« Smoke on the Water » James Philip

It is November 1969 in a world in which the swinging sixties never happened because the Cuban Missiles Crisis turned the Cold War ‘hot’ on the night of 27 October 1962 and the survivors have been living, and fighting it seems, ever since.

Only that spring there had been reasons for optimism at last. In the seventh year of the post–cataclysm era there was a new President in the White House, peace in Western Europe, the Soviet bear was in its cage, the United Nations going about its work, and famine and plague had been driven again to the margins of the globe.

But history never really goes away…not ever!

Now, over five years after Argentine Marines stormed ashore to ‘liberate’ the Malvinas in April 1964, the South Atlantic Task Force is poised to commence the re–taking of the Falkland Islands. For the men in the South Atlantic there is only the iron grey sea and the slowly greening southern spring wilderness of the remote archipelago, lost in the vastness of the ocean as the final battle of the most tumultuous decade in human history approaches.

They have no time for the old alliances that will soon be fractured, or the court intrigues which will determine the fates of so many of the men for whom those the distant archipelago in the South Atlantic will become islands of no return.