Word: port
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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With the high ground under their control, the British immediately began to rain artillery fire down on the 7,500 Argentine troops, which were entrenched in a defensive horseshoe around Port Stanley. Harrier vertical-takeoff jets pounded the area with 600-lb. cluster bombs, while 4.5-in. guns on Royal Navy frigates and destroyers added their drumbeat of fire. As the week began, the dense, rain-filled clouds that shrouded Port Stanley seemed to be the only barrier to a full-scale attack. But Rear Admiral John ("Sandy") Woodward and Major General John Jeremy Moore, the two commanders to whom...
...pause that would allow them to pick off the softest points on the Argentine perimeter-radar posts, ammunition dumps and artillery concentrations-while trying to draw enemy troops out of their prepared positions onto open ground, where they could be surrounded. About 1,000 of the occupying troops in Port Stanley were believed to be elite marines, the best fighters Argentine Commander Menendez had at his disposal. The remainder were relatively untrained conscripts who might prove to be vulnerable to such tactics, although, as one British paratrooper said, "a gun in the hands of a boy can kill you just...
While the tentative skirmishing continued around Port Stanley, the 3,500 troops of the Fifth Infantry Brigade began to make their moves ashore. The brigade, composed of the Scots and Welsh Guards and a battalion of the legendary Nepa-lese-born Gurkhas, landed at the Port San Carlos beachhead two weeks ago. The Gurkhas were assigned the task of mopping up pockets of Argentine resistance that were bypassed by Britain's fast-moving Parachute Regiment as it raced toward Goose Green and Port Stanley. Daily, after a ritual unsheathing of their curved kukris, they flew out in Scout helicopters...
Meanwhile, the unit of the Fifth led by Brigadier Tony Wilson was moving south from the beachhead to Goose Green, and then east toward Port Stanley. At the minuscule settlement of Swan Inlet, 35 miles from the capital, Wilson suddenly had a time-saving idea. Learning that the Argentines had left telephone lines intact, he stopped at a house and phoned ahead to Fitzroy, the next sizable settlement. To Wilson's amazement, someone answered. "Any Argies there?" asked Wilson. "Yes," replied Farmer Ron Binnie, "but they're not here today." Said Wilson: "In that case, I think...
...ordered about 100 members of his advance party to rush ahead in helicopters, securing both Fitzroy and the nearby settlement of Bluff Cove. The small British contingents held the position for about two days, while other units of the Fifth boarded the Sir Galahad and the Sir Tristram at Port San Carlos to join them. When the ships reached Fitzroy, they began unloading men and equipment. In effect, the British had a second beachhead on East Falkland...