Battle of Wireless Ridge - Final Assault

Final Assault

D Coy then began the final assault from the western end of Wireless Ridge, under the cover of heavy fire from HMS Ambuscade's 4.5 inch gun, tanks, twelve 105 mm artillery guns, several mortar pieces and anti-tank rockets. Earlier Argentine GHQ had sent the dismounted 10th Panhard armoured car squadron to make a reconnaissance foray into the western rocks of Wireless Ridge.

Captain Rodrigo Soloaga was particularly effective in persuading his men to engage the light tanks, Milan Platoon and the Machinegun Platoon on Apple Pie while the 7th Regiment's HQ sorted themselves out. In two hours the cavalry unit suffered five killed and about fifty wounded. The British tankmen were so sickened by the slaughter that they held their fire as the walking wounded stumbled back to Moody Brook and stretcher-bearers tried to find the seriously wounded.

Major Neame's D Coy took the first half of the objective relatively easily but upon advancing to the second half, came under fierce attack from Major Guillermo Berazay's compañía A of the 3rd Regiment which had tried to move forward to Mount Longdon during the fighting two nights earlier but had only reached Moody Brook valley. With Lieutenant José Dobroevic's 81mm Mortar Platoon providing mortar fire support, the company in the form of the platoons of Sub-Lieutenant Javier Aristegui and 2nd Lieutenant Víctor Rodriguez-Pérez advanced to contact. Private Patricio Pérez, who had just left school, recalled the unnerving experience of 66 mm rockets coming straight at them like undulating fireballs. He believed he shot a British Paratrooper, possibly 12 Platoon's commander, and became enraged when he heard that his friend Private Horacio Benítez of his platoon had been shot.

The platoon of 2nd Lieutenant Rodriguez-Pérez in fact closed with the British 12 Platoon, under the command of Lieutenant Jonathan Page (following the death of Lieutenant Barry at Goose Green). The fight surged back and forth. Lieutenant Page managed to hold the line, but only just. Major-General John Dutton Frost of the British Army describes the resulting attack on 12 Platoon:

For two very long hours the company remained under pressure. Small-arms fire mingled with all types of HE fell in and around 12 Platoon's position as the men crouched in the abandoned enemy sangars and in shell holes. (Frost, 1983)

Major Neame's officers and NCOs rallied the men to capture the final part of their objective and in the face of heavy fire, the Argentines having run out of ammunition broke and retreated under the covering fire from the supporting machinegun fire controlled by Lieutenant Horacio Alejandro Mones-Ruiz of Berazay's compañía.

Private Michael Savage and other survivors from compañía C were the first 7th Regiment troops to reach the relative safety of Port Stanley, only to be greeted with shock and disdain, he recalls, by immaculately dressed staff officers:

They had been sleeping in houses, in warm beds. They had shiny shoes, pristine ironed uniforms and waxed moustaches. They even had heating in their cars. I was so furious with them.

The battle was not over yet. One of the Argentine Army staff officers, the 10th Brigade Operations Officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Eugenio Dalton, during the pre-dawn darkness of 14 June, was seen driving around in a jeep marshalling tired, panicky and dazed soldiers from various units into a company and led them into Stanley's western sector under heavy fire.Some 200 Wireless Ridge survivors had been rallied by Dalton to form under heavy gunfire a last-ditch defensive line in front of the now silenced guns of the 4th Airborne Artillery Group near the racecourse. Near the church in Stanley, intent on helping Berazay, Major Carrizo-Salvadores, 2IC of the 7th Regiment, helped by the chaplain Father José Fernández,mustered about 50 Wireless Ridge survivors and led them on a bayonet charge, with the soldiers chanting their famous 'Malvinas March', but were stopped by heavy artillery and machine-gun fire.The Paras were momentarily alarmed and watched surprised, with one British officer describing it as quite a sporting effort, but one without a sporting chance. 2 Para had suffered three dead and eleven wounded. The Argentines suffered approximately twenty-five dead, about 125 wounded (mainly by airburst rounds rather than direct shots) and about fifty were taken prisoner. In the final stages of the battle, Brigadier-General Jofre had been offered the use of Skyhawks to bomb Wireless Ridge with napalm but desisted in the belief that the British response would be immeasurable.

For the bravery shown at Wireless Ridge, 2 Para was awarded three Military Crosses, one Military Medal and one Distinguished Conduct Medal. 29 Commando was awarded one Military Cross.