SAS Sea King Down

Mark ‘Splash’ Aston’s reputation went before him at the Army’s reconnaissance school where I first met him in 1990, when he worked there as the divisional sergeant major. All the recce students who passed under his instruction knew something of the seasoned SAS veteran’s background. The daring raid on Pebble Island, several helicopter crashes, the last one into the sea that took the lives of many of his mates. But in truth, we did not know that much. Unassuming and reserved unless you broke one of the cardinal rules of battlefield discipline he relentlessly imposed, the quietly spoken Gloucester-man never talked of his experiences in the Falklands War. And none of us dared to ask.

I last saw Splash as a serving soldier once more when he was the RSM of the parachute school. Checking over the harness of my chute before my first jump, he told me I would be alright if I followed the drills we had been taught and kept my knees bent and feet together when I hit the ground. ‘If you don’t, you’ll break both your legs boss; your call.’ 20 years had passed, and we were both ‘civvies’ when I next saw Splash in a small village hall in Wiltshire. He had been asked to do a local talk in support of a military mental health charity about his experiences during the South Atlantic Falklands campaign in 1982. Sitting unnoticed in the audience, I listened in awe as Splash told his tale in measured, matter of fact tones. It read like an adventure epic.

The first Sea King helicopter to crash on the Fortuna Glacier lies on its side in an Antarctic blizzard. Splash is seen approaching

Caught on a glacier in an Antarctic blizzard, Splash and his fellow SAS troopers were close to hypothermia when a desperate rescue mission led to his surviving two helicopter crashes in whiteout conditions. This was all before an emergency landing on the back of a ship in a four-man aircraft, which had 17 SAS men crammed inside. Snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, Splash’s commander (D Squadron) then ordered an all-out attack on the Argentine garrison in South Georgia and scored the first British success of the war. A few weeks later, in the dead of night and the eye of a howling storm, he and his comrades took part in a by the skin of their teeth behind the lines raid to blow up 11 enemy aircraft. Next, on the eve of the British invasion, Splash was in a Sea King helicopter that crashed into the freezing seas of the South Atlantic. Killing 22 of his comrades, Splash was one of the few survivors. Suffering from hypothermia and with a suspected broken neck, his war might have ended then. But desperate to return to his unit and get back into the action, Splash escaped from a casualty evacuation ship and re-joined D Squadron. More behind the lines operations followed, which involved ambushing Argentine Special Forces and playing cat and mouse tactics to evade enemy search patrols by digging into the sodden ground in sub-zero temperatures.

Following the lecture, I caught up with Splash over a beer. Having not seen each other for two decades, there was a lot of ground to cover, but I had a burning question. It took a few pints to summon up the courage to ask him if he had ever considered writing a book about his exploits or getting someone else to do it for him. He eyed me cautiously over the rim of his glass and said ‘***king no chance’.

I reminded Splash of that conversation when we met up over Zoom at the end of last month. A full year of Covid-19 lockdowns had passed since we had spent hundreds of hours talking about and writing SAS Sea King Down, walking his former battlefields together in the Falkland Islands, and visiting memorials to the fallen and his former haunts in the SAS’ hometown of Hereford. Splash had just come back from a socially distanced meeting of old soldiers from the Gloucester’s, the parent regiment he joined as a 15-year-old boy soldier, where he spent 12 years before passing the gruelling Special Forces selection process. Sitting in front of his laptop screen, he started telling me about the meeting. The main topic of discussion focused on how the different generations were coping with virus lockdown restrictions and I was keen to know more.

‘It hasn’t affected me that much in truth, I still get to go for regular runs, walk the dog and, because I am 72, Mandy’ – referring to his wife – ‘thinks I am at risk and won’t let me do any of the shopping, which is a bonus. I do feel sorry for people living on their own. But I know we will get through this and put it behind us. But I do not have much truck with many of those who moan about the restrictions, such as students. Especially, when you compare it to what young soldiers have had to put up with in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. They risk their lives, sleep in foxholes, and get shot at for months on end without complaint. The virus rules are there for a reason, so people need to show some discipline and get a grip.’

I asked Splash about his running, which averages out about 25 miles a week, which he does with Mandy. ‘She’s much fitter than me, but she should be as she is only 61.’ I know how fit Splash is. When we re-walked the routes together, that he once took all those years ago in the Falklands, I was sweating to keep up with him as we trudged through peat bogs and climbed the steep rock-strewn ridges that make up the Islands’ rugged terrain. Reminding him of it made Splash laugh. ‘You and I did it in daylight in the summer as tourists with light daysacks on our backs and the promise of a warm bed. In 1982 it was night-time in the depth of an Antarctic winter, and we had nearly 100lbs of ammunition and kit on our backs. It was also nice to know where we were going.’ I asked him about his keenest memories of travelling back to the Falklands on the research trip we conducted for the book, when flying 8,000 miles down to the South Atlantic was not the challenge it would be today.

‘I liked seeing the people we liberated. Most were kids then, but they have never forgotten what British forces did for them, and the troops who were killed in the fighting to kick the Argies back off the Falklands.’ The memory of those that did not come back was Splash’s motivation for writing SAS Sea King Down. As he said, having reflected on his initial response to my suggesting there was a fascinating book to be written about his story, ‘I wanted to set it all down in memory of the people we lost.’ Half of the men Splash served with in his troop were killed during the conflict and I noted how Splash paused reflectively for the briefest of moments on the screen in front of me when the subject came up. I had seen him do this before. I first noted it in the cemetery of St Martin’s Church in Hereford, when we stood together at the foot of the memorial wall that honours the 21 members of 22 SAS Regiment lost during the conflict.

I noted it again, when we visited John Hamilton’s hauntingly lonely grave overlooking a rocky inlet on the windblown shores of the West Falklands, where Splash’s troop had spent 12 days concealing themselves from Argentine search patrols. Splash always spoke fondly of John whenever his name came up. The 29-year-old was Splash’s commander in Mountain Troop, who won a posthumous Military Cross for sacrificing his life fighting off a much larger force of Argentines, so that one of his men could attempt to escape when their covert observation post was attacked.

There is much tragedy, as well as courage in Splash’s story, but there is also humour. What has always struck me in helping Splash write the book, is the remarkable fraternity of characters that he and his comrades formed. Having survived the Sea King crash and escaped from the hospital ship to get back to D Squadron, as he made his unexpected return to their mess deck of HMS Fearless, the first thing ‘Bilbo’ (one of his best mates), said to him was, ‘***king hell Splash, where have you and the rest of the South Atlantic swimming team been?’ Or when helping stem the bleeding from a serious gunshot wound sustained by one of his unit, Splash and the casualty launched into a debate as to whether the injury constituted a bullet wound to the upper thigh or being shot in the arse. Splash was adamant that it was of the latter category, as he jabbed morphine into the unfortunate’s backside and told him to stop arguing the toss.

With the book now out and the work of visiting former battlefields and writing behind us, I had a chance to ask Splash what the hardest thing was for him in producing the book. ‘Remembering some of the detail,’ was the answer. ‘In war, total recall can be tricky. Everyone has a slightly different version of the same event. Although some things I can remember in technicolour detail. Like the dread moment when I knew I had made a mistake in firing a flare during the ambush of the enemy SF patrol on Mount Kent. As starburst filled the night sky with light so we could pick out targets, it also revealed the smoke trail leading straight back down to me. Suddenly the Argies started switching their fire and I can still hear the fizz and high-velocity cracks as a blizzard of bullets exploded around me, as I curled into a ball and thought my last moment had come. Or the time the pilot of the Argentine helicopter flew low over our observation position. I knew they would be looking for us and I can still see every detail of the pilot’s moustachioed face and big aviator shades, as I peered up from the hide, not daring to move a muscle and praying that he would not look down. However, I could not remember all the ships we cross-decked between as we sailed to South Georgia and then on to the main Falkland Islands. Antrim, Brilliant, Plymouth, Endurance, Hermes and Fearless; there were so many of them and I had to lean on the recall of others to get the sequence right.’

Before we signed off, I enquired whether Splash had heard from DSF. Standing for the ‘Directorate of Special Forces’, DSF has a branch that deals with SAS men who write books about their time in SF. ‘Nothing yet, but I think we know that I am bound to get a notification of displeasure, as they don’t take kindly to the blokes writing about their experiences in Special Forces.’ I asked how Splash felt about that.

‘I get it if we were writing about recent operations that could compromise security. But what we did was nearly 40 years ago; nothing in the book is now classified and DSF got to see and comment on the manuscript before it went to Penguin. So, I think they are being a bit short-sighted. SAS Sea King Down is a testimony to the fortitude, daring, and courage of the SAS. But most importantly it honours the blokes that were part of it. I give a grunts eye view as it appeared to me. It is [the] story of a close-knit group of SAS troopers, often with the odds stacked against us, [and it] deserves to be told from our perspective. Especially, as many of those that were part of it did not come home and are still down south, lying under the Falkland’s peat, or those angry seas that we travelled so far across.’

Mark ‘Splash’ Aston spent a lifetime in the Army, serving for 39 years in call. Joining the Glosters, as a teenager, he passed selection in 1978 and joined the Mountain Troop of D Squadron, 22 SAS, the only squadron involved in direct action against the Argentine forces. He finished his career as the SAS RSM at the Parachute School.

Stuart Tootal is a former army Colonel, a best-selling author of Tank Action: An Armoured Troop Commander’s War 1944–45 and The Manner of Men: 9 PARA’s Heroic D-Day Mission. He is currently a global head in the corporate security sector. His exceptional military career has seen him serve in Northern Ireland and the Middle East. SAS Sea King Down is his latest book.

Aspects of History Issue 8 is out now.