Sarah, Duchess of York marked
the 40th anniversary of the start of the Falklands War on Saturday, and to do
so she shared some words from her ex-husband, Prince Andrew.
The Duke of York fought in the
conflict, which started in 1982 following Argentina’s invasion of the British
territory. The royal served as a helicopter co-pilot and was stationed on
the HMS Invincible during the war. His duties in the war consisted of
Exocet missile decoy, evacuating causalities and air and sea rescue, as well as
engaging in anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare.
Although Andrew and Sarah knew
each other while he was serving, they weren’t together at the time, with the
royal being in a relationship with photographer and actress Koo Stark.
“I asked Andrew this
morning for his reflections on the anniversary of his sailing from Portsmouth
to the Falkland Islands 40 years ago,” Sarah wrote at the beginning
of a series of now-deleted posts where Andrew recalled his service.
In one part of his lengthy
remarks, the Duke said: “I did get shot at, but it was not intended for me,
at the time Atlantic Conveyor was hit, I was airborne in the anti-submarine
screen and told to climb to height and drop chaff (to confuse the enemy radar
into believing there were many more targets than they thought and make their
targeting solution more difficult and then to confuse the missiles into
choosing the wrong target).
“I was flying and saw a
chaff shell fired from one of the ships that passed not that far in front of
us. For a moment it was on a steady bearing before it began to cross to our
left. The terror that that was going to be that, just for a moment, has
had a lasting and permanent effect on me.
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Sarah shared some words from her ex-husband
“We then had to put that
to one side and get on with the search and rescue mission to recover and find
men in the water after Conveyor was hit and burning.”
He then revealed that he had a
“full weep” while processing his memories as he thought about the
people of Ukraine following Russia’s invasion of the country.
He reflected: “We can’t
seem to learn from our history of the conflict that it is the human being that
suffers, it is the families that are torn apart by the indiscriminate
bombardments, it is the bravery and courage of the few to defend the many that
have really caught me as I reflect.”
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The Duke served during the Falklands War
The final post was of the Duke
during his time in the military and ended with him explaining how serving in the war had changed him.
“So whilst I think back
to a day when a young man went to war, full of bravado, I returned a changed
man,” he wrote.
“I put away childish
things and false bravado and returned a man full in the knowledge of human
frailty and suffering. My reflection makes me think even harder and prays
even more fervently for those in conflict today, for those families torn apart
by the horrors they have witnessed.
“And, I’m afraid to say,
that the historical perspective my short war has taught me is this – war is
failure to keep the peace; war is a failure of human judgment; war is failure to
recognize we need to seek permission to understand another person’s perspective
or reality, whether or not we agree or disagree with that perspective or
reality.”
