A paratroop officer who became the first British soldier to parachute into battle since the Suez crisis in 1956 recalled yesterday the dramatic moment when he landed in the freezing water of the South Atlantic 25 years ago.

David Chaundler, then a lieutenant-colonel, was being parachuted in to take over command of the 2nd Battalion The Parachute Regiment after the death of Lieutenant-Colonel “H” Jones at Goose Green, the first land battle of the conflict.

“I jumped from 1,200ft [out of a Hercules transport aircraft] into an appalling wind and hit the water at speed; had I been landing on ground I would have been killed,” he told The Times.

“I had no beacon or torch, and although there was a frigate [ HMS Penelope] nearby to pick me up, I spent half an hour in the water before a boat spotted me and hauled me on board. I was wearing a total immersion orange suit but by then I was soaked,” he said.

“I had never jumped into water before, and I had to make sure that I released the parachute and inflated my life jacket at exactly the right moment to avoid hitting the water without a parachute or going into the sea without a life-jacket and drowning,” he said.

Colonel (now Brigadier retired) Chaundler was deployed to the Falklands at short notice and at the most traumatic period for 2 Para, having lost their charismatic commanding officer, killed leading a charge against the enemy machinegun positions at Goose Green.

Brigadier Chaundler, 64, said: “I was sitting having breakfast in the Ministry of Defence with Mike Jackson [General Sir Mike Jackson] when we were told about H’s death and the battle of Goose Green. Someone said to me, one of you two [Jackson was also a paratrooper] will have to take over.”

Within hours Chaundler was being flown out to Ascension Island and then taken by Hercules to the Falklands: “The parachute jump instructor on board told me the winds were too strong for me to jump and we were going back to Ascension Island [an 18-hour trip]. But I told him I was a lieutenant-colonel and he was a flight lieutenant and I was going to jump.”

To get to Goose Green to join up with 2 Para, it took several helicopter rides and finally a yomp across the peat bog to reach them. The battalion by then had lost 16 men and another 36 were wounded.

As the new commanding officer, he led the assault on Wireless Ridge, which proved to be the defining battle in the conflict. He and his men were the first to spot the moment when the Argentinian troops gave up and started to walk back towards Port Stanley. “No one has ever really told this story, but actually once we had taken the ridge and were standing on the top, we saw the Argentinian troops slope off towards Stanley and we realised they were giving up,” he said.

He added: “So we followed on behind them. I had orders to stop but I’m afraid I didn’t obey. I thought we should carry on. But when we reached Government House [on the outskirts of Stanley] we stopped by the war memorial. This was seven hours before the Argentinians officially surrendered and they were still all armed.”

He dispelled one myth. “There were no white flags flying over Stanley. Major Bill Dawson, second in command of 7 Gurkhas, was interviewed by an ITV reporter and he came out with the report that there were white flags. This was later repeated by Margaret Thatcher in London. But he was talking metaphorically – there were no white flags over Stanley,” he said.

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