GOODBYE TINKER

 

On 28^th May 1982 five hundred men of the 2^nd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment attacked a tiny hamlet with its corrugated iron back set against the cold grey waters of the South Atlantic Ocean. The place was called Goose Green and for a few days our flag waving press hailed a mighty victory.

History tells us that the attack was borderline suicidal. Lecturers at Sandhurst and West Point insist that any force attacking a well dug in enemy must have a numerical advantage of at least three to one. In an ideal world they should also be backed up by air support and artillery.

Goose Green didn’t tick any of these boxes. The five hundred Paras were ordered forward to take on 1200 well entrenched Argentinians with no air cover and minimal artillery support. So why on earth did the top brass decide to gamble one of its very finest battalions on such a Kamikaze mission? Goose Green must surely have been one hell on an important strategic target. No. Not really. Not at all in fact. It could have quite easily been by-passed and left to its own devices. But the Government at home needed a victory to get the people onside with the whole Falklands adventure. Up until Goose Green, the news had carried all too many images of Royal Navy ships being sent to the bottom of the sea by Argentinian jets firing French made Exocet missiles.

Was it the sunk ships or the fact that the missiles were from France that got so far up Maggie Thatcher’s nose? I guess we will never know the answer to that one.

Anyway, by the end of May the time had come for her to bang the table and demand a victory. Any victory. Something to get everyone singing Jerusalem down the pub on a Friday Night. Something for her old pal Rupert Murdoch to serve up to the nation as the greatest thing since Waterloo.

All of a sudden the inconsequential and strategically irrelevant hamlet of Goose Green became a photo opportunity.

So. Who do you turn to when you want a victory against all sensible odds? The Paras of course. Who else. That is what Paras are for, when all is said and done. Back in 82 the Paras had been allocated a very specific role in the event of a full on Soviet invasion of Western Europe. They were to get themselves to the very front of the front line and take as many down as they could before getting completely marmalised. Most of the strategic planners agreed that the life expectancy of a Para in that particular scenario was about half an hour.

This was no kind of secret. They told the lads what to expect in the event of the Russian tanks rolling into the west.

Compared to the World War Three option, Goose Green must have seemed an absolute cake walk.

They won the battle of course and Maggie got her victory and the rest as they say became history. We were told by an adoring media that our Warrior Queen had delivered us a win to rank alongside El Alamein and Agincourt. Memories of Empire were re-kindled as the British public bought into the stirring tale big time and when it was time to go to the polls a year later we gave the Iron lady a landslide.

One of the 500 who played a part in the savagery and carnage of Goose Green was Tinker.

Derek Styles

AKA ‘Nobby’ Styles.

And this weekend past Tinker died. He was just over 50 years old.

He was one of the clients of our Veterans Project. Christ, I hate using the word ‘client’ when talking about Tinker. Tinker was just Tinker. In so many ways he was the very epitome of a British fighting man. About five foot eight and as wiry as a half starved kangaroo. A quiet man who exuded decency. A man who on 28^th May 1982 kept on going forward along with all of his comrades whilst all the time knowing full well that the mission was a basket case. From time to time he would come in for a talk and slowly over the years he would tell me a little more about those desperate hours. But never all of it. Whenever he reached the last chapter he would all of a sudden get the thousand yard stare and silence would settle over the room like a January frost. He could never quite manage to relive the final few minutes when the issue was resolved with bayonets.

He might not have talked about those desperate moments of murderous violence, but he certainly never forgot them. How could he? They came back to him every night without fail. In technicolour. He was terrified of sleep. Sleep meant a return to those blood soaked minutes when every shred of human decency disappeared from the world. Minutes when men became the very worst of animals. Minutes when he saw things and did things that he could never manage to box off and store away out of sight and out of mind. Oh no. Never out of mind. His mind became a minefield. His mind became his enemy - a hated, unmanageable VCR that replayed images of Goose Green day and night and night and day. 

Tinker died last weekend.

But on more than one occasion he said that he would rather have died along with 17 of his fellow Paras on the rain lashed slopes of the hills overlooking Goose Green.

For most of the thirty years that followed Tinker’s War, his life was lived off the rails. Addictions, homelessness, prison.

Years of it. Too many years. A couple of weeks ago he came in to ask for me to refer him to a six week programme up at Combat Stress. Would it have worked? We’ll never know now.

Instead he departed his life a tortured soul.

There is a whole lot of stuff that told me about Goose Green that I have no intention of writing down. Would he have wanted me to write it down and throw it out into the vastness of the internet? Maybe. Maybe not. I get a lot of this stuff at First Base. Many of the ugly secrets of our State find a natural habitat in the world of heroin. Things were done on that day back in 1982 that should not have been done. Let’s leave it at that. Well not quite. The bad stuff was signed off by men way, way above the pay grade of Tinker and his fellow squaddies. They were the disposable ones. The were merely the disposable ones who were thrown into a filthy, stinking pit of violence where they prevailed against all sensible odds.

Thirty one years have passed since Goose Green and most of them were bad ones for Tinker. He carried a sadness about him like a tired old overcoat. His fifteen minutes of fame wrecked his life. Was Goose Green to blame for his premature passing? Of course it was. Before Goose Green he was a super fit young guy who represented the Army in gymnastic tournaments all over the world. A bright future was waiting to be walked into. After Goose Green, nothing was ever the same again. His life was a shell of a life. A long, dismal road where drink and drugs stripped away his health and self respect and the nightmares came at him every night.

And through those years thousands of pedestrians passed him as he stood out on the High St selling the Big Issue. And much to the credit of the people of Dumfries, he always sold every copy.

And right now the British State is smiling over a glass of sherry as yet another of its warriors has taken his secrets to the grave. Just like always.

I feel honoured to have had the chance to know Tinker. In every respect he was the opposite of the cartoon paratrooper. A quiet man. A decent man. A man with genuine morality. Empathy. Humanity.

When he was ordered forward he went forward. They all did. And my God did he ever pay the price for a few days of positive headlines in the doting press.

A favourite saying.

Old soldiers never die.

Well they do.

And Tinker did.

Last weekend.

Thirty one years and fifty days since those desperate hours at Goose Green.

I hope that you have found the peace that you could never find when you were living and breathing.

“What dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil…”

Let’s hope they are better dreams that the ones you have suffered for so very long.

Goodbye friend. You deserved so much better.

YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN TAKING A LOOK AT MY SHORT BOOK 'AFTERWARDS' WHICH TELLS THE STORIES OF THREE OF THE GUYS I HAVE COME TO KNOW SINCE WE ESTABLISHED OUR FIRST BASE VETERANS PROJECT THREE YEARS AGO. YOU WILL FIND IT IN THE KINDLE STORE BY FLOOWING THE LINK BELOW

http://is.gd/2ndxKi

 

ALSO YOU MIGHT WANT TO LOOK AT JAKE WOOD'S STAGGERINGLY FINE AND MOVING ACCOUNT OF HIS TIME IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN AND THE PTSD NIGHTMARE HE HAS ENDURED EVER SINCE. YOU CAN FIND 'AMONG YOU' BY FOLLOWING THE LINK BELOW

 

http://is.gd/yKwa4B