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The following description of the action at Mount Longdon which draws heavily from an interview between the author and Bailey is
extracted from the book, Operation Corporate: The Story of The Falklands War, 1982, by Martin Middlebrook, published 1985:
‘3 Para’s attack started first. Lieutenant-Colonel Hew Pike had planned a standard assault. He decided that Mount Longdon could not
easily be approached from a flank and the feature was to be attacked frontally at its western end. A company on the left would attempt
to seize a feature to be known as WING FORWARD. Which would then act as a fire-support base for an attack by B Company on the
main Longdon feature, whose two parts were designated FLY HALF and FULL BACK. C Company would move up as a reserve and as
the exploitation company if there was a swift Argentinian collapse. The Argentinian defenders of Longdon had been correctly identified
as belonging to 7 Regiment, a conscript unit recruited in the province of La Plata. But 7 Regiment was holding Wireless Ridge as well
as Longdon and there were probably only about one and a half companies reinforced with specialist snipers and commandos on
Longdon itself.
The paras moved off after dusk for the approach march to the Start Line. Lieutenant-Colonel Pike and his Tactical Headquarters were
given a lift by civilian Land-Rovers, one of which was driven by a women, Trudi Morrison, perhaps the first time a battalion
commander had been driven into action by a farmer’s wife. The British artillery were firing no more than the normal evening
harassment. A and B Companies reached their Start Lines on a little stream about fifteen minutes late. Corporal Ian Bailey was a section
commander in B Company.
‘We were only on the Start Line a few minutes. I went round the lads and checked everybody and had a joke with my mates. The lads
were quiet, each man whispering to their own very good friends, having a last drag. It was a time for being with your own mates. They
knew some of them were going to get killed. For some reason, most of them fixed bayonets; I put mine on and looked round to find all
the others were putting theirs on too.
We stepped over the stream and set off. It was a very clear night, cool, but it didn’t feel cold; there was too much adrenalin flowing.
We knew we had got a punch-up on our hands. It was uphill, a fairly steep gradient, lots of rocks, tufts of grass, holes where you could
break your ankle easily – just like a good training area. You could see 200 or 300 metres ahead of you. As we went up, we were
funnelled together into a space between the main Mount Longdon and a large separate rock. At one time, we were shoulder to
shoulder, so we tried to spread out, some men waiting while others moved on faster. That was only about twenty feet from their main
position but that first position turned out to be empty.’
The silent approach ended when Corporal Milne, a section commander in B Company’s left forward platoon, stepped on a mine which
severely injured his leg. The explosion, and Corporal Milne’s scream, alerted the Argentinians and the battle began. The early mine
explosion drew fire before B Company reached the main Argentinian positions and the paras found themselves squeezed into a series
of steep and narrow rock channels on the face of the hill, called by one officer ‘bowling alleys’, down which the Argentinians could fire
their weapons and toss grenades. Some British artillery support was possible but could not be brought close enough to engage the
Argentinians firing on the paras.
The three platoons were faced by well-constructed and stoutly manned defences, including at least two heavy 0.5-inch machine-guns,
many other automatic weapons and snipers, the many ‘signatures’ of whose infra-red night sights could be detected. Corporal Ian
Bailey, leading a section in 5 Platoon, resumes the story.
‘Then we got the first grenades; they were just bouncing down the side of the rock face. We thought they were rocks falling, until the
first one exploded. One bloke caught some shrapnel in the backside. He was the first one in the section to get injured, not badly but
enough to put him out of the fighting. The small-arms fire followed soon after. People were getting down into cover again then. Because
we had got funnelled, we weren’t really working by sections now; the nearest private soldier to you just stuck with you. Corporal
McLaughlin, the other leading section commander, was ahead of me now. He and his men were getting the small-arms fire. It was
keeping his group pinned down but no one was being hit in either of our sections. There was a lot of fire on the right, where 6 Platoon
was going up but it was quiet on the left where 4 Platoon was coming up after hitting the minefield.
My men started firing the ‘66s’ (hand-held 66-mm anti-tank rockets). Whoever was in the best position to spot targets fired; the others
passed spare rockets to them. It was a very good bunker weapon; there wasn’t going to be a lot left of you if your bunker or sangar was
hit by one of those. We could see their positions by now, up above us, possibly thirty feet or so away, we could even see them moving,
dark shapes. Their fire was sparse to start with but then it intensified. Some of them were very disciplined, firing, moving back into
cover, then coming out again and firing again or throwing grenades.
The next cover to get forward to was in some rocks with one of their positions in the middle of it. Corporal Mclaughin’s GPMG gave us
cover and we put about four grenades and an ‘84’ round into the position, which was a trench with a stone wall around it and a tent,
which was blown over. We went round and on, myself and whichever ‘toms’ (private soldiers in the Parachute Regiment) were
available, and the two men with the ’84’ launcher. It was all over very quickly. We ran across, firing at the same time. Just as we went
round the corner, we found one Argentinian just a few feet away. Private Meredith and I both fired with our rifles and killed him. The
rest of the post - two men – were already dead, killed by the grenades or the ‘84’ shrapnel. We put more rounds into them, to make
sure they were dead and weren’t going anywhere; that was normal practice.’
Meanwhile, on the left, Lieutenant Bickerdykes’s 4 Platoon had become pinned down by one of the heavy machine-guns and was
largely out of contact with the company commander. They were released from this position by Lance-Corporal Lennie Carver and
Privates Gough and Grey of 5 Platoon who put the machine-gun out of action. The advance route on the left was still dominated by
fire so Bickerdyke edged 4 Platoon to the right and two of his sections became intermingled with 5 Platoon. The progress of these men
was now blocked by a second heavy machine-gun which caused some casualties. Lieutenant Bickerdyke was hit in the thigh, the
impact of the bullet being so strong that he was thrown over backwards.
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