Forty years after a bomb hit his ship in the Falklands War, Simon Weston still thinks he’s a very lucky man
BOOM! It had all gone kablooey
DEREK D’SOUZA
I
n 1982, I was a 20-year-old Welsh Guardsman and part of the Falklands Task Force. On board the Canberra, we sailed into San Carlos Water, which was nicknamed Bomb Alley. After about a week, we did a march up to the top of a big hill, said hello to 2 Para and then marched all the way back down again. We were put on board HMS Fearless, an amphibious assault craft. But the 14 The Oldie April 2022
weather conditions were so awful that night that guys started going down with hypothermia. So they took us back to Bomb Alley and we got onto the Sir Galahad. She was eight hours late setting sail because she’d been hit with a bomb two days before – but it didn’t detonate. They’d taken the bomb out of the side of the ship and dropped it in the sea – it’s still in San Carlos Water, I assume.
Then we set sail into Fitzroy, into Port Pleasant. They say we went into Bluff Cove, but actually Bluff Cove is a mile or two away. So be careful what you read in history: it’s not always made by those who live it; it’s nearly always made by those who write about it. No book on history I’ve ever read was written by anybody who was there, by the look of it. The last words I heard before we got blown up – before my life changed –
