley.