Word: sir
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...failure to attack sooner cost Britain's fighting men dearly. With no warning, Argentina's air force roared across the skies southwest of Port Stanley last week to deal the British their worst casualties of the campaign. Demolished on that disastrous Tuesday were two landing ships, the Sir Galahad and the Sir Tristram, carrying members of the Fifth Infantry Brigade who were establishing a second British beachhead only 17 miles from Port Stanley. That brought to seven the total of major British ships lost since a Royal Navy task force reached the wintry South Atlantic archipelago on April...
Wilson 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...
...forces had used with great success at the Port San Carlos beachhead were already ashore at Fitzroy, but they had not yet been set up on hillsides overlooking the estuary. Although both ships would have been unloaded in another hour or so, at the time of the attack the Sir Galahad was still packed with most of its full complement of 68 crewmen and, according to some accounts, as many as 500 troops waiting to go ashore. Those on board had no time at all to react; those on land could only watch helplessly as the bombs fell...
...least two bombs hit the Sir Galahad. The Sir Tristram was raked with cannon and rocket fire. According to Michael Nicholson, a British television correspondent who witnessed the attack on the Sir Galahad from ashore, "boxes of ammunition aboard exploded, shaking the ground beneath us, and soldiers crouched as bullets from the ship whistled past." Hundreds of men rushed along the decks of both ships, pulling on life jackets and leaping into water that was sometimes aflame with burning oil. Bright orange life rafts were thrown into the sea; some immediately burst into flame as they were hit by debris...
...surrounded himself with old grade school playmates. If he grows officious, they bluntly tell him off and he laughs appreciatively. In the evening they would assemble in his room as in a clubhouse, play poker or watch a movie like Arthur and compare each other's impersonations of Sir John Gielgud. "Georgie here is a Cooney-come-lately," Cooney said, introducing George Munch. "Fourth grade. Now Hilly and I, we go back to second grade...