Goose Green: The decisive battle of the Falklands War - by the British troops who fought it

On 28 May 1982, 450 men of the 2nd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, stood poised to retake the settlement of Goose Green on East Falkand, where 1,500 Argentine soldiers had captured, and were holding in squalid conditions, 119 Falkand Islanders - men, women, children and one baby. 2 Para’s mission: to capture the settlements of Darwin and Goose Green and save the lives of the hostages.

This is a true story of a great victory against all the odds. Forty years on, Goose Green is still the biggest, bloodiest battle the British Army has fought in modern times.

In chronological order and in their own voices, the author has compiled a living narrative of the battle by the men who fought it; the men of 2 Para, the SAS, the Royal Navy and Merchant Navy, and others, in more than a hundred exclusive and untold personal accounts. Some are side-splittingly hilarious, some sad, and some so heart-breaking they may well bring readers to tears. All the interviews were recorded face to face and then transcribed; many have been left in the speakers’ own words, adding a gritty authenticity to each particular account.

The result is a book that goes beyond the official histories or the memoirs of senior commanders, to bring to life the first and, as it turned out, the decisive battle of this country’s extraordinary and brilliant campaign to retake the Falkland Islands from a foreign invader.