*As featured in the landmark BBC2 documentary Our Falklands War: A Frontline Story*
Published to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Falklands war
'There was a time when we did extraordinary things.'
On 28 May 1982, 450 men of the 2nd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment - 2 Para - went into action to retake the settlement of Goose Green on East Falkland, where more than 1,000 Argentine soldiers were holding 119 Falkland Islanders - men, women, children and one baby - in squalid conditions.
Forty years on, Goose Green is still the biggest and bloodiest battle the British Army has fought in modern times. This book is the living narrative of the battle told by the very men who fought it; not just the soldiers of 2 Para, but also the SAS, the Royal Navy and Merchant Navy, and others, in more than a hundred exclusive and untold personal accounts.
Some are extremely funny, some touching, and some heart-breaking. All were recorded face to face, the speakers' own words adding a gritty authenticity to each account and conveying the confusion and terror of battle, as well as the courage and selflessness of men in action. Goose Green is a book that goes beyond the official histories and the many memoirs to bring to life the first and, as it turned out, the decisive battle of this country's outstanding campaign to retake the Falkland Islands from a foreign invader.
This is a true story of a great victory against all the odds, told by the men who fought it. Nigel 'Spud' Ely served in 2 Para as a private soldier and was later one of the youngest to pass Selection into 22 SAS. During the Falklands War he was on the first landing craft to hit the beach at San Carlos and was point man for the battle for Goose Green. He went on to fight in 2 Para's second major engagement, the battle for Wireless Ridge (2 Para was the only unit to fight two battles in the Falklands campaign) and as the firing died down, he and his comrades found themselves rapidly advancing into Port Stanley. So 2 Para became the first unit of the Task Force into the islands' capital, where they took the unofficial Argentine surrender. After leaving the British Army he worked as a military adviser for the British Government, a war photojournalist and became a bestselling author. Published to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Falklands War, April-June 1982 Goose Green was the first and most decisive land engagement of the Falklands campaign, and the British Army's first full-scale attack since the Korean War in 1951 There is bound to be much media notice to mark this major anniversary - the youngest British survivors of the Falkland's campaign are now in their late fifties, but many have died Based on genuine reminiscences from interviews conducted by the author - who himself played an important part in the battle There have been many published accounts of the Falklands War, some extremely successful. This book, by a survivor of the battle, speaks for the ordinary Paras who fought and won against overwhelming odds - many of them were in their late teens
