Operation Rosario

Sixty-eight Royal Marines. Two thousand Argentine troops. Three hours of fighting through Stanley at dawn — and when the governor finally ordered the ceasefire, not one British soldier was dead. The first man to die in the Falklands War was Argentine — and the Royal Marines tried to save his life. He refused, with a grenade in his fist.

2 April 1982. Port Stanley, Falkland Islands — 8,000 miles from Britain. The afternoon before, Governor Rex Hunt had received a telegram from London: "We have apparently reliable evidence that an Argentine task force could be assembling off Stanley at dawn tomorrow. You will wish to make your dispositions accordingly." Hunt read it, summoned his two senior Royal Marines officers, and said what every man in the room was thinking — "Sounds like the buggers mean it."

The garrison should have been a single detachment. By accident of the annual changeover, both the outgoing and incoming detachments of Naval Party 8901 were on the islands — 68 Royal Marines under Major Mike Norman, with Major Gary Noott as military adviser to the governor, joined by 11 armed sailors from HMS Endurance and the volunteers of the Falkland Islands Defence Force. Coming ashore against them: over 550 Argentine marines, some 84 Amphibious Commandos and tactical divers, and around 20 LVTP-7 amphibious armoured vehicles — the spearhead of more than 2,000 troops landed by the end of the day.

Norman did not wait in barracks. Through the night his men moved out of Moody Brook camp into positions across Stanley. It saved their lives. At 6:05 that morning, Argentine commandos stormed the empty camp — with grenades and raking automatic fire in the British account; with stun and smoke grenades, under orders to take the marines alive, in the Argentine one. The marines were not in their beds to find out.

Minutes later, the second assault group reached Government House. Lieutenant Commander Pedro Giachino, leading a small party of Amphibious Commandos, had orders to take the governor and end the matter without a battle. He got a battle. Bursting through a door, he was met by Royal Marines, who shot him down at point-blank range. Lieutenant Diego García Quiroga was hit beside him. Corporal Ernesto Urbina, a medic, was wounded by a grenade trying to reach the fallen officer. Giachino lay bleeding by the servants' annexe and refused every attempt the marines made to treat him — he had pulled the pin from a grenade, and he would not let it go.

Across the town the fight went on. On the airport road, Lieutenant Bill Trollope's section took on the armoured spearhead head-on and brought the column to a halt — British accounts record the lead vehicle knocked out by a Carl Gustav round; Argentine accounts deny losing one. What nobody disputes is what that morning cost Britain: thousands of rounds exchanged across Stanley, and not one Royal Marine killed or seriously wounded.

By nine o'clock the arithmetic was closing in. Armoured vehicles were within sight of Government House, and the defenders had nothing left to stop armour. Hundreds of Argentine troops were ashore with the follow-on force of two thousand landing behind them — and Stanley was full of the civilians Hunt was sworn to protect. At 9:25, Hunt ordered his marines to lay down their arms.

Rear-Admiral Carlos Büsser walked into the governor's office, tall, courteous, hand outstretched. Hunt refused to take it — he confessed in his memoir that his first instinct was to pull the pistol from his desk drawer and "empty the magazine into his chest". What he did instead was tell him: "This is British property. You are not invited. We don't want you here. I want you to leave now and take all your men with you." Later that morning, at Stanley Town Hall, he formally warned the Argentine commanders that they had landed unlawfully on British territory and must remove themselves and their troops.

Büsser answered like a professional soldier. He told the captured marines to stand up and be proud of what they had done — they had killed one of his best officers, and they could lay down their arms with their military honour intact.

Pedro Giachino died in Stanley hospital that day, the first man killed in the Falklands War. Argentina promoted him posthumously and awarded him the Cross of the Argentine Nation for Heroic Valour in Combat. Before the war ended, 649 of his countrymen would follow him — alongside 255 British servicemen and 3 islanders.

Hunt and his family were flown out to Montevideo that same day. He left in full ceremonial uniform — sword, gold braid, ostrich-plumed hat — driven to the airport in his official red London taxi, the Union Jack flying on the bonnet, past islanders in tears. In his final broadcast from the islands, he had made the people of Stanley a promise he later admitted he had no grounds to make — nothing, he wrote, but "the deep conviction that the British public would recognise right from wrong and would not let wrong prevail."

"Rest assured," he told them, "the British will be back."

Seventy-four days later, they were.