Dark Earth: Borderlands

[Simon Darkshade]

Borderlands Part 1: The Falklands

It was good to be back.

Major Mike Norman stepped off the stair of the RAF Belfast. The breeze was bracing, yet warmer than he had become accustomed to in his last deployment to the islands, even considering that spring was still a month away. That wasn't the only thing that had changed. Several new buildings had now been erected around RAF Mount Pleasant, along with a very large radar back from the control tower, two dozen hardened aircraft shelters and storage igloos, and a number of fenced off areas that were likely the new experimental missile cells.

"A tad greener than Aden."

"Gary! I had been expecting someone a little less illustrious."

"The mufti almost got me, but I'd recognise that snout from a mile off."

"Well, I'm not actually here yet, officially speaking. Corps HQ at Portsmouth thought it better to have a gander before the actual changeover, and read the tealeaves. And a good snout is never a bad thing when it comes to sniffing out trouble; it did the job last time I was here."

"Yes, the business with the velociraptors; who can forget it. All things considered, it should be rather quieter down here for this pull. Anyway Mike, I thought I might as well kill both birds of protocol and familiarity with the one stone, and run you back up to Stanley myself. HE, the Army fellows and the Navy and Air Force blokes are all keen to meet you ahead of the formalities of the arrival of your lot tomorrow. A little chat before satisfying Aunty and the local news with the little parade in the morning."

"Very good. The road seems better."

"They've done it up a treat. We've got the new Land Rover Cruisers down here, so we should be able to do it in around 25 minutes. A bit quicker and quieter than the train, even if it does run exactly on time; that Portuguese honourary director is a dab hand at punctuality."

"Bento? He still kicking about?"

"He is, the funny old coot. He'd be 90 if he was a day, even if the beard makes him seem as old as a wizard. Shall we?"

"Lead on, Gary."

The drive down the military road to Stanley was indeed swift, with the repulsor fence posts ensuring that the main population of the islands didn't wander onto it. The road was wide and straight, part of its purpose of serving as an auxiliary runway as well as allowing heavier vehicles to get from the airfield to the main town in convoy. The rugged, windswept landscape about them on either side was dotted with little farms and houses, and in the distance, Norman could see some of the buildings of the new mining settlements off to the west. It had been 8 years, yet progress had even come to this distant borderland outpost of the Empire, in a fashion; the sight of a horseback patrol from the Army's mounted troop off to the east showed that it hadn't quite yet completed the transformation.

“Any trouble I should know about?”

“Nothing, really. We’re too far away for the other side to get any eyes on the ground down for a proper look, although no doubt they’ve tried, and nothing goes on outside that their eyes in the sky can see. Nothing like your fun and games with the dinosaurs, or those crackpot Argies landing on the racecourse.”

“If I never come face to face with one of those bloody chickens again up close, it won’t be long enough.”

Noott was good to his word, and, within a short while, they were approaching the town. Stanley had sprawled out further, which he had briefly seen from the air, but got a better sense of it from here on the road as they approached. What had once been the old golf club was now a new array of houses set around a park, the town stretched out a dozen streets inland rather than seven and the outer verges were now only separated from their destination of the Moody Brook Barracks by a little under a mile. There were now several more larger buildings in the middle of town, good solid ones of stone, and a pair of half sized Routemasters puttering about past them.

Pulling into Moody Brook, they passed through a pair of checkpoints, the first along the fence line and the second at the inner gate, with both allowing Norman a chance to get a look at the men of the previous Royal Marine company.

“All spick and span, Gary. Good to see your lot haven't gone native down here?”

“These boys have done as many Burmas and Adens as yours, Mike. We're not the Guards, but we've kept our standards up, no doubt.”

“Amen to that."

Inside, Noott lead the way down a corridor into a spacious briefing room, where waited five men, four in uniform and one older fellow in a morning suit, who would be the Governor of the Falkland Islands, Sir William Tarkin.

“Major Norman, these are the commanding officers of the other contingents - Major Harry Hearne of the Black Watch, Major Jack McVicker of the Gurkhas, Squadron Leader Archibald Lockwood of the RAF Regiment and Lieutenant-Commander Lancelot Hunter of the Royal Naval Commandos.” Noott did the honours as nods and handshakes were exchanged.

The Governor seemed rather familiar, even as he and Norman had never met before, and he wracked his brain for half a moment before coming up with the answer - His Excellency was the spitting image of Professor Lorimer Van Helsing.

“Major Norman. Welcome back.”

“Thank you, Your Excellency. The place has changed a bit, I’ll warrant. Hopefully a little less lively than my last tour.”

“Indeed; we don’t really want those types loose in our new forest.”

Norman smiled thinly and perfunctorily.

“Very good. Major Hearne will begin our little informal briefing today, having seniority; we had our own little Zulu to do here before you arrived.

Rather typical of the Army. Come to think of it, this Hearne fellow looked a little like Michael Caine.

“Thank you, Your Excellency. As of today, we have the five company sized elements here on East Falkland - the RAF Regiment at Mount Pleasant, the Navy Commandos across at Stanley Airfield, the Marines here at Moody Brook, the Gurkhas at Darwin and my boys at Victoria Cantonment on Teal Inlet. Colonel Mustard has the HQ Company and B and D Companies on exercise in Prydain, and D Company is up on Saint Helena for the month, whilst Colonel Chapman has his regular battalion of the Falkland Islands Regiment down in Lafonia for training in the forest.

As for the South Atlantic Fleet, there are cruisers in Montevideo and São Paulo, the RSAN carrier Natal is at Capetown and their battleship up at Zanzibar. The nearest British battleship is at Gibraltar, and there is a carrier due to be visiting Trinidad for working up cruise next week. Fairly standard. Endurance is at sea, but Terra Nova and Sherwood are in port, and Amazon is due in three days.

We have no indication of any threats beyond the usual Argie firebreathers that Rodriguez has been humouring of late, and they don’t even reach the level of a minor nuisance. The Argentines are in discussions about some scrapping contracts on South Georgia, but there won’t be any decisions on that anytime soon, apparently. They make up a fair whack of the more recent tranches of gas workers, but none of them really stay for long; not quite salubrious enough for Latins here, what!


In the case of any unexpected visitors or a crisis, we are well set here, as we’re one of the few battalions to deploy with our 25pdr support guns in peacetime, and there is the Valiant troop and a battery of Light Guns for general support. We have the standard load of four atomic warheads for our Pink Panthers, along with a dozen gas and eight blessed ones; enough for most contingencies, and that isn't even factoring in the jets from our estimable Royal Air Force compatriots.

Our ostensible role is to provide security for the oil facilities, and the four mines, along with the airfield and port. Our actual one is, whilst covering those, to ensure that the new facilities remain undisturbed - the Royal Space Force has a ground station under an old shearing shed on Grantham Sound, Baker Street has a ‘village’ they are building for some of their special friends, under the guise of the Shaking Quakers, and the Ministry of Magic has a laboratory in the dig at Mount Young. They want it nice and quiet there, and we are happy to oblige, and to know nothing further. They have their own security team in house, but in case of stranger things, we’re back up.”

"Have the chances of any of that actually changed? Are there any indications of a valid threat." asked Norman.

"Frankly, no. The pool on the reason why there have been the force increases here over the last decade and a bit remains open, and I dare say our lords and masters won't deem to take us into their secret confidence any time soon. My bob remains on a member of the government having some secret family ties to some dear old biddy somewhere off in the Camp, but I've always been something of a romantic; one wag from the Navy thought that they had gazed into their big crystal ball in London and discovered that there would be a war here someday, but he was frankly batty. As ever, I dare say we're really here for the oil."

"Your humour is your greatest treasure, Major Hearne," began Governor Tarkin as he arose from his seat "In the absence of a sudden descent by a Soviet brigade or Senor Rodriguez losing his mind and sending a division of his Marines on a surprise attack, we remain quite, quite secure and quite, quite peaceful here in the Falklands, and that is how I wish it to stay. Not that there is any scope for the Argentine to go mad; their days of that type of business are extinct, and their fire has gone out of the neighbourhood. Major Norman, after your last tour here, you will find this to be what it is - a nice and quiet posting where nothing significant will ever happen."

"That, your Excellency, after those dashed raptors, is a reward I will most certainly take."

As he walked back outside, Norman looked out over Stanley Harbour, where the frigate and sloop stood at anchor and at peace.

Of all the Empire's borderlands, at least one was at peace.

[jemhouston]

Mr. Murphy, please pick up the red courtesy phone.

[Simon Darkshade]

No, that isn’t the case at all here, just an ironic final line in the light of our world.

"The presence of Prydain as an independent Commonwealth state on the South American mainland, encompassing the @ Argy provinces of Chubut and Santa Cruz and the entirety of Tierra del Fuego effectively makes the Falklands a non-issue; whilst there is an old claim on it, Argentina is far away and faces a pretty immovable object in its way that has a population of several million and is a long time friend, trading partner and fellow founding member of the League of Nations."

That puts the nearest Argentine base 1150 miles away, or out of range for any fighters, right on the bleeding edge of their 24 C-130s and only in range of their bombers.

The garrison of the Falklands is fairly substantive, ostensibly for oil and Antarctica.

The purpose of this series of vignettes is not to do a Falklands War, as that would be a non-starter, but to look at several different borderlands, ostensibly at peace, but in some cases, not really. Something of a deeper meaning to the title.

[Simon Darkshade]

Falklands Garrison:

Land Forces

3rd Battalion, The Black Watch
1st Battalion, Falklands Islands Regiment

B Company, 72nd Royal Marine Battalion
C Company, 41st Gurkha Independent Battalion, Parachute Regiment
D Company, 4 Royal Navy Commando
No. 236 Squadron RAF Regiment

1 Mounted Cavalry Troop (1 x 60)
Field Artillery Battery (8 x 125mm Light Guns)
Royal Artillery Infantry Support Gun Battery (8 x 25pdr)
Armoured Troop (8 Vickers Valiant MBT)
Air Defense Battery (8 PT.428)
RMGC Platoon

695 Coast Regiment: 4 x 9.2" Automatic Coastal Defence Guns, 6 x twin 5.25” Automatic DP Anti-Aircraft/Coastal Defence Turrets
879 Missile Regiment: 16 x Paladin anti-ship missiles

Royal Engineer Troop
Royal Signals Troop
REME Section
RLC Section
RASC Section
RAOC Section
RIC Section

Air Forces
No. 1417 Flight RAF: 6 Avro Arrows
RNAS Flight: 6 Hawker-Siddeley Phantom FGR.1
RFC Flight: 6 Hawker-Siddeley Harriers
Commonwealth Flight: 6 RAAF English Electric Lightnings

RAF Transport Flight: 6 Short Skyvan
RFC Helicopter Flight: 6 Bristol Bulldogs
RNAS Rotodyne Flight: 6 Fairey Rotodynes
Commonwealth Flight: 6 RCAF Britten-Norman Defenders

Naval Forces

HMS Endurance
HMS Terra Nova
HMS Amazon (RN Guardship Type 21 Frigate)
HMS Sherwood

HMS Strong Champion
HMS Strong Defender

Naval Party 8902 (4 hovercraft)

Notes
- Endurance is a new cruiser-sized nuclear powered Antarctic Patrol Ship with icebreaking capabilities (25,000t, 4 x 12", numerous AA and light guns, Sea Wolf SAMs, 4 Helicopters/Rotodynes, maximum speed of 28 knots)
- Sherwood is one of the new Medium Patrol Ships/OPVs (6250t, 4 x 6", numerous light AA/GP guns, 2 x Sea King helicopters, range 20,000nm, CODAG engine, maximum speed of 28 knots) mentioned in ANJ Part 15.
- The Royal Marines come from 8 battalions raised to administratively control the various Naval Parties deployed in British colonies, key overseas bases and naval stations, consisting of:
North Atlantic: Bahamas, Bermuda, British Honduras, Azure Islands
South Atlantic: Saint Helena, Ascension, Falklands, Saint John
South Pacific: Fiji, New Hebrides, Easter Island, Galapagos
East Indies: Mauritius, Seychelles, Maldives, Diego Garcia
Africa: Berbera, Zanzibar, Tangiers, Sierra Leone
Middle East: Kuwait, Southern Arabia, Bahrain, Socotra
Far East: Brunei, Hong Kong, Sarawak, North Borneo
Mediterranean: Minorca, Cyprus, Pantalleria, Ionian Islands

- Each Naval Party consists of a reinforced company, which in this case means an extra reserve section for each platoon, an extra strength weapons company and an attached wizard
- The Royal Naval Commandos are a different force that free out of the WW2 forces into something of a counterpart to the Royal Marine Commandos and, strangely enough, might be viewed as an equivalent to the Argentine Buzos Tacticos
- They are down south as the Falklands and South Georgia provide some excellent secure training areas for operations up in Norway, Sweden and the Arctic
- The Gurkha Paras are there for a similar rotation
- The Black Watch, like every infantry battalion deployed in the light role, is equipped with the Pink Panther recoilless rifle, which is a British equivalent to Davey Crockett. Only 4 atomic rounds are issued for a typical battalion, along with 12 chemical and 8 blessed ones. The nuclear shells are kept locked in special boxes with an ingenious combination lock…
- Contrast atomic armament with 84mm Charlie Gs
- The RAF is at Mount Pleasant, the RN at Stanley, the RM at Moody Brook, the Gurkhas at Darwin and the Army is at Teal Inlet
- The mounted cavalry troop? It is drawn from one of the units formed when the Free Polish Army was folded into the British Armed Forces, so that this particular unit are ‘descended’ from Winged Hussars
- Each of the 404 infantry, airborne and commando battalions of the British Army fields a heavy infantry section of 12 men in power armour. The capabilities of such a force against basic light infantry are...one sided...
- The level of force down in the Falklands can't be explained by conventional reasons, or even by the warnings from 'The Other World' via Lapcat in 1961. There is something else afoot, and no one on the ground realises it yet...