It was an odd war, fought with the same weapons, NATO weapons. But bullets don’t recognize nationalities, neither do torpedoes and missiles and both sides were going to brutalise each other with western arms. That was only one of many unusual facts about this short sharp war that has left the veterans on both side wondering what it was all for. As we watch Russia invade Ukraine claiming ownership, this is surely a moment to reflect on the Falklands where 255 British military personnel died, along with 649 Argentinians and 3 Falkland Island civilians. On 2 April 1982, Argentine forces invaded and occupied the Falklands and a few days later a UK task force was sent to recapture the Islands.GK Chesterton wrote once that “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”  For the Argentinian’s there was a lot of military historical water under the bridge and that bridge was built on the Malvinas. We must investigate these because they all add up to a crescendo that became a war. For the British it was the same motivation. The 200 islands in the Falkland Group lie 480 miles north east of Cape Horn straddling the line of 52 degrees latitude and comprising around 4 700 square miles of land. That’s about two thirds the size of Wales. There’s a geological irony, as the rock formations and fossils suggest that in prehistory the islands may have been part of the land mass of southern Africa – but the tree stump fossils suggest a closer link to South America more recently. The islands were never inhabited by indigenous people, but by birds and seals. It had an indigenous apex predator called the Falklands Fox, but humans shot it into extinction in the 1870s. We need to pick up the past and shake it about to blow a bit of truth dust into this story – because history is what drove the Argentinians into war with the British in 1982. The arguments about who owns this icy flotilla of land begin with its discovery. The British view repeated regularly is that English Navigator, John Davis first sighted the islands in 1592 when his ship was “driven among certain isles never before discovered by any known relations, lying fifty leagues from the shoare east and northerly from the Streights…”The Straits being the Straits of Magellan – and fifty leagues is 150 nautical miles. The problem with the discovery story is that non-British historians disagree with this origin epic saga. The Spanish and Portuguese say the islands were sighted by Amerigo Vespucci almost a century earlier in April 1502 when gales drove his ship along the coast of some unknown land and he described “wholly a rough coast, seen fitfully…” Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.