At 1,093 feet, Mount Kent is not a great mountain, but in late May 1982 it was the most important high ground in the South Atlantic. It rose just five miles west of Stanley, squarely across the British line of advance, and whoever held it could see the war coming. For ten cold days it was fought over not by armies but by small bands of special forces, moving by night across the rock and bog, ambushing each other in the dark, each side trying to seize a hilltop before the other could bring up the troops to keep it.
The opening came by chance. In late May, SAS patrols from G Squadron discovered that the peaks overlooking the Argentine defences around Stanley were largely empty. The Argentine reserve company had been rushed off to the fighting at Goose Green, and another regiment had been pulled back toward Two Sisters and Mount Harriet, leaving the door to Stanley ajar. Major Cedric Delves's D Squadron was inserted by helicopter on 25 May to hold it open. They arrived just in time: Argentine special forces under Major Aldo Rico were moving into the same hills with orders to secure them and wait for reinforcement. Two sets of elite soldiers were now stalking the same darkness, often unaware how close the other was.
The clashes were sudden and confused. On the night of 29-30 May, an Argentine assault section ran headlong into the SAS on the slopes of Mount Kent; a sergeant, Raimundo Viltes, was badly wounded, and his comrades carried him out at great risk, refusing to leave him bleeding on the hill. The next day another Argentine patrol radioed a message that captured the whole campaign in a few words: "There are English all around us... you had better hurry up." In the firefights that followed, men on both sides were killed and wounded among the rocks. First Lieutenant Ruben Marquez and Sergeant Oscar Blas died showing what their citations called great personal courage, and were posthumously decorated. These were professional soldiers, fighting in appalling cold, and they fought hard.
On the night of 30 May the conventional force arrived. Captain Peter Babbington's K Company of 42 Commando, Royal Marines, with a battery of guns, boarded three Sea King helicopters and a single battered RAF Chinook, the famous Bravo November, the only one of its kind to survive the loss of its ship. The flying was desperate work. The Chinook's co-pilot later described slinging three artillery guns into a landing zone in fog, then clipping the surface of the sea at a hundred knots on the way back, the bow wave washing over the cockpit before the aircraft lurched out of the water "like a cork out of a bottle." Lifting the Marines forward took five freezing nights, but the high ground was now held in strength.
War in the dark exacts a cruel price, and not all of it from the enemy. The only British death in the whole Mount Kent operation came from friendly fire: in the early hours of 2 June, an SAS patrol fired on a Special Boat Service team near Teal Inlet that had strayed into their area, and SBS Sergeant Ian 'Kiwi' Hunt was killed. Days later, a Royal Marines night patrol mistook a mortar section of their own 45 Commando for the enemy and opened fire, killing four men and wounding three. Argentine artillery, meanwhile, hammered the captured peaks; a radio reporter on Mount Kent called it "just another version of hell." Aircraft fell on both sides, including a Harrier hit while supporting the SAS and an Argentine helicopter downed by a shoulder-fired missile.
Holding Mount Kent decided what came next. Brigadier Julian Thompson had been told from London that reconnoitring the mountain before flying in the Marines was unnecessary; he ignored the advice, and later said that without the SAS already there, the Argentine commandos would have caught 42 Commando as it landed and "inflicted heavy casualties on men and helicopters." The exhausted SAS troops were eventually relieved, and the position became the springboard for the final offensive. On 11 June, British infantry attacked from these hills and captured Mount Longdon, Mount Harriet, and Two Sisters, ending the last Argentine attempts to win back the high ground. From the bog and rock of Mount Kent, the road to Stanley, and to the end of the war, finally lay open.
Mount Kent stands on East Falkland at about 51.67 degrees south, 58.11 degrees west, roughly five miles west of Stanley and a central feature of the high ground guarding the capital. From the air it appears as a craggy, rock-strewn summit rising to 1,093 feet above surrounding peat moorland, flanked by Mount Challenger to the south and the Two Sisters and Mount Longdon ridges to the east toward Stanley. Recommended viewing altitude is 3,500 to 5,500 feet to take in the whole ring of battle hills and the line of advance from San Carlos in the west to Stanley in the east. The nearest airfield is Port Stanley Airport (ICAO SFAL); the main regional gateway is RAF Mount Pleasant (ICAO EGYP), about 25 miles to the south. Weather here is harsh and fast-changing, with strong westerly winds, frequent low cloud clinging to the summits, sleet, and poor visibility; the clear, still conditions that make the terrain legible are uncommon.