Today the military awards are announced for valour in the Falklands campaign. Tomorrow the Falklands victory parade wends its triumphal way from Armoury House to the Guildhall, flags waving, crowds cheering, everything but the defeated General Galtieri in chains.
Meanwhile, one man who will not be there is Welsh Guardsman Simon Weston. He will be there in spirit, one hundred per cent, but he will be down at the Army╒s rehabilitation centre at Chessington learning to use his hands again.
He was one of the Welsh Guardsmen trapped in the tank deck of the Sir Galahad at Bluff Cove when it was hit by an Argentine missile. Twenty-two men from his own platoon of 30 were burned to death. Another seven were badly burned, and only one man escaped unhurt.
A giant fireball flashed through the deck. ╥A red alert went. We hit the deck and I saw this great orange and red streak. Trouble was, I watched, and didn╒t protect my face. Three lads next to me were in flames. I didn╒t feel a thing, just a rush of hot air in my throat.╙ He says it took him about 15 seconds to get out. ╥I moved so fast. A Marine sergeant pushed me up the stairs and I kept on going till I got out. I saw a lot of bodies on fire, burning all over.╙
He was put into a landing craft. ╥Medics gave me some jabs. I was in a bad way. They cut the clothes off me. It didn╒t hurt much. You see, I was burned so bad that my nerve endings had gone, so I didn╒t feel it, though my legs, which weren╒t so bad, were a bit sore.╙ He goes in for a lot of understatement. ╥When I got to the medical post I began to go into shock. I was seeing bodies all around me. There were a lot anyway. Some people were having tracheotomies on the spot. It was all operating tables and bodies and I started to panic. They knocked me out pretty quick as I was shouting and frightening the others.╙
When he came round he was lying on a stretcher next to another man, who has since become a firm friend.
╥He was lying next to me. He leant over and was sick all over me. That╒s how we met,╙ he says, laughing.
He╒s a great one for jokes. He has become a kind of walking mascot at the Queen Elizabeth Military Hospital in Woolwich. His cheeriness defies belief.
I met him in a corridor in the hospital, bounding along, accompanied by a nurse, on his way to being transported to Chessington. He was appallingly badly burned over 50 per cent of his body. It was something of a miracle that he survived. His face melted in the heat. He lost an ear and part of the other one, part of his nose, and he has no eyelids. His legs in shorts were bright purple with burns. His hands were clawed and rigid with some fingers missing. yet there he was, full of jokes and energetic self-confidence. The brigadier who was showing me round greeted him warmly and introduced him to me. He told his story almost as if all this had happened to somebody else.
╥When a doctor came to see me at first he said: ╘God, you╒re ugly.╒ I said to him, ╘You╒re looking pretty ugly too.╒ I had a terrible thirst. I was saying to people that I╒d swap my family for a cold can of Coke.╙
The brigadier explained that burns victims often die of dehydration as they lose so much liquid from the weeping of their burns. It was the promptness of the setting up of drips on the beach which saved many of their lives.
╥I was pretty cheerful at first,╙ the guardsman says. The brigadier told how when he first saw his face his only response was, ╥Oh, oh, you╒ve got a lot of work to do on that.╙
Guardsman Weston says, however, that he did become deeply depressed in the last stages of his journey home on board the hospital ship Uganda. ╥They kept telling me I could go home, and then that I couldn╒t. Then I got septicaemia. I wanted to be flown back, but they kept me. A surgeon on board saved my eyesight.╙
He describes his first bath. ╥No one could pick me up as they didn╒t know where to hold me. Then I just decided to get up and get in the bath myself. I won three cans of cider and a pack of cigarettes for that. I felt better afterwards.
When the Uganda docked, he was flown in a Chinook helicopter to the burns unit at Woolwich. ╥They rushed me upstairs when I got here,╙ he says. ╥I╒d stuck to the stretcher.╙
Later he was allowed home to Nelson, in Wales, for his 21st birthday. ╥The whole village came out to see me. It was magic, a magic time. The pain subsided after I went home. I felt better. The nerve endings had been growing back and I╒d been getting a lot of pain. I╒d been a bit delirious at times.╙
He says he has been promised that he can stay in the Army. ╥I╒m going back to my mortar platoon and my mates,╙ he says with complete confidence. He jokes that he can just move one hand enough to hold a beer glass. ╥I╒ll be back in the rugby team next year.╙ Then he added, ╥I think about the 22 lads killed in my platoon. I think how sad it is they didn╒t get the chance to prove themselves. They all wanted to fight, but they never got the chance.
╥I did feel bitterness at one time. Why me? Why this and why that? But it was a must, this war. Lives were lost, and I╒m sorry, but dictators must be stopped. No two ways about it. We can╒t let dictators rule the world.╙
He was even cheerful about the state of his face. ╥They say beauty╒s in the eyes of the beholder, don╒t they? Well, I╒m beautiful, I was beautiful before and I╒m beautiful now.╙ He╒s famous around the hospital wards for repeating that phrase.
I was visiting the hospital to try to find out what had become of the 777 men listed as wounded in the Falklands war.
In the gym I met some amputees of the 3rd Parachute Regiment, struggling to learn how to use artificial limbs, and to regain the strength in their other seriously injured arms and legs. They had all been shot up on Mount Longdon, the night before their regiment marched into Port Stanley. Unlike Guardsman Weston, they were not in a talkative mood. Perhaps they didn╒t want to be interviewed, or perhaps they didn╒t want to answer questions with a brigadier, a captain, and their army physiotherapist standing over them.
I spoke to them only briefly, glad to get away from their anger and their reluctance. The one thing they all said, over and over again, with great emphasis, was that they wanted to stay in the army, and they╒d been promised they could stay in the army. I caught the defiant note as they eyed the brigadier. It was the same story upstairs among the men in the burns unit. They wanted to stay in their regiments with their friends.
Brigadier Declan O╒Brien, the consultant surgeon in command of the hospital, has served in Kenya in the Mau-Mau campaign, and also in Northern Ireland. He has had a lifetime╒s experience of caring for wounded servicemen.
He says that one of the problems with the injured men came in the first days after they arrived back. ╥They were swamped with visits from Royalty, politicians, and commanding officers. Each of the men was promised by someone or other that he could return to his unit and some kind of job would be found for him. People were carried away by the emotion of the moment.╙ Decisions, he says, will have to be made, but not for a long while.
No one knows, until the men╒s wounds settle, how many may end up being pensioned out of the service, which is understandable enough. But the Ministry of Defence claims to have no detailed list of the injuries sustained in the first place. ╥We don╒t collect that information,╙ said one spokesman.
The total number of men wounded was 777, but that included minor injuries. When the men came back they were dispersed to different hospitals. Although it can be discovered how many men are actually still occupying hospital beds, that is no guide to the number sustaining permanent disabling wounds.
The Marines own up to 13 still in hospital. The RAF have one. The Navy say they have seven in their Portsmouth hospital. At Woolwich, the Army has 10. But Woolwich had 18 amputees, three bad head injuries, 30 bad burns, and one abdominal injury, so that 10 gives a false impression.
An itemised list of injuries must exist somewhere, and if not, why not? When Parliament returns, some MP might ask the Prime Minister. How else can we count the cost of the war?
