« Armadas » James Philip

It is October 1969. In a timeline altered by the Cuban Missiles War of October 1962, a British Task Force is gathering in the South Atlantic to take back the Falkland Islands from the Argentine invaders. The fighting begins … but can a war 8,000 miles from home for a windswept archipelago of which the bulk of the British people know little, fought in the name of fifteen hundred exiled people – the Falkland Islanders, or ‘Kelpers’ as they prefer to call themselves – ever be a just war?

Political braggadocio has failed to dent the resolve of the generals in Buenos Aires and now, the unthinkable is happening, the United Kingdom is going to war over the ownership of an archipelago which few of its exiled people have expressed any desire to return to. The plans have been made, the treasure expended and the still formidable British war machine mobilised; will it be Suez all over again, or something the people back home can celebrate? Or, as many people fear, will it be a nasty, messy not so little war that could easily end badly.

Peter Christopher and most of the officers and men of the South Atlantic Task Force know that nothing is certain in combat, that bad things can happen at any time and when things go wrong, they can go wrong catastrophically. Nobody has any illusions; those storm–tossed rocks in the South Atlantic will surely be islands of no return for countless friends, and enemies alike.