521144 - THE FALKLANDS WAR THEN AND NOW from After The Battle

Edited by Gordon Ramsay

Includes then and now comparison photographs, roll of honour of casualties on both sides, the graves of the British fallen, eye witness accounts.

In 1982, Argentina rashly gambled that a full-scale invasion of the Falkland Islands - ownership of which had been disputed with Great Britain for over a century - would put an end to years of political wrangling. However Britain's response was to immediately despatch a task force to recover the islands, by force if necessary.

The 'conflict' which followed (a formal declaration of war was never given) lasted ten weeks from Argentine invasion to British liberation, the white heat of battle using 20th century technology contrasting with bitter hand-to-hand bayonet fighting in inhospitable conditions. Eyewitness accounts by the participants of both sides, and islanders, leave us in no doubt as to the ferocity of the combat on land, sea, and in the air. Comparison photography in colour of all the battlefields, the crash sites of the aircraft shot down, the relics and the remains, together with portraits of those who lost their lives and the battlefield memorials, serve as a graphic testimony to their endeavours, 25 years after the battle. A Roll of Honour lists the casualties of both sides and, for the first time, the graves of all the British fallen - both on the islands and in the United Kingdom - have been visited and photographed as a lasting record of all those who made the supreme sacrifice in what is most probably Britain's last colonial war.