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Falklands Posting

  • Aswin Rana
  • Interview by: Jess Boydon

Transcript

I was detached to Mount Kent

just after the Falklands War

and I have to say yet again another exciting tour.

It was all real

and it was one of my most scariest moment

because this time it was on one of the shift.

The alert sirens went off.

If you don't know Mount Kent,

it's on top of a mountain.

There's nothing else other than a radar

and just a group of us doing the same job,

identifying the air picture

and sending it to the headquarters.

The alert siren went off.

It seemed that on the southern island

they'd detected fast patrol boats of Argentinians,

so that was my first experience

of actually arming myself up

with signing out my weapon

and live ammunition

and I was sent to a sanga, a gun post

and it was very, very dark, very night

and you stand in the sanga there

and you looking through

and the night plays tricks with you

and the thoughts that go through your mind

and I remember it clearly.

Bushes were moving

and I'm thinking that's in there,

the silhouettes of the bushes

and anything that's moving you think it's coming

and I was really scared.

I was on my own in a sanga,

still a young man thinking what am I gonna do

if it's an Argentinian?

Are you gonna shoot?

And all these thoughts that go through your mind

and then because there's a small lookout

you think is he gonna pop up his head?

And then what you gonna do?

So, that was the most frightening experience

of my time.

Luckily nothing happened

but I have to say frightening and daunting experience

knowing that I've got bullets in my weapon

and I could fire at any time

and I could kill somebody.

  • Aswin Rana with colleagues

    © RAF Museum

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