The notable ‘Tumbledown rescue’ M.I.D. pair to Scout Helicopter Air Gunner Lance-Corporal J. Rigg, Army Air Corps, for bravery under fire, exemplary devotion to duty and unselfish concern for injured comrades

General Service 1962-2007, 1 clasp, Northern Ireland (24442062 AIRTPR J J Rigg AAC); South Atlantic 1982, with rosette (24442062 LCPL J J Rigg AAC), mounted as originally worn, good very fine or better (2) £7000-9000

M.I.D. London Gazette 8 October 1982, the original recommendation states:

'On the night of 13/14 June, on the Island of East Falklands, the 2nd Battalion Scots Guards attacked well entrenched enemy positions on the craggy ridge feature of Tumbledown Mountain, seven kilometres to the west of Port Stanley. Helicopters of 656 Squadron Army Air Corps flew in direct support of operations throughout the battle.

Lance Corporal Rigg, Army Air Corps was a helicopter crewman involved in the evacuation of the seriously wounded. Unmindful of his own safety, he unhesitatingly volunteered to fly with his pilot on a succession of extremely hazardous missions. Despite heavy enemy artillery fire, he flew repeatedly to recover casualties from exposed forward positions.

For his bravery under fire, his exemplary devotion to duty and his unselfish concern for his colleagues, Lance Corporal Rigg is strongly recommended.’

Julian Rigg was born in 1961 and educated at Emmbrook School, Wokingham. At age 18 he enlisted in the Junior Leaders, before joining the Army Air Corps. After training in Gazelle, Scout and Lynx helicopters, he was awarded his Observer Badge in June 1981 and his Air Gunner Badge in October of the same year. Rigg was posted as Air Gunner to 657 Squadron (Scout helicopters), in October 1981. After a tour in Northern Ireland, he was posted to 656 Squadron, which was part of the build-up of the Taskforce sent to recapture the Falkland Islands: Operation Corporate.

Eye-Witness to the devastating Airstrike on the Sir Galahad troop transport ship

On 8 June 1982 Rigg was flying a troop lift during the British advance on Stanley when his Scout helicopter XR628 was forced to take emergency evasive action after sighting a formation of five Argentine Grupo 5 A-4B Skyhawks to the south-west of Fitzroy, where the Sir Galahad was lying offshore, waiting to land a battalion of the Guards (Falklands The Air War refers). Journalists interviewed Rigg and reported that, 'if ever he should forget that horrific moment when the Argentinians attacked the warship Sir Galahad and his helicopter crashed into the icy waters, his photograph album will certainly jog his memory. For the Wokingham man, who is in the 656 Squadron with the Army Air Corps, was transporting men in his Scout helicopter when the first of the Argentinian jets began to home in on Sir Galahad. "One of the men sitting behind me tapped me on the shoulder," said Julian, "and pointed to the Argentinian jets flying either side of us. To try to avoid being spotted we dropped height and flew very low. Suddenly, however, we plunged into the water." A mechanical failure of the tail rotor drive shaft had caused an immediate forced-landing in MacPhee Pond. "As we climbed out of the helicopter we could see the Sir Galahad being bombed. It all happened so quickly - it was in flames but we did not really have time to think about it." (Wokingham Times, 12 August 1982 refers)

The battle for Mount Tumbledown - “Do you know where you’re going?”

Rigg mostly flew with Captain Sam Drennan. Their exploits are extensively profiled in Above All Courage, which is précised in this note: ''Corporal Jay Rigg, my air gunner and co-pilot, and I arrived in the Falklands on 1 June. Being aviators, we went to all the places of interest where things were happening. We had to start off doing recces in Lafonia to check for enemy and the Army Air Corps on its own captured seven Argentinians there. That was our first aggressive contact with the enemy. Up until the night of Tumbledown we were flying every day. We flew sixty hours in fourteen days, which is about two months' flying normally, in a squadron. From the day we arrived we were really preparing for the big push on Stanley.” Drennan and Rigg’s aircraft was tasked to support the Scots Guards attack on Mount Tumbledown, a key enemy position which was strongly defended by some of the best-trained and led regular Argentine troops and Marines. “By the time of the Tumbledown battle, Jay and I had developed an extraordinary rapport - a tremendous trust. When we were flying towards Goat Ridge, out of the half-darkness came this voice: 'Do you know where you're going?' I replied, 'Trust me, for God's sake, trust me.' And he did. If I'd mucked it up then, he would never have trusted me again - there would always have been a tension.”

The “Big Guy Fawkes Night” - Landing under fire and in a Minefield to rescue wounded soldiers

Drennan and Rigg’s aircraft was pre-positioned about fifteen miles from Mount Tumbledown before the British night attack went in. “As we moved to our briefing we could see it all going on - it really looked and sounded like a big Guy Fawkes night. We were briefed by the Squadron Commander, and told that things were not terribly healthy up there, but would we like to give it a go? He was wearing his worried face! He said, 'Look, this is the score. The baddies are here, they're resisting fiercely, but we've got a casualty here and one there, who are both badly hurt and need to come out.' The aircraft were sitting outside ready to go. It was pitch black, no moon, and we didn't have night-sights. It was going to be an interesting night! So off we went to Tumbledown.”

After Captain Drennan reached Goat Ridge “we looked over the ridge and Jay pointed out where the first casualty was. I realised that no helicopter had been that far forward on Tumbledown. The Argentinians then opened fire on us.” They were using all that they had, including artillery shells, missiles, machine-guns and small-arms fire. “My big fear wasn't getting hit by a shell, because if you get hit by a shell, you die and that's the end of the story. But if you see a missile heading towards you, and you can tell by the smoke, you can avoid it if you're fast. So I said to Jay, 'If you see a missile, give me a shout,' which was greeted with raised eyebrows and a wry smile - apparently something had just passed our tail and I hadn't seen it!”

The first casualty to be picked up and evacuated was a Gurkha. “I went quite slowly down the side of this hill, at about fifty knots, because I'd decided that if we saw the smoke track of a missile coming towards us I'd put the aircraft on the ground bloody quickly. Jay was keeping his eyes open. I was concentrating on missing the rocks on the way down and all the time there were puffs of smoke where shells were landing, which was quite spectacular - some were quite close to us. We found the Gurkha and they lifted him into the pod. We were using pods, like coffins, on the side of the helicopter, so we could get more casualties in. The back was open, because Jay was in and out all the time. There was a little puff of a shell landing here and a little puff there, and I thought, 'Christ, I hope there's not a little puff here soon.'

I was worried about the Scots Guardsman that we had to pick up as well, because I couldn't see him anywhere.” It transpired that the injured Guardsman was lying in a minefield. “I'd got plastic armour underneath my seat, so if I'd hit a mine, it would have to go through the aircraft and the armour on the floor and on my seat before it blasted a hole in me and I might have survived. Not so Jay: he was on the skid! If we'd hit a mine he'd have got killed. It was our job to pick up this soldier and we did. We then lifted off, turned round and went like a bat out of hell for the safety of the ridge behind Tumbledown. We went whizzing back to the MDS (Main Dressing Station) where the two casualties went to the surgeons straight away. We'd managed to get in and get out again without getting killed. Then the floodgates opened.”

Into the floodgates of the battle for Tumbledown – again and again and again and again

Rigg and Drennan heard by radio that the Scots Guards had been in very close combat and had suffered casualties. “We were authorized to return to the same area. I thought about Jay at this point, because I could have been taking him to his death. But he knew we had a job to do. He said to me, 'Think of your own self bleeding to death on the mountainside, and people saying, "I'm not going to come and get you." That wouldn't do.' We went whizzing back out.” Drennan, who had been a Scots Guards officer before moving to the Army Air Corps, landed at the Scots Guards’ Regimental Aid Post to get the latest information. “I came across an old friend of mine, Colour Sergeant Archie Baird. I said, 'Hello Archie. How's it going?' He said, 'Not so good,' and turned back to the doctor and spoke about one of the men who was lying injured in the middle of the battlefield. 'He's gone into a deep coma, and it looks like he's had it.' Both Jay and I sparked at the same time and thought, 'No, he bloody hasn't.'

I said to Jay, 'Right, wait for the grid reference and I'll run down and start the aeroplane.' Where we had to get to was right at the front end of Tumbledown. Jay pointed out where it was on the map and I looked down and all hell was going on down there. We looked at each other and resolved we were going to go; it was one of those unsaid things. We sneaked along the northern side of Tumbledown. We couldn't actually land because it was too steep, so I dropped off Jay, who went half-way up the mountain to see what was happening, rather than risk us being blown out of the air. I saw Jay running back so I hovered and Jay came up underneath the aircraft and grabbed hold of the skid. I didn't have time to wait for him to climb in - he pulled himself up to the chest and then reached over and grabbed the inside of the door stanchion and pulled himself in.

We had a look over this hill where shells were landing and making rather large bangs. We looked at each other as if to say, 'Well, shall we give it a whirl?' But there was no point in saying it because we both knew we would. We flew along the side of the mountain and identified where these people were. One stood up - a brave boy - so we could actually see where they were. We noticed there weren't too many Scots Guards about. It was obviously not too healthy a spot. We were looking right down on Port Stanley and it was the first time I'd seen it, and it was quite spectacular really. Just to our right were the Argentinians who were having a real go at us with their machine guns. The rounds were coming cracking over the top and some were bouncing off rock. We landed on this steep slope and before I knew what happened, Jay had gone. He was out and he was loading these injured soldiers, one into the pod and one inside. The longer we stayed there the closer the bullets got.

We had two casualties, both badly hurt. We managed to get Lieutenant Bob Lawrence into the back to be looked after by Jay, and the other one, with severe chest and gut injuries, we put in the pod. Unfortunately Bob Lawrence was badly placed in the aircraft and had his head, which had a bullet lodged in it, very exposed to the bitter cold air. Jay had this young lad's injured head on his knee. Unbelievably he was still conscious and looking up at Jay and muttering. Jay put his furry hat on Bob Lawrence's head to protect him, but it flew away. Bob Lawrence then tried to get up, but fell down, so Jay pulled him round a bit and put his body in front of him. We were very determined that this brave lad wasn't going to die because even with injuries of such severity he was still fighting to live.”

The casualties were delivered to the surgeons at Fitzroy MDS, which was a twelve minute round trip from Tumbledown, and “we went as fast as the Scout would travel. After three trips to the nasty area we'd taken out six casualties, but there were more along the really dangerous side of the ridge - the side of the ridge open to gunfire from Mount William, where there was no protection. We had to go along the really nasty side of the mountain and pick them up. We were nipping in among the rocks, more or less a 'bring out your dead' situation. Jay was in and out of the helicopter loading the wounded and looking after them in a way like a man possessed. It was quite incredible. Neither of us had slept all night, but then neither had those lads who were fighting and we weren't going to stop until they did. We went back again to pick up some more casualties.”

Drennan decided to take a shorter route this time, round the front of Mount Harriet. “So we went whizzing round the front, going very fast, when over the radio came this voice that sounded like an exasperated mother talking firmly to a naughty boy. He said 'Hello, Two Charlie. This is Zero. You're being shot at - again.' So I realised that it was a stupid decision of mine - Jay also thought that, but he said something stronger than stupid! As we got closer to Tumbledown, I heard over the radio that they'd found a soldier who had been severely injured. We'd been knocking the hell out of our aircraft for two hours and they hadn't killed us, so we thought, 'Let's get him out, let's go.'

When we got there this poor lad was really in a bad way. He'd obviously got separated from his platoon, got badly shot up, fallen behind some rocks, and had been lying there for some hours before he was found. We got him on board and he was just lying there, like a rag doll covered in gore, looking up at Jay with big, frightened, staring eyes. He was in a terrible state. Although it was freezing cold, Jay took off his gloves and held his hand really tight. All the time he never let go of Jay's hand. Those terrible, big, staring eyes had gone into a look of death. I thought, 'He's never going to make it,' but I'd underestimated just how fast a Scout can go, because that time she flew very fast indeed. When a man's blood is ebbing out of him, every second is vital until the doctors get a needle into him. The decision to take that short cut, hairy as it was, probably saved his life. But saving him wasn't just speed, I'm sure of that. Indelibly printed in my mind is Jay holding this dying lad's hand. He looked as if he was willing his strength to go from him into the other guy - and this lad did survive. Jay, who was twenty-one at the time, told me later that he was determined that he wouldn't let him die. He said, 'To see a guy the same age as me, with so much life left in him, dying - I couldn't let that happen!'

Drennan and Rigg “trundled back to Tumbledown and landed there, where they told us they'd seen white flags. I remember I jumped down and hugged Jay and the medic. I thought we could relax, but some Argentinians thought otherwise and took a few shots at us. But we knew we'd won and that there had been a lot of enemy anti-aircraft activity going on, but we didn't actually know fully how much. I was told a couple of days afterwards that they'd really had a good go at us from Mount William. The lads on the ground told me that they could tell when we arrived because there was a crescendo of gunfire from the front end of the mountain!

The casevac flights continued through the day of the Argentine surrender and included flying enemy casualties to receive proper medical care. Drennan remembers “an Argentinian casualty who was obviously in great pain as he'd been badly shot up. He was just an eighteen old lad, of peasant stock. He looked bewildered and terribly afraid. He was well strapped up, so Jay put him on the litter, but the noise of the helicopter rotors and all the rest of it must have really scared him. He was in a hell of a state, so Jay just leaned over and pinched his cheek and gave it a gentle shake and a pat. This lad's whole face lit up with relief.”

“There’s a mountain ahead....”

Captain Drennan’s account continues: “The day they surrendered we continued doing our various flying tasks until night came: a pitch-black, horrible moonless night with horizontal snow. I hoped I wouldn't have to fly, but about 10.30 the Welsh Guards called up on the radio and said they'd got a Guardsman on Sapper Hill who had a perforated ulcer... the doctor had said that if he wasn't brought out, the chances were that he would die. We flew along the coastline and the only way we could tell it was the coast was the luminescence of the waves hitting the shore. We were not only having difficulty seeing but were being buffeted by very strong winds. Then, to make matters worse, our radar altimeter went unserviceable, so we couldn't tell how high we were or where we were above the ground! Somehow, everything seemed against us. The war was over, they'd signed the surrender, yet here we were on this vile night, travelling almost blind. We flew along and found the area of Sapper Hill, but we couldn't identify it specifically. There were fires all over the place, but we couldn't see the landing lights. We tried to get in for about an hour and eventually we lost radio contact with them. By now we were experiencing intermittent snowstorms and we were getting a bit weary.

Jay said to me, 'There's a mountain ahead!' And I said, 'No, there isn't. We're going to miss it.' I thought we were about 200 metres further north than we actually were, but because he couldn't see anything he'd been keeping a damn good mental plot. He turned out to be dead right. Suddenly, he was screaming at me, 'There's a mountain ahead, you cunt!' I slammed on the landing light and coming towards us at an alarming rate was sheer wall-to-wall rock. I took frantic evasive action and somehow - and I'll never know how - I managed to swerve to the side of it.... After the war had finished, after going through all that we'd been through together, imagine my stupidity killing us both. Jay had just saved our bacon, and I couldn't waste such a partner.

Jay had worked himself to the bone; he was absolutely tremendous. In fact, if I'd been the guy who was dishing out the gongs, I'd have given him one the size of a dinner plate, because he really was quite something. He went into that war as a young man of twenty-one and he came out of it a very mature man. He was terribly brave and I shall never forget him standing on the skid at 140 miles an hour in a horrid gale of freezing cold, sub-zero temperatures, looking after those poor wounded who were almost dead. He did it and he did a fantastic job.”

Drennan was awarded the D.F.C., and Rigg was Mentioned in Despatches for their joint gallantry at Tumbledown. Rigg was jointly awarded the Ferranti Trophy for 1982 and went on to serve another two years in the Army Air Corps. In 1988 the film Tumbledown was released, in which the plot centred around Bob Lawrence (played by Colin Firth), the Guards Officer whose life Drennan and Rigg saved.

Rigg's M.I.D. is unique to the Army Air Corps for the campaign.

Sold with the following associated items: (2) related miniature awards, mounted court-style as worn, riband bar and cloth insignia; Royal Air Force Aircrew Flying Log Book (28 April 1981-10 December 1984), slight water damage, this occurred when his helicopter forced landed in MacPhee Pond whilst trying to avoid enemy aircraft, 8 June 1982; M.I.D. Certificate, dated 11 October 1982, glazed and framed; Martin Patent Ejector Seat Plate, from forced landed Scout; Operations Map used by recipient during the Falklands Campaign, with then current positional annotations; Scout AH Mk 1 Flight Reference Cards used by recipient during the Falklands Campaign; (2) scrap books compiled by the recipient replete with photographs from various stages of his career, and a number of letters of congratulation including from: Major General M.B. Farndale, C.B., Colonel Commandant, Army Air Corps, dated 11 October 1982; Colonel D.E. Canterbury, Regimental Colonel, Army Air Corps, dated 8 October 1982; Major General J.J. Moore, O.B.E., M.C., Headquarters Commando Forces, Royal Marines, dated 18 October 1982; and Lieutenant General Sir Richard Trent, K.C.B., Land Forces Deputy to the Commander in Chief Fleet, dated 8 October 1982; a copy of Above All, Courage, by Max Arthur, with a dedication to the recipient by the author, several signatures including that of Captain Sam Drennan, D.F.C., additionally annotated from him to the recipient 'IOU one life', also signed by Lieutenant R.A.D. Lawrence, Scots Guards; a copy of The Helicopter Story of the Falklands Campaign, by John Hamilton, signed by the author, and includes a colour plate of the original painting by the author entitled 'Casualty evacuation by Scout helicopter from Mount Tumbledown'; a copy of Falklands The Air War; a number of contemporary newspapers, in which the recipient is featured; BBC Video Falklands Task Force South, photograph of recipient is used on reverse of case.