The sights Mark Hassall sees in ambulances these days are, he jokes, far more gory than anything he came across in the Falklands Islands.The ambulanceman and retained Newport firefighter, 49, was a Royal Marine in the conflict and found himself involved in some of the fiercest fighting.
Twenty-five years on and Mark remembers those months in the South Atlantic clearly.
Back in 1982 being deployed into action wasn’t as much of a surprise for Mark as it was for others in the armed forces.
He recalls: “I was aware that the Argentinians had landed and we were going to fly down to see if we could bolster the lads on the ground at the time. We all knew people who were there already.”
The conflict started reasonably quietly for the land-based forces, but then the air raids in the San Carlos Bay area broke the silence.
Mark was one of the many to witness the sinking of HMS Antelope, due to a time-delayed bomb from an air raid, but his action was to come soon enough.
The Royal Marines have always been acknowledged as one of the best-conditioned regiments and this was put into practice when the unit Mark was in “yomped” across the island towards Port Stanley.
He says: “It was cold and damp and we weren’t getting much food because most of the helicopters were being used to deliver ammunition. We had to ration ourselves accordingly, using one day’s ration over three days.”
Then came one of the fiercest battles, which Mark admits was “quite hairy”. He was part of a unit with a mission to take and hold Two Sisters, a twin-peaked mountain lying adjacent to Mount Tumbledown, itself the scene of an horrific battle.
“There was 18 hours of fighting and it was pretty grim.” he says. “We lost seven guys, one of which was a young bloke from the Royal Engineers who I knew quite well - he must have been 18 or 19 at the time.”
There is another memory which lingers in Mark’s mind - the hospitality shown to British troops by the Falkland islanders.
“When we got to Port Stanley they couldn’t do enough for us. They were absolutely fantastic, and it was exactly the same 20 years later when about 300 of us went back.”
The revisit was emotional. Mark says he had not had problems before. “But when I went to a memorial with some of the Scots and Welsh Guards I became really choked up, mainly because of the suffering they were going through.”
He left the Army in 1985 and 18 months after that joined the retained fire service. Four years ago he joined the Shropshire Ambulance Service.
“I never really think about the Falklands,” he says. “It’s only when the anniversaries come along I pay attention to it again.”
By Henry Carpenter
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