|
|
Post by stu77 on Jun 13, 2022 23:25:23 GMT
Superb documentary www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0018c8n/our-falklands-war-a-frontline-storyOur Falklands War: A Frontline Story Forty years ago, British troops returned home victorious from a short and brutal war. This film is the story of ten ordinary men who fought on the front line alongside one another in the Falklands War. Very little of the frontline fighting on the islands was captured on film. So if you want to know what the Falklands War was really like, you need to ask the men who fought it. Tasked with liberating the Falkland Islands from Argentina, British troops set sail from England in April 1982, returning ten weeks later. In that time, their lives were changed forever. In their own words, with unflinching honesty and detail – some speaking for the first time – their stories revisit some of the most dramatic, impactful, bloody and life-changing moments of the war. For these men, it remains as vivid as they day they fought it. |
|
|
|
Post by Lord Emsworth on Jun 14, 2022 5:50:14 GMT
Thanks Stu
Five star review in The Times
Our Falklands War: A Frontline Story
BBC2
★★★★★
There have been several documentaries to mark the 40th anniversary of the Falklands conflict and some have been excellent. But wow, Our Falklands War: A Frontline Story, two years in the making, was exceptional. It was breathtaking, humbling, honest and surprising, and I say this as someone who has watched umpteen hours of Falklands stuff lately.
It was not a military overview of the conflict, but a drilling-down, giving voice to ten soldiers, some of whom had never spoken about their experiences before, not even to their wives. They let their violent memories and palpable post-traumatic stress disorder bleed out on to the screen in a way that was unexpected and at times extremely intimate. It was part confessional, part catharsis, part horror flick.
Robert Lawrence, from the Scots Guards (whose experiences were told in the film Tumbledown), recounted sticking his bayonet into a young Argentinian’s arm to test if he was alive. The Argentinian spun round and snapped the tip off it. “I killed him. With a broken bayonet,” he said. Just before this the soldier had spoken to him “in English”. What did he say? “Please,” Lawrence replied.
Chris Waddington, of the 2nd Battalion Parachute Regiment, who was only 19 when he was sent to war, also had to use his bayonet to kill an enemy soldier. “I remember the smell,” he said sadly. “He defecated as he was dying.” Another soldier told how he was forced to head-butt a soldier repeatedly “until he was no longer a threat”.
Here, men with quiet, ordinary voices revealed the raw savagery of war. “People ask me, ‘What was it like in the Falklands?’ ” said Nigel “Spud” Ely, also from 2 Para. “Now I’ve served in the SAS, in Afghanistan, Kuwait, Iraq, Africa, and nothing can compare to what we did at Goose Green.”
Imagine how psychologically damaged you must be if, on coming home, you build a trench in your mother’s back garden because it feels safer to live outside. Michael Iddon, who was on board the Sir Galahad when it was hit by an Argentine strike and became trapped in a smoke-filled corridor, could no longer bear to be indoors, so spent “months” on the lawn. The storytelling was controlled well, like layers of an onion being slowly peeled away.
The most astonishing story was that of Chris White and Kevin Woodford, both Royal Marine Commandos aboard the Sir Galahad. Woodford lost his leg in the horrific blast and although White tried to move him, he kept passing out through lack of oxygen as the flames approached.
White said he had to leave; Woodford squeezed his shoulder. He told his rescuers, “There’s a guy in there,” but assumed that Woodford had died. Deeply ashamed, he seized a .45 automatic pistol and went to the stern of the ship to blow his brains out.
“I left a man to die,” White said. He couldn’t live with that. Yet someone had seen him and the weapon was confiscated. It was then that the padre told him, to his astonishment, that Woodford was alive. “[Kevin] saved my life,” White said. “By not dying.”
You could see that these men had an extremely complex relationship with this conflict: it was hideous, but it defined them, was part of them. “It was a dirty wet horrible stinking war,” Ely said. Did he enjoy being there? “Yes,” he replied. Outstanding TV.
|
|
