 the 2nd 1982. Argentine Navy cameraman filmed their invasion of the Fulcrum Valley. Frogman landed first from a submarine, followed later by the main assault force. The situation as you might hear is that the radio station has now been taken over. If you take the gun out of my back, I'm going to transmit it here, but I'm not speaking with a gun in my back. Venus fighting. Government House is completely surrounded. Ricky, how are you, brother? Very, very good, Chris, you? Yes, firing, mate, firing. And we've got over our technical issues. Technical issues supposedly sorted, and we have coffee, I've seen yours. It didn't work like this on the BBC, I promise you. No, and thank God we're not the BBC, but that's a whole other kettle of indoctrination, again, should we say? Definitely. You're looking well, mate. Thank you very much. I haven't shaved for you this morning. Wow, I did, too. It's just I didn't have a razor blade. They'll broke milk bottle again, is it? So, Ricky, I'm absolutely honoured that you've joined us today on the Bought the T-Shirt podcast. Thank you very much. Um, for friends at home who don't know, I'm Chris Frohle. I'm a former Royal Marines commando. And in a short synopsis, and Ricky will come in and fill us in on the blanks, or correct me where I'm wrong, a lot of my generation, we joined up off the back of the floor, should I say, after the Falklands conflict. I was 12 at the time. And we, as people know, I'm not a big war person. I think there's better ways. But it has to be said, what are mended down there was just, I think utterly heroic. I'm very proud to know many of them. Um, it, I remember, I think I was driving through Southampton when the ships were coming back in. May have been ports, I'm sorry, it was obviously a long time ago. And I mean, I still get emotional about it today. I'm going to try not to now. But driving down the motorway, you're overtaking cars and there's Marines in the back and sailors and soldiers and they're all waving to you. And as a kid, you probably didn't quite understand what these men, I say men because obviously it was maybe Ricky will correct me, but I'm sure it was at least majority of men in the Falklands conflict, not taking anything away from the work that was obviously going back on or back home. But it's just beyond words. I'm incredibly proud to be a Royal Marine. I'm so proud of what my brothers did in the Falklands. But I'm also aware that there's a side of the story that was never really told. Back in the day, there was a brief, let's just call it a sort of expose or glimpse in the media that the Royal Marines that were on the Falklands at the time, which was 8901 Naval Party, had been attacked by this hugely superior in numbers force and that they surrendered. Then it started to come out and no, actually, they put up a bit of a fight and now it's coming out through the work of people like Ricky that no, they put up one hell of a fight. Before, I think, and again, Ricky will correct me if I'm wrong, being ordered to surrender by... We actually, we never used the word surrender between me and the guys, we never used it. It was surrender. It was a ceasefire and a lot of people go, what's the difference? Trust me, meet the guys and don't say the S-word and we don't and there was no order to surrender. The order was to stop fighting. They walked out literally carrying their rifles. So that's not what you do when you surrender. Yes, they piled arms and they were repatriated but no one person ever put their hands up and said, I surrender and surrender was never said. There was no article of surrender signed. It was a ceasefire. It might seem a finickety point, Chris, but it's very important. Not finickety at all and also from the Argentine's perspective, it was a good job. There was a ceasefire because these guys were hammering them and I've been in the Royal Marines and I know what my job was and I know what I would have done under the circumstances. So I think probably for all concerned, a ceasefire was the best resolution at that time. Am I right? Yeah, absolutely. I think it comes down to one of the guys there, Figgy Duff, who's a lovely, lovely man. He said right at the end, he said, I would have died to defend the Falkland Islanders but at that particular point I would have just died. I wouldn't have been defending them. At that point we're both surrounded by so many people. I'm not going out to defend them. There's no chance of when I'm just dying. Better to come back and have another go, which the majority of Naval Party 8901 did, of course. Most of them when they came back. Again, amazing man, good friend of mine, Mark Gibbs, who was there. As he was going out, he said, I felt like the little kid who'd been kicked out the playground by the school bully and now was going to go and get my big brother and now he's going to come and sort the bully out. He famously said to one of the Argentines as he was driving him down to the airport, he said, there were not quite 70 of us today. When we come back, he said, we're bringing the whole core. There'll be 7,000 of us then. He said, you should have seen him. The guy was crying. He said, he's going to start in the mind games already. I can't blame him and he did everything he said he was going to. Gosh, yes. We did, didn't we? Yeah, you can't take that away from the boys. Whatever they did put off a massive effort. To be honest, I think a lot of people here in the UK look at the Falklands War and we see our side. We don't actually see the Argentine side, which is something that's always fascinated me. A lot of the news reports here just made it look like we just went in. We just walked straight over them. It certainly wasn't the case either. It was touch and go off in the whole way. A lot more things went our way, but the nature of war, one slip, one mistake can change the whole ball game. They all did a fantastic job, but of course these guys who were there on the first day, that was something that came to me by a series of amazingly happy accidents. It wasn't like I sat down and thought, I know what I'm going to write today. That didn't happen. The story came to me in a number of strange ways and it became the first casualty, which it's been a five-time number one best seller. I can't knock that. It's done more than anyone ever thought it could have done. Yeah, I thank you for that on behalf of my brotherhood mate. You're welcome. Yes. Shall we just set the scene then for our friends at home that probably aren't aware? I'm talking about our younger friends of where the Falklands is, why it is significant to the UK and why there was a party. Again, you can correct me on this, but I believe it was 30 men, but they were actually being replaced at the time by their incoming detachment, and so that was double the amount. Just by happenstance was double the amount of Marines on the island at the time. Where is the Falklands? So the Falklands, now it might sound like a silly question to some, but you've got to remember when they were invaded in 1982, people were going to go into their world atlases and looking them up and trying to work out how does Argentina invaded the Atahebrides? Most people thought genuinely that Argentina had invaded some islands in Scotland. Of course, as we know, the Falklands are about 3-400 miles off the coast of Argentina. There are islands which, I mean, there's a whole convoluted history about the Falklands, who owned them, etc. They were first discovered by a man called John Davis, an Englishman in 1592. They were first claimed, the very first claim was British, Captain John Hawkins, 1594, and their first name in fact was Hawkins Maidenland. He claimed them for his sovereign, Queen Elizabeth I, and that was their first name. You finally, only in 1700, so we went there, we took possession in 1690, and they first appeared in the 1700 world atlas, published in the world as Falklands Islands, and in the revised 1702 edition as the Falkland Islands. In fact, of course, Argentina called them Malvinas. That word only comes in. The French had this word Malouines because they came there from the support of St Marlowe. They had sailors who realised they could pull in there in bad weather and things, and they came in with Malouines. But Malvinas, the Argentine term, only really comes in after about 1767. What a lot of people don't know is that the French went to the Falklands because they were British. The French actually went there to manufacture a war, and under a clause from the Treaty of Utrecht, they turned around and said, oh, look, Spain, we shouldn't have done this. We'll give them to you, and of course, they were going to put Britain and Spain on a direct collision course for war. It was a war that was very narrowly avoided in 1770, and oddly, it was just left brewing. And ridiculously enough, even obviously Argentina became independent from Spain, they felt they had inherited this claim, which technically you can't inherit a claim. But that's by the by. And so this war that was manufactured in 1770, actually the weirdest of reasons took place in 1982. So it was a very strange thing. And of course, you know, after the Second World War, the British Empire was, we were beginning to dismantle it. You brought in the United Nations, the Decolonization Commission, and a lot of countries, a lot of territories were, you know, given to their original owners and said, you know, all the people who lived there normally via subdetermination said, you know, you happily go your own way. The first was Jamaica in 1962. But a lot of them didn't have the means, the ability, the need, the want. And it's funny to say, if people say, well, how would someone not know where the Falklands are? If someone came on the news today and said, the Pitcairn islands have been invaded, everyone would go, well, you know, or Tristana Cuna, some was a Tetris, someone would go, where is that? This was what the Falklands were like for us. They were largely a forgotten outpost. You might have, if you'd have been in touch with the news and realized something, you might have known more about them. But a lot of people just didn't. And the British garrison there, in 1966, it was only six Royal Marines. And that year they had 18 armed hijackers or terrorists from Argentina called the Condor Group. And they hijacked a plane, the first ever proper hijacking of a plane, forced it to land in the Falklands. 18 of them came out armed with guns. This is all listed in the book, the first casualty, the sort of buildup to this. They were seen off. And within a very, very short space of time, there were a dozen, what they called Buzertactico, which is I suppose Argentine SPS. And they made a raid and they actually stayed there two or three days. And again, funnily enough, this came out only yesterday. A lot of people said, oh, that didn't happen. You invented that. That didn't happen. And only yesterday, I saw it was actually, Argentine's going, yeah, we did actually. And there was a whole news story about it just yesterday, maybe quite justified. Due to that, they actually, you said 30, it was actually 44 was the official 8901 detachment. It wasn't always that big because some people went home with the advance party. Some people might have been off with the diplomatic bag. There was one guy at the time of the Argentines invaded, he'd gone home, he'd broken his leg playing rugby. So it wasn't like you got two lots of 44, that's 88. It didn't happen that way. And of course, quite a few of them joined the small group on HMS endurance, and they went off to defend South Georgia as well. So what you actually had on the Falklands on April 2, 1982 was 69 men. And that's not that much of a garrison. One of them, Jim Fairfield, was a former royal who had got married, settled down in Stanley, left the corps. And the second he knew it was coming, he went straight up to Moody Brook and said, can I rejoin, please? And so Jim was a volunteer. He wasn't even signed up as such. But they're very glad they had him in the end. Did he actually rock up with his shotgun in the film? No, the man with the shotgun is Don Bonner. No, Jim literally turned up and he phoned up and said, do you need a hand? And they said, yeah, he was a home baking bread, doing his own thing and heard it on the radio. Did they say, can you jump up on that pull-up bar and do 10 pull-ups? I don't believe so. But I tell you what, if he was there now and you said, do that, and you're in, he'd do it now. No, they literally, they sent a lamb rower for him in five minutes. And he came back to Moody Brook. He got given an SLR, five mags, a white fox and a smoke grenade, I think. And so, right, join the boys. And of course, you know the call. Most people know each other anyway. So it was just going straight back into mode for him. And he's a very proud man for that. And of course, it's something that comes out in the first casualty. I might mention it later. But Jim was the only one to win any kind of medal for that, which he got the British Empire medal as a civilian. The guys who were there defending the Falklands on April 2nd, they were put in for five military medals and 12 mentions into matches. And none of them received anything. Sir Rex Hunt was the commander in chief, the governor of the Falkland Islands. He approved it. It all went off. And last that I heard, the MOD, the powers that be, put it down to an administrative error, which they weren't going to correct, apparently. So the guys will never be recognised really, truly for what they did. And if first casualty hadn't come out, they'd still be waiting. They were waiting a very, very long time. So let's just get to the bottom of that. Why were they denied their recognition? Was this the British government for political reasons, trying to cover it, cover up what happened, or to diminish? It's, I mean, the proverbial reason why, you know, it comes down to everything. I can tell you the facts. I can only guess as to the reason why, but certain things that happened almost immediately afterwards. So the guys after the battle, and it was a battle, it wasn't a skirmish or anything like that. The guys went back to Montepedeo and they were put into a hotel, the Hotel Carrasco, under a pressed blackout for three days. And the Carrasco is, it's literally on a roundabout. It's got a road around it and they literally could seal it off. And so the guys didn't know anything about what was happening. All they were basically told is you're here for three days in a hotel. They actually, you know, Royal Marines well enough, they drank the hotel dry three days out of three. And the bar bill, bear in mind this was 1982, the bar bill was £100,000. They were told that they would have to pay it back when they got home. In fact, the British government paid the bar bill. When they were picked up and they were flown first to Ascension, it was there that they suddenly realized something had gone wrong. You know, they said, you know, what are they saying about us at home? You know, just people know what we did. When they got to Montepedeo, there was a civil servant just saying, do you mean there was some shooting involved or something? They were like, yes. Nobody knew. But the British government had certainly known and the stories, all the photographs and everything else that were taken, the guys laying out in the road, Luama walking out with his hands above his head, the famous photo, Lou still calls it that bloody photo. He hates it, but it's a fact. Those photos had gone around the world and only when the Royal Marines were on that plane from Montepedeo to Ascension did they read the headlines. And the first one was the Daily Mail. It said, shamed. Royal Marines surrendered with barely a shot fired. The Sun said, surrender a moment of shame for our Royal Marines. And they were like, no, no, no, this is so wrong. You know, that was all you had was the newspapers. And to be fair, because of first casualty, the Daily Mail, who the guys really bit that headline, that was the one they bit. Most people remember the Sun headline, but it was the DM that they really didn't like. And the Daily Mail gave us, because of first casualty, a massive great big double page centrefold. The Sun had an article in it as well. So they have, they haven't apologised, but they have put it right. And that was nice because those were the two that we really wanted. Because of the offence that they caused by reporting that. And I think a lot of people just didn't know. One of the weird things is April 2nd, the invasion, is probably the only day out of 74 days of that war, where both sides agree. You can read a completely different history between the UK side and Argentina side for every other day of that war. April 2nd, we just give Argentina there, yeah, whatever they said, we'll go with whatever they said. But yeah, the newspapers back in 1982, that was all you had, that and three and a half TV channels, you know, Channel 4 was on or off or on or off, I remember it well. That was all you had. And so a lot of people said, that doesn't sound right. But there was no go to internet or something, you know, where someone would have been able to say, let's question that. You only had what you were told. A lot of people did question it. But who do you question? Who do you ask? And of course, there was nobody. But coming back to the guys from Ascension. Now, to give you an idea, this is where it starts changing the story. This is where you know it isn't a mistake. From Ascension back to Verizon Autumn, a recording is played in the aircraft from Maggie Thatcher herself. And by the way, I have to say, I'm personally, my politics probably aren't yours, Chris, but I'm Maggie Thatcher was my MP. I met her personally as well. And I love Thatcher. Okay, she didn't do everything right. But she played or had played a recording that she had made telling the guys, you cannot talk about this. We know we'll make it right. You cannot talk about this. Now, they land at Verizon Autumn. And one of the first things they had was a what they referred to as a government suit, who basically they were saying, look, look at these these headlines, can we change these. And he said, guys, it never happened. Those were his words. And they said, if the press try and contact you, you'll get in a lot of trouble if you say anything. Tell us. The press have been told to leave you alone as well. We will arrest anyone. And literally, the whole thing was blanketed out. Why? Your question was why? I don't know. They don't tell me no more than they tell you. But there was something. And I knew and I think a lot of people, certainly a lot of guys in the core knew this isn't right. But it's only when you start putting it together that it wasn't misinformation that someone didn't want people to know what had happened. And then when I went and actually got the guys together and asked, and fortunately, it was one of the joys of first casualty as well, I got to work with the Argentines, they said, can we be in it? And I said, I don't know as you want to, you know, this looks like a very different story. And quite a few people said, well, it made it sound like we turned up, I can't remember who said this, but it made it sound like we turned up waving flags. This was a battle. This was something that the Malvinas are very important to us. And we were making history that day. And this was a battle. This was not some skirmish. This wasn't just an armed parade. We'd like to be in it. And of course, then the fun part, the Falkland Islanders came and said, well, if someone's going to finally write the proper, true version of what happened on that day, someone should actually ask us. And I said, yes, I think you're right. I think you're absolutely right. And so whatever casualty sort of was in my head and on scrappy notes and what have you, it began evolving into something else. And it's the only, the first and only, of course, three sided first person narrative history in existence, you know, like Band of Brothers or Pegasus Bridge by Stephen Ambrose, they're just sort of, you know, one sided narrative histories. And that's considered an expert job. So when someone said, now we've got a three, there was no roadmap for it. So it really was a journey and an experience to write casualty. And in itself, I suppose it's a bit of literary history because it is the first and I believe still only of its type. So just to clarify then, why was that media blackout? Has that anything to do, for example, with reports that there were British special forces on the island? My thoughts are, no, that's my thought. My thoughts are that it was nothing to do with perhaps anything else that we might have had going on that we didn't quite want to admit, because I think what the guys did, you know, spoke for itself. My guess, and we can only guess, unless someone goes, hello, I'd like to tell you all not going to happen, probably not in my lifetime. But my guess is that we needed to appear as the underdog. You have to remember that for years and years and years, going back into the 1960s, the 70s, etc. Argentina was, we were happy to sell them arms contracts. We were trying to sell them aircraft carriers. We had it down. We were trying to sell them either HMS homies or invincible. We tried to sell them carriers. We tried to sell them Vulcans. We even looked into it. And that was in 1981, by the way. I think it was. We were still trying to sell them Vulcan bombers. And we came down and said, look, we'll let you buy one because we don't quite trust what you're going to do with the rest of them. So we'll let you buy one in the end. The sale went through. And ridiculously, the last thing we actually did is we sold them 100 silenced sterling machine guns. We thought they can't do any damage with those. And it was only a few weeks later, they turned up with those same machine guns invading us. And it's like, you should have seen this. But while we were busy selling them arms contracts, and we sold them to brand new Type 42 destroyers, the Centres Petrinidad and the Hercules. And while we were selling them these arms contracts, they were hammering us in the UN or to anyone who would listen, imperialism, colonialism. And rather than do something, the British taken it was to sort of stare at shoes and sort of, you know, doff your cap and what have you. And yes, sorry, sorry about the old colonialism thing. Would you like another arms contract? And so we had basically been allowed ourselves to be painted as the bad guy. And Argentina had this whole thing, you know, we're overthrowing colonialism, we're overthrowing imperialism. They based the capture of the islands on the Indian capture of Goa, which was done peacefully, almost literally without a shot, they just turned up and swapped the place. And that's what they had in their minds that they were just going to do it and the UK couldn't do anything back. And my belief is that we needed that breathing space to quickly regain this sort of initiative and say no, no, no, we are the good guys, you know, and of course, what did it is these photos, the Argentine photos, the men laying down in the road and, you know, the Argentine commando stood over them, you know, all sort of bed in black. And it was the perfect image of the fascist junta stomping on democracy. And those photos which went around the world, we must have looked at them and thought, this is Christmas. This is brilliant. Don't let anyone say anything. Just say they came and they stomped on us. And this is wrong. And we need to get them back. Had people known that we'd put up one heck of a fight. I wonder if opinion might have been different. People didn't really know then. People didn't know how it was going to play out. Hindsight is a great general. But at the time, we needed every opportunity and everything that we could leverage. And certainly global opinion really did help win the war. So I kind of think we went to the UN. We got our mandate on self-defense. And did we need anyone saying you sort of have defended yourselves? You know, you could call it on us even. I don't think we could risk it. Gosh, what a complex web of intrigue. It is a bit. My mind's, I'm always sort of scanning, trying to make sense of things. And what is the relevance then? And again, I can only go on what I've heard. I'm not trying to say to anyone this is the truth. And I'm certainly not trying to, you know, stir the bees nest or whatever the expression might be. But I did hear that Islanders had reported seeing mysterious guys dressed in camouflage moving around the island prior to this invasion. And the intimation, if that's the right word, was that these were British guys, IAR Special Forces. Then obviously begs the question, ah, how much did the British government know that this invasion is about to take place? And I think we all know now that they probably were well aware of it. Using the Argentine invasion was the worst kept secret since Christmas. You know, it's coming. You know, it's everyone knew, I think we even knew when. And it tells you a lot, the Operation Corporates, which for those who don't know was the mission to go and take back the falcons, Operation Corporate was moving before Argentina invaded. Kind of gives you a very good idea. And I think a lot of people knew. The last to know really were the Royal Marines on the islands. They didn't know. And of course, April 2nd was the day they invaded. They were told on April 1st, the Argentinians are invading the new detachment had literally just turned up, dumped their kit, they would go into town, get some stationary writing material, what have you, you know, it's going to be a long stay, there's no phones, there's no anything else here. And they will just off exploring the town and suddenly it's like, you know, the arches are invading and it's like, ah, April Fool's Day, well done, good one. And it took a while for everyone to go, no, no, they're coming. Coming back to your question on mystery men, should we say who were there or those special forces who purportedly were there. Now, one of the things that the Falkland Islanders firstly will tell you, yeah, they were, I saw them. But Falkland Islanders don't work that way. I don't blame them that they're a very closed, very shielded people and they have to be, particularly with things not just Argentinians, our government rented to them leading up to the Falkland sport. And, you know, this is wonderful saying everyone knows, which means I know and you're not putting my name to it. And it takes a very long time to build trust. Yeah, a lot of people knew, they had seen people that been a garbled report a few days before the invasion. And it, oddly the Americans had picked it up and they didn't know where it was from. And they even wondered if they picked up our columns, something more secret. But it said, landing tonight, garbled, garbled, south of Stanley, garbled, garbled. And our guys were like, should we look for them? And it said, well, it's a big place, you know, we haven't got a lot of men. We're better concentrating on ourselves to deal with whatever comes up. And there were definitely a group of guys seen down at what's called the Pony's Pass down the Fitzroy Road, who were military guys, a few people, you know, they saw a few people around. And of course, probably the most telling. Yes, Falkland Islanders were there. There was a big house just across the harbour from Stanley on what's called the Canberra. And they knew the people from that house weren't in. They were off island, I believe at the time. The lights were on, there were people moving around. Everyone knew there was someone. And probably the most telling thing, to be perfectly honest, is when I started to talk to the Argentines and three separate guys come and they described four men with a GPMG and what they called a Jeep, which I would imagine is a lamb rover, some description. And in a certain position, they said, who was that? And I said, there are no roamarines within two miles of that position at any time. And three individual, you know, professional Argentine special forces said, no, there were definitely people there. We moved around. We asked permission to attack them. And they said, no, just bypass because they're not they're not the objected. There were lots and lots of people there. And I think probably what are the most telling is one of the nurses from King Edward Memorial Hospital, which is there's only one hospital in the Fulton descent there in Stanley. Right at the end of the ceasefire and everything, there's a lot of casualties. One of the things that I did that a lot of other people didn't, is that a lot of football books just said, you know, if they dealt with the invasion, a lot of them have said, we think there were more casualties on the Argentine side. We don't know. Whereas, I decided to go and speak to the doctors, the nurses, the people who did the operations, asked them numbers, types of wounds, how many, and they're in the book. But probably the most telling. Now I was asked, don't put my name to it by this person because that happened. But she was there on duty and a man runs in with mangled bits of finger and everything. And he was in camouflage gear and she said, who are you? They knew the Royal Marines because they were there for a year, but she assumed he was one of the new detachment. And she said, are you one of our one of our Royals? And he said, no, he said, I'm SBS. I'm not supposed to be here. You've got to hide me. She said, what happened? He said, I was hiding in the bushes, in the gorse, the famous picture on the front page of the sun where they're laid down. Those gorse bushes there, an Argentine Amtrak, which is the big arm of personnel carrier, ran over his fingers. And I think she had to chop a few off, so a few on, and they quickly got rid of his gear, dressed him up as a local in a farming accident or something. He was gone a few days later. They came in, the man had vanished. What happened? Nobody knows. Those people, those mystery people were there. And a lot of people know. I asked, through certain people, certain contexts that I had, never directly, but I asked, what were they there to do? And the answer I got was, I had asked, were you there to repent an invasion? The answer they said is no, we were there for other reasons. Be they what they may. My understanding, as times have gone on, yeah, casualty is written, is done and dusted, but I still look. There's still so many more questions, Chris. And from what I understand, they might not have been officially there in terms of they might potentially have retired on paper and not have been official. And I can actually tell you, one of them, I know one of them, I know his name, I won't say it, one of them died in Spain last year. Now, when casualty first came out, the rumorants who were there who, amazing, amazing men, such a privilege to know them, they're all good friends of mine. And they looked and thought, what's this? Well, one of them was, you know, a few people in the unit that doesn't write books and went and spoke and they came back and they said, you've got the nod. Yeah, we were. Officially, no one's ever going to say it, but yes, they were. Mate, they're right books now. Say again? They're right books now. They do, but that's kind of the, if you don't want to say who they are, we use that in history circles. The men who don't write books is what we call them. The men who don't write as many books as the SES. No offence in Penweed. Come on, calm down. Yeah, that's yours. That's on you. That's not on me. Yeah, so they were there to do what? I don't know. But they put up a bit of a scrap from what I understand. Are we talking like anti-tank rockets to take out, I'm just going to say that off the top of my head, like landing craft or such things? Yeah, I mean, again, there's this whole weird thing. So again, officially, it doesn't happen. But the first words, when the invasion begins, you can hear it. I mean, you can YouTube this and just put Falkland's invasion radio. And you can hear twice the governor's erect hunt says, one landing craft approaching the narrows, heading to or trying to get to government house. A few minutes later, he's back on again. He's talking about this landing craft coming through the narrows. Now, the tank landing ship, the Argentine's had is called the Cabo San Antonio. And weirdly, they said, no, we didn't have any. Oh, yes, we did. We only had two. And I said, you had eight. Yeah, we didn't launch any. Oh, we might. And it gets weird. It does get weird, but they certainly had landing craft on the Cabo San Antonio. Certainly some were launched. And certainly one is seen coming through the narrows for those who don't know again. So you've got Stanley to the south and the harbor in the middle. And there's a sort of narrow, thin neck of land that opens out to William and the rest of the scene to come through the narrows. Everyone would have known exactly where that was a very narrow tongue of land. And one of the Falkland Islanders sees this thing, this landing craft erupt in flames. And he even said in his diary, you know, he's actually scribbling as he's watch what the hell was that? He said, this thing just exploded. He described it as a Higgins boat like they used on Iwo Jima, which is an LCVP landing craft. It doesn't come from nowhere. The governor mentions it twice. A man looks out and sees it blow up. You can find this in, and I think you can find Diary of a Falkland Fireman, which is, it's on Twitter and it's also online as well. You can find this on April 2nd. People said, oh, you invented it. It's there. You can find it in John Smith, 74 days. Graham Bound, who writes a lot of books, he's a Falkland Islander. He wrote a lot of books about it. He didn't only mention it before. He came back to the UK and he actually reported it to the MOD and he put it into Reuters. And the MOD refuted the Reuters report. So everyone knew about it. John Smith in 74 days says they were picking up bodies floating in the harbor from the landing craft that went down. Everyone knows about the landing craft that went down. But our side, supposedly, didn't do it. Now, to confuse things just in case someone says, oh, no, I found it. Martin Middlebrook, great historian, Martin. He wrote in one of his books that Marine Brick overall, who was actually Dick overall, he's not called Rick, blew it up with an 84. Dick overall did not have the 84 and didn't shoot it. So Martin Middlebrook didn't get that right. I know why he wrote that down is because Dick overall was accidentally put down as having the 84 in Mike Norman's report. But he didn't have it. It was a mistake. And he didn't shoot it. In fact, none of the Marines on that point were by they could have hit it. There was a small section guarding the narrows. All of them said, no, we didn't hit it. We didn't, if someone else did, fine, we didn't. I'm led to understand and again, I could be wrong, you know, they don't, but they don't go, well, because you've written a book, we'll tell you everything. I'm led to understand that if pressed on the issue, our official answer is it was a premature detonation of munitions and that nobody blew it up. But that nobody has ever pressed the issue. That's my understanding. More questions than there are answers in so many ways. I could only provide the evidence and go, there's that. Yeah, it's just something that I think like any observer, especially an author like myself and yourself would be curious about. Let's move on, Ricky, because obviously we're never going to know the truth about that. And that's fine. But I don't want to take away from the men's efforts down there. Absolutely not. So, and I should point out, I think I might have said this in the beginning, but I've been humbled to work with some of the men that were on that 8901 naval party. I don't know if we should be saying their surnames unless it's absolutely, unless they're completely cool with it. I'm just going to use their Christian names, but Harry was the guy that I worked with. He's in the film, The Un-Gentlemen, The Act. Is it corporal? Whatever that Argentine is doing, will you let him live? That was the Governor Rex Hunt when he was trying to make a phone call to the UK and Harry's just blatting away at the invaders. I think to be honest, one thing I would say, I mean, Un-Gentlemen, The Act. Now, I have to say, I really enjoy the film. It was shot on location in the Portlands. It was done in 1992. It won an Emmy Award. I have nothing against it, but the people who are in it or portrayed in it never liked it. And they believed, rightly or wrongly, that it cemented this myth about them. Now, a lot of people will watch that film and go, no, they're fine. They're doing well. And they said, no, that's nothing compared to what actually happened. And so many people have said that it needs another film. If a 1992 film won an Emmy, and a lot of people said we didn't like it, Major Mike Norman said he was on set and he said, they had an idea in their head. And I was an advisor, but it didn't matter what I said. Once they had an idea, they went off and did whatever they did. And knowing the guys, I know a lot of backstories and things. I said, no, that's not going to happen. No way. But first casualty is almost just reads like a film. It should be a film. If there's a film director out there, do us justice. Give me a call, please. Yeah. Major Mike, was he the commander down there at the time, or? Yeah, Mike Norman was officer commander of the new detachment. Major Gary Newt was on the outgoing detachment. And it was general form that the, while the two detachments in change over a week are there, that the command transfers. So Mike Norman inherited a command of a place. He didn't actually know anything about it. You know, he was very good leader of men, very good combat officer. And the idea was that Gary Newt, so Gareth Newt, he's not Gary anymore, would coordinate from government house and he would be in the field. As it is, of course, everyone ends up getting pushed back into government house. But it's an incredible story. And to learn what these guys did is a story I never get sick of telling people. And to know the guys as personal friends. I said, if I died tomorrow, I will always have done that. I've done lots of other things with history. That will always be the one thing is I gave those guys back the honor that they, to me, they never lost. I think to most people, they never lost, but they felt they lost, you know, and that's very important, as you know. Well, I tell you what, Rick, I'm not sure about a film because I don't think films always do the true story justice by definition of the fact that they exaggerate them, don't they? To all they change them for the public. But certainly a documentary could be a proper documentary is a possibility. I say that because I'm approached quite regularly by documentary makers that want to work with me. And they say, Chris, let me, what can I make for you? And I have to think. I've got Damien Lewis on as well. I'm a massive fan of Damien's work. And he's, you know, he's done a lot of those. He normally, Damien much prefers being in the thick of it and getting shot at normally. But I don't know if he prefers it, but he ends up with it. I don't know. I think a film, I mean, you look at Jadotville, Cedar Jadotville, an amazing film. And, you know, weirdly enough, that was 1961. It was almost the same story as happened in 1982. These guys were, you know, they were called Cowards, the Jadotville Jacks, they called them. That was 1961. And it was only a few years ago. They finally got recognized because of Declan Power's book, because of the film, which, you know, people were always going to go, oh, did that happen? But actually, it's really, really good film. I don't know if you've seen it yourself. Cedar Jadotville was amazing. And it's, it's as bang on as you're ever going to get it, I think. Incredible film. And I'm fortunate enough to know Declan Power, who uncovered their stories, a wonderful, wonderful man. And he read it, and he actually wrote a wonderful thing for the back of First Casualty, which is in there. And he actually said, I think these, these rumours had it worse. You know, there was 155 of my guys, there was only 69 of theirs, and they were 8,000 miles from home, you know, my guys had support. Can you just give us a quick synopsis of, I think I've read the book or I watched the film, The Seed of Jadotville. What happened there? So, the short, short, short version is, it was one of the very first United Nations missions out in Congo. And during a big sort of uprising and revolt, and the idea was supposed to be, you see that we turn up and go, the UN's here, everyone's stop fighting, that's it. And we didn't know how, you know, maybe the UN thought that, that everyone go, well, if they're there, we'll go home. They didn't. And so a lot of the rebels said, right, okay, then let's play. And there was 155 Irish soldiers just put out in the middle of nowhere in Congo, around this tiny little mining town or village called Jadotville, and they're attacked by thousands and thousands of men. And they held out for several days, like the Royal Marines in First Casualty, none of them were killed, although some were wounded. They fought to the last bullet, pretty much like the 8901 Royal Marines. And in the end, they did, they, the Jadotville guys did have to surrender. And when they went home, you know, they've been put in again for lots of medals and bravery awards. They're incredibly brave men. And they were told, uh, no. And their commanding officer was told, um, we're thinking of court marshalling you for cowardice, because what do you mean? And they said, as far as everyone is concerned, the UN cannot be stomped on. So we're going to put it down there. It was your fault, and you were just surrendered, and we're putting it on you. And they were ridiculed, the Jadotville guys, for 1961 until the, you know, I think it's 2002, I want to say, the book came out, and I think that film was 2017. And only then did people go, oh, oh, they were heroes. And okay, you know, films can be, can be rubbish. I remember an American film director came and said to me, yeah, I really want to do this as a film. And I said, great. And he said, I want to throw $50 million at this. I said, well, I don't care the money, it needs to be right. Obviously you need a bit, you need lateral play for the films I get that. And he's gonna, what we'll do is we'll get a Harrier coming in and then an Argentine plane, you know, Skyhawk or something, we're going to do a dog fight. I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no Harriers. There were no Harriers. There's no dog fighting, because that's all right, so I can get a Harrier. And I was like, no, no. And he wouldn't listen. So I was just like, no. You know, I value my integrity. I value the integrity of my friends who were there. That's never going to happen. If someone, you have to for a film, you know, in a book, I can turn to the reader and go, look, there's this. So I can set the scene up in something like a film, particularly as it's only a couple of hours, you can't do that. So you have to, you have to create a scene where one didn't exist, just to sort of tear it up and, you know, make it fit. And I get that. But there are certain things, you know, a Harrier turning up, doing a dog fight. And I was like, no, it can't happen. I think it needs to be a film. And anyone, some people, screenwriters and things have read the first casualty. And they've said, this does most of the work, because it's a narrative history. And it just does most of the work for you. It's like a screenplay, you know. So if anyone could do it justice, we're still waiting for our Mr. Right. Well, it's, let's discuss this more, because we've certainly got the players, because we both, well, you more than me, but we know the men that took part. And you have the wonderful medium of things like crowdfunding now. And I think there'd be no end of bootnecks and our extended family that would want to do this story justice. So for anybody watching, feel free to email me through my website if you have any ideas. But yeah, let's get back to the guides then, because how did things play out? In what sense? At what point? At what point did somebody go, Oh, fuck. There's a landing craft coming in, or however it manifested. I mean, the guys, when they were told, you know, they were, might normally Gary Newt are brought to the governor's office. He's got a flash from London. And it says, you know, that the Argentinians are coming to invade and make your dispositions accordingly. And they were like, Oh, dear. This is a problem. And so, you know, they came up with this plan, and they were still like, you know, is this happening? Is it not? But it started getting more serious. And I think when they were gathered in the bar at Moody Brook, which is the Royal Marines barracks, and Mike Norman says to them, right, you know, there's no punchline. This is not an April Fool's joke. For anyone who's waiting for it, it's not going to happen. And they were like, Ah. And, you know, he told them that they really should think about death and the idea of dying and to swallow that down, get rid of it and go out there and do their jobs. Not for the flag or for whatever, but for each other, which is, you know, which is why you fight. And I think that's something I was, I don't know, proud, privileged, lucky, what have you to capture was the amount of men who said, I knew I was going to die. I think that that comes into it a lot. And I was always going to keep that in. I never truncated anything that anyone said, if it ended with, I knew I was going to die because I really wanted that to be the one thing you get. These guys stand no chance. Even to the point that they're talking about scenarios, you know, I realized like, you know, we'll cover the guys back. And I knew I'd never get back. So I was going to fight to the last bullet. And then me and the, you know, even the plan was for us to get back. We knew we wouldn't. We were going to wait until we were out of ammo and then basically commit suicide with a grenade and take some of them with us. They were thinking about that. You know, 8,000 miles from home, no support, 69 guys. They've got, you know, they've got thousands of men coming at them. They've got helicopters. They've got an aircraft carrier. Literally, they're looking at this aircraft carrier coming along, the Vente Chinca de Mayo, 25th of May, or of course, as we used to call it, HMS Venerable. It was a Colossus-class aircraft carrier. It was one of ours. Two Type 45s coming through to, you know, a couple of brand new French missile corvettes turning up. And then like, I've got a rifle. You can't imagine being against those kind of odds, I think, unless you're there. And to do what they did and to fight the battle they thought was just incredible. You know, and so I think at that point in the bar, that's when it dropped on them. Yeah, we're going to die, aren't we? And I think what's admirable is that deep down, they always knew somewhere they signed up to do that. And they choked that down and said, okay, let's go do it. It's going to hurt. And you know, it hurt, but perhaps not them. It's, you know, casualty, like I said, it never came to me like a story, oh, I know what I'm going to write. I'd love to, in fact, the story of how casualty came along was kind of weird. It came along. I was walking, I was walking my dog, in fact, and a man who I knew had got a book. And it was a book that was wrongly delivered by a catalog company. And he said, Oh, I like Ricky said, you like history, because I was going to give this to a charity shop, do you want it? And I was like, oh, so many books. And I thought, now you're right, my wife nudged me in the ribs and said, don't be rude. And I said, okay, thank you. And I went home and I read it. Now, it wasn't about these guys, but the rest of the book I wasn't interested in. I kept coming back to this story, these guys, and I thought, wow, there's more to this. And I thought, what incredible guys. I can't get enough of this, this story. It was only probably 20, 30 pages in this book, but I loved it. And I started going and looking and trying to find more evidence and put these bits together. And I had this wonderful idea. I had a military history blog. And I put it out there. It was a three part blog. And I thought, I'm going to put it out there. I'm going to give it to some historian out there to do. I had my own projects. And I was like, I'm going to give this away. I want someone to do this immense justice. I want to read that book. That's what I want to do. I'll give this away. I want to read that book. No historian turned up. The guys turned up themselves. I was like, you're him for the book. And he said, yes, and these guys are going, look, man, he's a historian. He believes us. And they were like, oh, thank God. And they said, can you write a book? I think this is more specialized. I'm sure there's someone better. I'm sure there's someone more experienced in this bit. And they said, they've had 35 years and they've never done it yet. And I said no to writing it a couple of times. And I looked and I thought, it is on me to do it. And we were very fortunate. Most publishers were like, you cannot do a three sided first person narrative history. It doesn't exist. We were very, very lucky with our publisher because he'd been in the Royal Navy. He'd been in the Fulton's War. He was a fan of this. And it was, unfortunately, his level where he had served made this a problem all of a sudden. So because of, I won't say his name or who he was or what he did, that's not better. But because of his level in the Royal Navy, when it came out, what we were doing, he was basically threatened. He was told, in fact, the words, I'll give you the words. And I can even tell you the date on which I heard them. It was December 16, 2016, he phoned me. And the words were, you can't publish that. He said, why not? And they said, because he's right. Where the hell did he get that from? It's classified. And I was offered a deal by they to work with a sanctioned historian to write a very muted version of what would be first casualty. And my only lateral play was to suggest the Royal Marines put up a bit more of a stiff fight than was otherwise said. And it wasn't my decision to make. So I went and I spoke to the guys and I said, what do you want to do here, guys? And it was Lou Alma, and lovely, who actually said publish and be damned. And so we did, you know, and my publisher was getting all kinds of threats, what they call a denotus, which has to be signed by the PM. He was threatened with that. They can take his business off him. The jail was mentioned. This all sounds a bit familiar. Yeah, but why would someone, Chris, why would someone be that threatened by a book unless there was something like something in it that was important? And the guy was was worried. He was panicked. He's like, I didn't sign up for all this. What have I got into? And so I was lucky to, you know, there was outlay, there were costs. I was lucky to acquire first casualty and the rights to first casualty myself by which time were the printers. And I actually had to crowdfund pay in the printer is I'm not going to pay the printer as well. And they're expensive. So a lot of people and a lot of people said, Oh, it's self-published. First casualty is not self-published. First casualty was just paid for by me at the end of the day to save a man's business, to save a man potentially going to prison. And the end result was I was I took the idea that if someone came after me, I would it would sort of rubber stamp it. And I gambled on that that very British thing of we'll just ignore you. And it works. I got a couple of quite nasty phone calls from they. And after that, it went away. And I think I said to one of just just ignore me, then it'll go away. Are you you can't do much about it? And I think I sort of jokingly said, you know, if you're going to try and shoot me, at least sort of, you know, go for a severe wound and I'll get the message. He didn't find it funny. But luckily, no one has, which is good. And I'm still telling the guy's story. And I think they are still silent on the issue. And that's the way it's going to play out. But I think there's no doubt in anyone's mind that first casualty blow for blow happened as is there as the guys told it. And, you know, I used a very, very strict system of what to put in there and how much evidence something needed to put in there and did it match those criteria. And if it was interesting, but there wasn't enough to put it in, I still say, look, there's this, it's evidence, it's interesting. It's there. I can't back it up fully. But most of the things, you know, I said everything that went in needed three qualifying pieces of evidence to back it up. And in most 99% of cases, I had 20 or more to back it up. So that is a battle, an entire battle. If someone's had to say very quickly, what is first casualty? I say an entire battle from the Falklands War that has been covered up and heroes who were denied by their country, they were abandoned by their country. Most of those guys think they were left to die. They think that was what their job was. And I don't disagree. I think the blood, brains and guts on the newspapers would have been fantastic for our government. And so do they. And if people say, I don't agree with that, that's from the guys who were there. That's not from me. It's an entire battle. And I think if you are into the Falklands War, if you want to know more about it, yes, there are great generic histories of it. Yes, there's so much material and read as much as possible. Start with first casualty and then look at it. And it completely changes. And I think that's, you know, I think it's a, it's been massive. I didn't, I said that wondering if anyone would read first casualty, five time number one bestseller. You know, the people picked it up and they took it where it was, you know, every single person who says I bought your book, I say, thank you. Please tell me how you're getting on. Tell me what you think. Everyone else out there, to everyone, I'm looking at everyone who has bought first casualty, everyone who has told these guys stories. Thank you, personally, from myself and from all the guys. And keep telling everyone that's, you know, I don't want them to wait as long as the Jadupville guys had little old guys in their 80s and 90s who's left of them to get some little... I don't want them to have to wait. I don't think they should. Exactly. Exactly. So, yeah, going back to what I was saying, how did it come about? Can we talk about the fight itself? Sure, a lot of people will be interested. Who fired the first shot and why? The first shots were fired by the Argentine Commanders Amphibious and Buzo Tactico, which I suppose that's their version of like a Commanders Amphibious is like a Royal Marine, a Buzo Tactico is like an SPS. And the first shots actually happened. They surrounded Moody Brook, the Royal Marines base headquarters, what have you. And they basically hammered it with everything. Now, luckily, the Royal Marines weren't in their beds. They were all about a mile and a half away at Government House and also, you know, further out towards the beaches. So they actually came around behind them and tried to take them out in their sleep. Again, a massive conjecture. Officially, the Argentine orders don't cause any casualties because the British would love casualties to scream, you know, injured party here. But yet, again, the guys who were there said there were machine gun bursts through every bunk. There were not just CS gas grenades or STUN grenades thrown, but, you know, actual high explosive fragmentation grenades. The electricity, you know, trunking and tray work was everywhere, water pipes burst. They were Major Mike Norman didn't have a stitch of normal civvy clothes on when he went home. They were all riddled with bullets. Luama had a piece of HE grenade strap, straight through the middle of his passport and wondered if he'd actually be able to get home with it. And Moody Brook was annihilated. I'll ask anyone who was there and they will tell you. But the guys back at Government House a mile and a half away, they saw this. It looked like a fireworks display. In his wonderful lines, you know, that it was obvious, Jim Fairfield said this, it was obvious they wanted us as dead as we now wanted them. And the game, as they say, was afoot. And it was like, oh, yes. Now we're getting into it. And then suddenly, within a few minutes of that, Government House is under attack. And it's very rockstripped, you know, it's got the little stone wall around it and everything else. There was no singing at each other, I promise. And our guys didn't burn ammo. They watched muzzle flashes. They watched the movements at the Argentines and they knew they could bide their time. And, you know, they were just watching and waiting. And then one of the Argentines, and this is, again, this is in the film, a lovely, lovely man, a very good friend of mine, Diego Garcia Carroga. Diego, he was there, he spoke perfect English. And he shouts, Mr. Hunt, come out. We're Argentine marines. We've cut your telephone cables. Come out with your hands up. And Sergeant Bill Muir shouts out, F off, I won't swear. F off, you spick masters. And suddenly, everyone just erupts with fire at everyone. And they realised it was getting intense. And an Argentine squad with Diego in it as well, rushes around the back, vaults the wall, and tries to run into the house and kidnap the governor. And unfortunately, for them, they run into four Royal Marines. And there's what a lot of people described as like a mini gunfight at the OK Corral with five of them, four of our guys, blazing away from the hip, point blank. And Pedro Giacchino, who was a Lieutenant Commander, he was kind of Argentina's Superman was Giacchino. He got shot several times, very, very badly wounded and died of it. Diego's right behind him. Diego is shot several times. And of course, he lived just about. And then Anesto Abina, who was a corporal, he was actually a medic, but he wasn't waving a red cross or anything. He ran in firing and he got shot as you got three guys laid there in the back garden in a terrible state. Three more of the guys actually found a way round and they went upstairs into the government house. And they were captured. And oddly enough, you won't you won't see this. No one ever mentions the first prisoners of the entire Falklands War with three Argentines and Cardio Flores and La Desma with their names. And they came up with a wonderful story afterwards how they were battling the Marines and everything as they were in hiding the whole time. And they said, oh, we never surrendered. They did. So suddenly you've got all these wounded men in the back garden and the screams are going off them. This is winding a lot more of them up and the fire intensifies and around government house that they're trying to use poor old Jim Fairfield said decoy the heavy machine gun up on the bridge, which is just above government house and try and get the guy's position as meanwhile, Jody Gill, who lovely man, wonderful man and one of the best snipers the Corps has ever seen. He had quite a few confirmed kills already by that point. He goes to work with his L 42, which is basically a NATO converted Lee Enfield bolt action rifle. And he starts going to work taking down one after the other after the other all denied again. And suddenly this whole gunfire ensues, whereas meanwhile outside a government house in and around the town itself, there were people popping up from everywhere. There were sections running back from the beaches. They thought the attacks coming from the beaches. Now the attacks come from behind. They're running back through the town battling as they go. Interestingly, in every single Argentine account of this, there was no fighting in the town. There was nobody who could have been doing the fighting in the town. They said nobody was there. And yet if you actually look at the fighting that happened, I mean, I know section six, so multiple sort of Royal Marine small groups, small sections, section six fired, I think, 3450 rounds between them at various Argentine attackers popping up from, you know, behind hedges, culls in gardens, etc. I happen to know section one of those section one didn't count their entire ammo counts. As far as I know, certainly they're heavy machine gunner. Johnny Alden, who wrote his own book, in fact, he fired at least 500 rounds out of that. They took on multiple fire contacts. You can read their official report was never ever published. In fact, not until first casualty came out did I start putting bits from the official report in there. We'd hidden it. We'd hidden their own report. And, you know, I remember section six, it just says number of rounds out going 3450 number of rounds incoming a lot. But there was nobody supposedly who should have been able to be there, to be fired. So they were obviously, we had more men there. So did Argentina. We just don't know who or how and even much as my British friends don't know my Argentine friends don't know who or how, but they were there and they were shot and they were in the hospital. And so it's all kicking off. And of course, it's slowly closing back in on government house as the guys abandon the beaches to go back and defend government house and the town. Now Marine Battalion in armored personnel carriers is coming up the beaches and running straight for Stanley. And again, there was a sort of, there was a battle on the airport road at a place called White City, which is a very grandiose name for what is basically sort of four corrugated iron huts. And there was a wacking great big battle there again with anti tank rockets going off and, you know, everything and the guys slowly were covering themselves back by sections. But they could never have wasted the numbers that were there. And yeah, they were finally more or less either corralled into the center or they got the ground in the town. But they were still fighting tooth and nail right until the last minute. And one of the sections did a dramatic escape as well. It got out. And they gave themselves up two days later only because they'd taken refuge at a farm and they didn't want, they didn't, the Argentines knew that they were out there. They knew they'd escaped. They didn't want repercussions on the people who had looked after them. So they, you know, booby trapped their weapons and then buried some and chucked some in the sea. And when it was, it was a huge great big battle. I mean, if you look at the actual odds, you've basically got 69 guys against the entire Argentine invasion force, okay, including men on ships and things was 6,000. In terms of actual boots on the ground, it ended up as 2,800. That's the same odds. It's 40 to one odds. It's the same odds they had in rockstripped in Zulu. And they, the odds were getting bigger and bigger and bigger every time. So this whole battle in this town that never happened supposedly, the damage is still there today. You can still go and see the bullet locks along the fences and everything else. And people will point them out. But according to the histories that can't have happened because there was no one there to do it, which is just ridiculous. So the whole battle as you think, whatever you think, you know about it, you read casualty inside, didn't know that. You know, and it's wonderful how the history has come together. And, you know, it's, I don't give too, too much of hours. I might as well just sort of read it to you. Yeah. But you get the point. There's so much we don't know. Even if you think you sort of know, read that, and then you question everything you thought you knew as to what and why, I suppose. Sounds like the odds were in the Royal Marines favor. Only because they were Royal Marines. You can imagine them sort of sat there at Government House going, right, we've got you surrounded. We've got you where we want you. But most of them were actually really gutted when the ceasefire order came through because there was the ridge behind Government House. We could see them silhouetted. And we were like, oh, we can have a filled day. And they were told, no, no, it's, we've done what we need to do. And again, my fault was days by Sir Rex Hunt, which is autobiography. He said, I did it thinking, okay, have we done enough? To convince the people back home that this is important. And that they should react to this. And yes, they did. But not in the way that the powers that be wanted it done, they saw much more profit in these photos by a man called Raphael Warman, the photographer, took those photos. They went around the world and the guys were shoved into a hotel under a pressed blackout for three days while the machine did whatever it did and made the Falklands War that we think we understand to this day. Is it Sir Rex Hunt? Am I right in that? Yes. And is Sir Rex still alive? No. No, he's sadly, sadly past. I wouldn't have thought he was alive because he was, you know, getting on a bit back in the day, wasn't he? Yeah. I mean, he'd been a Spitfire pilot. You've got to remember, this is a man as well. He was, I want a life, Sir Rex Hunt led. I mean, he was the, he was the envoy in Saigon when Saigon fell and he saw the TET offensive and everything else. He had some really, you know, some really tough assignments. And I thought, I will just put him out on the Falkland Islands. Nothing happened there. I mean, you know, it says that they're wonderful quote from John McClain in Die Hard. You know, how can the same thing happen to the same guy twice? So he led a life. But yeah, he was a wonderful man. And I've never heard anyone ever who had a bad word to say about him, not one. Well, it sounds like with his experiences, certainly in Vietnam, that he probably made some good decisions there that saved the lives of a lot of people. I think he did. Yeah, undoubtedly. Did you ever get to meet him or was your writing after the event? I believe, I believe, I want to say 2012 is when he passed. So it was pre me coming into this story is very unfortunate. I'd have loved to have met the man. And no, no medals whatsoever for any of those marines? No. So as I said, they've been put up for five military medals, 12 mentions into dispatches. Sir Rex signed it. It was all approved. And they never ever went through. That said, when last this comes from Major Mike Norman, he went and asked, and he was told it was an administrative error. And oddly, coming back to Sir Rex quite interestingly, Sir Rex, when he after the war, he came back, he, you know, resumed his position as governor of the Fultons. And he said, these guys deserve recognition. And the government said no. And so Sir Rex said, right, for the guys who were here on April 2nd, I am going to have our own medal minted. And they said, don't you dare. They said, you're not allowed to, don't you dare. So the only thing Sir Rex could do was as a civilian, Jim Fairfield, he signed up for the night. Sir Rex had it in his power to grant the British Empire medal. And I've seen the original letter, Jim showed it to me, and he sent it off to Jim and said, would you please be so kind as to turn up a government house for the award of the British Empire medal. And Jim stood there and as Sir Rex pinned the medal on him, Jim said very loudly for all to hear, I hope, Sir, that the other boys get their recognition in due course. And Sir Rex leaned in and said, they bloody well should do. And it's interesting even that it first casually opens with this wonderful quote by Sir Rex Hunt, which tells you everything you need to know. It tells you you're on the right track. And it's almost like you wrote it for me when I was writing this. It said, it's personally important to me that this story gets told as exactly as it happened, since I believe that there are those who would rather it didn't or it wasn't. I can't remember. But you get the point. He knew Sir Rex was no fault. He knew the guys know other people have hinted at it. But casualty was the first and the only to say this wasn't just a bit of who knew everything was all confusion. Yes, there was a lot of that. I'm not saying it was this massive cover up, you know, one of the things you find with, I hate the term conspiracy theory, but one of the things you find with conspiracy theories is the truth behind them is often wonderfully mundane. And it doesn't have to be a massive cover up for some deeper purpose or higher reason. Other than obviously, we were trying to limit the damage of what was happening. Of course, we were trying to turn it to our advantage, but that we feel that it was 38 coming on 39 years ago, and someone should say something. And I'm afraid that I wonder if, you know, if we're going to have these little old boys in their motorized chairs or something like that who are, you know, sat there in their nineties or something and someone goes, Oh, yeah, okay. Okay, we admit it. I don't want that. But if we conquer their government to do it, the most important people for them for all of those Marines, and they've always said, tell people, we don't care what the newspaper says, we don't care what Wikipedia says, we don't care what anybody else says, we care what the people think the average person, we want them to know. And for that, I can only thank the people, the people have been amazing, you know, the first casualty from from the roots of the fruit has been people power. And these these guys, their story, the way they told the stories, you know, I'm not in this book, they are. And not just the not just the raw Marines, I mean, you know, the footprint and diners, it was so important that people knew who they were, why they were important, what it felt like for them, what being invaded feels like. And it was so important to me that people didn't just see the Argentines as you know, the men in black, in fact, it was it was dark green, but in the newspapers, they were black and white, they were these men in black, you know, and knowing them so well, that they were, you know, they were people, some of them are friends of mine. And it's always this wonderful thing when you sort of read, read casualty, and I still get it now that you've got these, these two groups of guys coming in and out, you're laughing with them, you're joking with them, you know them. And you think, are they just going to get together and have a load of beers or something, you know, turn out to be great mates. And of course, then they get smashed together in this massive fight. And I really, really wanted to capture that. But, you know, I didn't make it happen. They made it happen. I just, they had the words for it. And it was, it was, it was amazing to write. It's still amazing to read now. I've read it thousands of times. I never get sick of it. Let's talk about the writing then, Ricky, because obviously we're both authors, so it's something we're passionate about, as I'm sure a lot of, you know, several people watching will be. What kind of process do you go through to, to not just assimilate, but to gather all these different narratives? And then, and then try to, to make sense of them and then put them in a, you know, in a coherent log. What process? I think the process is called agony. In fact, I mean, I had 50, 60 piles of paper on the floor. Because there wasn't a table big enough. And starting to look and, you know, some guys are telling the same story and you're going, right, that's that section. That's that section. And then you get in the Argentines and the Falkland Islands. And you're sitting there going, you know, I remember once I was looking at this and I just sat down on the floor and I thought, I can't do this. It's never been done. There's no road map. I can't, and I actually, genuinely, I was rocking on the floor, probably dribbling and sitting there going, this cannot happen. And then there was this ridiculous thing. I just picked up an Argentine thing and I thought, I've read that and I thought, oh, he's shooting at him. And I thought, right, now we can start building. I couldn't do it again. I couldn't. It's, you know, it's very, very hard. I mean, you have to get, you can't just take someone's word for it. You have to go back and say, tell me that again. You know, I took it as it was. A lot of other people are saying, tell me this one again. And then where you're lucky is that Falkland Islanders, one thing that they probably, you don't know, is that they're all diarists or 90% of them are. And they're very keen diarists. I mean, they could tell you what the weather was doing, the wind force from which direction they note everything. And behind every curtain, you have Samuel Peeps, if you know who to talk to. And I was so fortunate, what filled in the blanks. I went on to Falklands Radio with the lovely Liz Elliot. And she put out this thing. If anyone knows, if anyone's got diaries, if anyone's remembers something, if anyone's got a photo. And we did this interview on Falklands Radio. And five minutes after that, Liz phoned me up and said, there's a queue outside my door going down the street. And people were coming, sending stuff. And, you know, a lot of people, it's infuriating sometimes people, oh, here's, you know, here's the original of what I got. Don't quote me though. Don't quote me. I'll tell you, but don't quote me. Use someone else. It's a very Falklands thing to do. You know, people always say, oh, why didn't they just say, that's because they don't know them. But it was amazing that, you know, something's you'd look and think, I need someone there. I need somebody who saw that. And you make a phone call, send an email and someone goes around and knocks on someone's door. I says, you've got your, oh, come back next Tuesday. I'll have them for you. And then you can normally find what you're looking for. Like I said, you know, if you know how to ask who to know, if you're patient, if you're not pressing, you can do all the work in the world. And you just throw away a careless statement and the wall will go up. And they'll say, I don't know what you're talking about. And I can't blame them. I don't blame the unders at all, because anything they say typically has been turned, has been twisted, or has been what have you for someone's cause, you know, so they're like, you know, we don't want to get into this. But they also for these guys, they call them their lions, you know, if anyone's seen the post, the lions of Stanley, it's on the top of my Twitter, it's first casualty Falklands or at first Falklands, the first thing, the lions of Stanley. And that was, that was kind of a quote from someone who said, I couldn't believe looking out her window and seeing these guys, they, you know, they've been there for a year. They were just, they were friendly. They were nice. They were the local Royal Marines who came in and out and what have you and some came for dinner and things. And suddenly they saw them doing their jobs. And they said, I had no idea our Marines could fight that hard. These guys were fighting like lions to protect us. There's so few of them. And they're jumping and vaulting and rolling and, you know, moving fire and everything. And they are pulling out all the moves they've got to try and keep these people safe. And it was incredible to get all these narratives together and weave them. And suddenly it was like a jigsaw piece, but having no picture as to what you're supposed to solve. You know, the first thing I realized was that the history you read on your average Falklands war book, Wikipedia, whatever, take that. Don't throw the rulebook out. I threw the history book out. So let's start again, because the history we read is just nothing like what actually happened. So we just started again. And once you've read it properly, you can't go back and go, Oh, it could have been that. It wouldn't, you know, it's not worth it. But I don't think anyone could have put casualty together. And I don't think I could do it again. It's, I can always nip it and tuck it and what have you. And occasionally I play with it a little bit. But it's as perfect as it ever could be. You know, it's created a kind of a kind of a bar, you know, you're sitting again, oh, what do I do after this? And it's amazing how many lost cause soldier stories I get. And there's people going, Oh, I was here and we were forgotten. And I was like, I can't do everyone. This took me to the brink of insanity doing this one, you know, but it was worth it. What's next for you, Ricky? What project are you working on now? So, I mean, people, people always forget, of course, the first casualty is the book I'm f-word famous for. But of course, I mean, I wrote a book on Napoleon called 60 Battles. It's the first book that ever had every single battle skirmish anything when Napoleon ever commanded. No one had even ever counted how many he'd been in. And it was the first book that ever covered that. I wrote a book, Hannibal Rising, the hunt for a lost battle and a new past. In fact, that was the book I was writing. I finally shelved it to pick up casualty. And I finished that as the one of a two-parter. And I went on a hunt to find Hannibal, you know, the great Hannibal, Elephants over the Alps and all that, to find his first ever battlefield, the Battle of the Tagus from 220 BC. And I found I'm the man who found Hannibal's first battlefield. And the most famous one of his dads as well, the Battle of the Saw. I found both those battlefields. And I wrote this book down. But I, a lot of people said, you know, can you come back to the Falklands? And I always said, I don't want to be that Falklands guy, you know, there's a lot more to me. But again, a series of happy accidents, like I said, that the man who said, oh, hello, would you would you like this book? And then a series of accidents that got me into writing casualty. Here we go again. So I was here in Edinburgh, I was talking to a Falkland islander who was there during the invasion. And she came out with a bunch of letters. Now, these were letters. So the next book that's coming out is written. It's at least the drafts are done with twiddling and refining. But at the moment, it is brilliant. It is truly brilliant. If I thought I couldn't top first casualty, the next one last letters from Stanley is, on my own worst critic, it is blinding. So it's an Argentine group. Now, they all wrote letters home, but your average Argentine construct only got four letters home, was all they ever really had. A lot of them never got there. After the war, there were hundreds of these things. They got binned or burned or what have you. Basically, they don't exist anymore. If you find a letter from a conscript in Argentina, this is like someone finding a page of the Bible that no one knew existed. This is big news. But these were put into a shoebox that went with an islander to Australia. He sadly has passed away. His sister went and cleared out his effects, found these, bumped into me. We started talking, brought them to me, I should say, and said, what can you tell me? So we started to read through them. Now, the spelling and grammar and a lot of things is bad. I can read Spanish, but I knew that was something important in them. And so I got a very, very good friend from Argentina, a man called Wilermo, and he's co-authoring with me, Wilermo Rodriguez. I'm an amazing man, incredible friend of mine, and we started going through these. Now, it turns out these guys who were there, they were all from the same unit. And each of their letters home amazingly tells the war. If you put them all together, they tell the war in a nutshell. They've seen some of the most important things firsthand. They're describing it, explaining it. And you can follow the entire unit through the Falklands War, this Argentine unit. And I love this, because here in the UK, we don't know about this. And even in Argentina, it's being translated, not into just European Spanish, but into Argentine Spanish, into their own dialect, like Wilermo. And the guys don't know. Now, they don't know they're getting their letters back. That's the trick. And they get those back. And we get to find out more about them. And there's going to be a lot more social media talking to the guys, and their story comes out. So I've taken each of the letters and we've translated them. We're describing where they are, what they're doing, and using their words, and the words of a lot of other Argentine soldiers, to tell the war as they saw it. And to follow this Argentine unit through the war in their own words, by a multitude of letters, which if they find like one letter these days, it's incredible. We've got quite a few of them. And one of these guys, I'm trying to say this as not to give it away, one of these guys is sort of famous in Argentina. So he's well known. And I think it's just incredible to take these guys' stories. And the Argentines who were there, you know, we hear a lot of, there's a lot of stories of, you know, scared stuff, little conscripts and things like that, chicas de la guerra, as they say, the boys of the war. And in Argentina, they don't like that. They really don't like the idea of the history. And they say, you know, they weren't boys, they were men, a lot of them. They weren't, yeah, some were only a couple of weeks of training. Some had done a whole, like these guys had all done, they conscripted here, and they all came and signed up again, back to their unit to go out there. And these guys, one of the hardest things about them, I think, is that they, you can tell that they're brave men. They're very brave men, they're very honorable men. And you know, they're cold, but they're not complaining. They're hungry, but they're not actually complaining. They're talking about how they survive. And there's, you know, a black market and food that's there and things like that. They're giving so much insight into the war. But they're totally brave. They know what they're doing there. They know what they're fighting for. I kind of expected, you know, mom, it's cold, I want to go home. And it gives a wonderful insight into them. And it's something that we don't know here in the UK, really, a lot of what it was like for their soldiers. We just, you know, we know the war, as our guys tell it, and as our historians tell it. But also in Argentina, they also say, you know, the war is not known in Argentina, they say, because, excuse me, because the war has been made into a bunch of slogans in Argentina. You know, they don't, they don't know the modern generation, I think, don't know the cut and thrust of what the men really, really went through. And it just captures everything. I love last letters from Stanley. So, you know, hopefully you're going to be seeing a lot, a lot more of it. And, and just to clarify, Ricky, is that, is that your next book? Yeah. Last letters from Stanley. Yeah. So, last letters from Stanley. Now, it was supposed to be out before Christmas, but I have to say it, COVID. So the person who currently has the letters can't actually go to where they are and get them moved on before January. So it's going to be in time for the anniversary of the Falklands War coming up. It's probably going to be January, February publication. The most important thing, I think the message in this, what my, my Argentine friends looking at this got the soul of the book as a wonderful term, is that a Falkland islander, I think this is beyond the Argentine soldier's stories or anything else. I think the soul of the book is that a Falkland islander has reached out and wants these men to have their letters back. These are people who they don't deserve, you know, maybe as far as a Falkland island will go, they don't deserve my love. They don't deserve my, you know, my sympathies or anything like that. They could just throw them away and they said, no, these are men. These are men who were there. And I think everyone deserves closure. And if there's a message to the war and the people left, it is that we didn't all lose our humanity and we're all people. And it's a wonderful, wonderful story that a Falkland islander is reaching out reuniting these men and all their families with this missing piece of their lives. And it really is a book. It isn't a war book as such. I mean, yes, lots of war and death and explosions and things like that. But it's a book about humanity and how these guys, these Argentine guys right at the end, they didn't lose their humanity and how we still now we're moving on. We're turning another chapter when we're doing it. So it's a story. What I love is it's a story within a story. You know, it's a book, but it tells a whole another story. It's opened another chapter as it goes. And I absolutely love it. I cannot wait, I know I've read it lots of times, but I cannot wait to physically read it. And it's going to be in both languages as well. So in English, it's last letters from Stanley. Now in Spanish, and I hope I'm not going to get in trouble for this, so to speak, all the letters begin with a term that they wrote. The Argentines refer to Stanley, the Falklands capital as Porto Argentino. Of course, that means Argentine port. As you can imagine, if you're a Falkland islander, that's going to really annoy you. But that is what they called it. And every letter opens with that. And so that is the name of the book in Argentine Spanish, Porto Argentino. And I want these people to realize what their men, what their heroes did, and that it wasn't all flag waving and Viva La Patria and things like that, but, you know, the real war that 90% of the guys would have seen. And I hope my friends in the Falklands excuse the title, but I think it's important that as many people as possible read these guys' stories and understand the real war from that angle. It's an angle that really hasn't been explored. I'm sure they will understand. You're reminding me slightly of the work of Vince Bramley, who I'm sure you must have come across. Oh yeah, we know that name, yeah. Vince, former Parra wrote just two amazing accounts of the Falklands war, and he did the first one. It was Excursion to Hell, which was based on his experience of attacking Mount London. Yeah. And the second book, I believe it was Two Sides of Hell, was the other side of the story, or a bit of both sides of the story. And my gosh, those Argentines up there on the mountains, their enemy wasn't just the British, it was their own officers, wasn't it? This is one of the things, one of the things I really got right in this was that the enemy wasn't wearing a British uniform, to a point they were, but the enemy they really saw day-to-day, were often their own officers, NCOs, and the establishment, of course. These guys are sat here, they are cold, they are wet, they are hungry, they're getting shelled, they're getting bombed, and then they're picking up a newspaper, telling them how much they're winning, and it goes through their thoughts and their words as they're reading about a war that the people at home think they're winning. And they're sat here going, I'd kill a sea of British guys just to have someone to shoot at, we're getting bombed, we're getting shelled, this is not an existence, but we've got to hold on is what they keep saying. Now, as to, of course, it's to Vince Bramley, unfortunately, Vince comes with a caveat, I suppose, because of a certain page and a certain allegation that was there, etc., right at the end, and it went in all kinds of weird directions. It's unfortunate, because I'm sure you know the reference that I'm talking about in regards to Vince's book. I love Vince's book, I think it just captured it perfectly. You feel like you're there with the guys, the writing style was amazing. I should say, Ricky, that, you know, I'm just being open and honest, I've heard two different narratives to these attacks in the Falklands, both of which I completely understand, and I wouldn't really expect anything kind of different in warfare. I don't know if it's anything along those lines, but, you know, war's not nice. No, I mean, Vince Bramley basically, it was unfortunate in a way, I mean, the book gained notoriety for this, it certainly sold a lot of copies for, what is one page, but everyone goes straight for it, which is, there's a, there's a dit at the back where a guy's talking about shooting some prisoners, but that the prisoners were American mercenaries, and those two words together, American mercenaries in the Falklands, you put that in, and that's become a no-no, you know, half of three barrel got dragged in for questioning, and there was a lot of bad feeling, and a lot of everything else, and they basically had to distance themselves from Vince and things like that, because, you know, those kind of stories are never going to go down well. Those stories weren't, how it was published, how it was published was not what Vince wrote originally, is all I'm going to say. I know that for a fact, I'm not going to say what or how, because I think it's a, you know, it caused too much agro, but there's not what Vince wrote originally, and actually the man who made him change it was Robert Maxwell, and I'm not going to say any more other than that, but that's not beyond our imagination, I mean, if you have a conflict, you're going to have mercenaries, that's... I mean, it was a big thing. Oddly, there's a little bit in Los Angeles from Stanley, which references someone else, it's not me saying it, someone else has said something, and I put a wee note in it, and just said, actually, there's this thing over here, and it's an interesting bit, there's nothing anyone's going to say is, you know, incriminating or damning or what have you, I can only take a man's words and say, there's some evidence about what that man said, which is quite far removed from anything Brownlee said, but it errs into that, should we say. But, you know, you had to be very careful, we're mentioning the N word with regards to the Falklands, everyone seems to have an opinion, and you're going to upset people. So it is in last letters, properly and carefully done to that point, and respectfully done as well. So, yeah, but obviously you mentioned Vince's book in regards to how he captured both sides of it, and I think that was something I always wanted to do, the Argentine side is fascinating, mainly because we don't know it. It's very easy, like you remember seeing the task force come home, I remember seeing the task force come home and, you know, I was a kid, I didn't really know what it was about, but we remember that we see images and what have you, and we have videos, we have photos, but we don't get their size, you know, we tend to be like, you know, they're the baddies or they're the enemy, and we don't focus on them, we just focus on our guys. So it's fantastic to look at their side and look at what it was like, who they were, you know, who they were, who they were fighting, what they felt they were fighting for, it's fascinating. You know, the Argentine side of the war has always been very fascinating to me because it's a side we don't know. So, you know, I feel I've done, you know, a big thing for it, and I really, really think Last Letters from Stanley will change a lot of people's perceptions about the war, about the day-to-day war, and it's typical, of course, if it's got Ricky D. Villetra and on the front, there's always going to be something that you didn't know, that was always something I wanted to do. If my name's on the front, there's always going to be some bits you didn't know and some new stuff coming out of it, and I think it's just, it's a great book on so many levels, you know, and it's, it's achieved the first casualty bar that I never thought I'd achieve, so I'm hopeful for it. Is it about time? I mean, I tell you a little story here, right? My best mate growing up, his dad was a CSM, so company sergeant major in full two commando in the Falklands, God, God, I'm struggling with asking this one, I'm just, I'm just trying not to get upset, mate, you know? That's all right, mate. For people listen that don't remember the conflict, on the national media, after the news, after the news every night, they used to put up the names of the dead that had been killed that day in the battles, and my, my friend, he's, God, what, what, we were, I was 12, he would have been 11. He used to have to sit and watch the news and like see if his dad had been killed that day. That'd be torturous. And then because we didn't deal with shit like that back then, you know, he had no one to talk to. He used to go up and run himself a bath and just cry, cry in the bath, you know? And all our kind of accounts of conflict are all very political centric, historic centric, adult centric, military centric. You know, we don't tell that story of all these kids that have lost their freaking mothers or fathers that got go through the rest of their lives, not, not knowing the person that brought them into this world. And yeah, I'm, I'm a dad now. And it, it, Jesus Christ, it puts such a different spin on everything. Yeah, it does. It's, you know, you, you can't imagine, I mean, it's, it's one of the things, it's one of the things you, you sort of, you often don't see the face as a historian, you know, and it's, I suppose I've done, say, covering casualty, but when I write about, you know, someone is shot, and I can't tell you the guy's name. And it must be harder, in fact, actually, when I spoke about the Argentine side, I mean, don't get me wrong, the way that if they're flashing up on the screen and stuff, and that's the way you find out, that's, you know, that's just the worst way. There is no good way. But in Argentina, a lot of people, they didn't have that to find how many Argentine people were killed or wounded or what have you on a certain, yeah, in a certain action or on a certain day in a bombing raid or a shelling or what have you, it's impossible. I mean, unless you knew, you know, unless you knew there was this many guys here and I don't know, you know, they were all, yeah, a small group of people or something like that, like the skirmish at Top Marlowe, you could work this out. But I found that in a lot of cases, you're putting together, we had those casualties lists written more or less day by day. They didn't. There was a report of a guy probably, probably a month ago in Argentina, who this little old boy just sits there waiting for his son to come home. And the worst bit was he's not on the lists of dead. Nobody knows, you know, who he is or what have you. In 1983, it was April 1983, there were families, I bear in mind, Argentina always said, we lost about this many, you know, they've come up with this figure, 649 for a while, they said it was just over 700, we're not sure. But we kind of know. And of course, 323 of those are known, are named, they were on the Belgrano, so they know who those people are. And yeah, it was 1983, April 1983, that families representing over 500 missing men went and spoke to the government in Argentina and said, where are our sons, husbands, what have you. And the Argentine government actually lied to them and told them that the British still held them prisoner on a sentient island. And they came back in 1987, five years after the war, and that they were on British TV. I remember watching it, I know lots of people who watched it. And they said, no, you've got them prisoner, our government had told us, and we're like, we don't, we haven't got any, we don't keep prisoners on a sentient, we got rid of all, they're all gone home. They're like, well, he's not on the list, he's not come home. Some people don't know. And the record keeping was atrocious, just trying to find anything, you know, you get names mixed up, first names and middle names, middle names and sir names, ranks, units and sometimes you look and think, no, this is the same guy, just whoever wrote the thing down probably, you know, was semi-literate or something, and they got it wrong. The record keeping was atrocious out there and trying to find any kind of coherence to the figures. And sometimes I have to write just a number and I've gone, there's this guy, I don't know who he is. And I don't think anybody knows who he is. So I can't, I know how you had your friend probably must have felt, and it's a tough one. And believe me, there are people still suffering that today, maybe not in the UK, but in Argentina, I think it's an important story to tell as well. Yeah, I just think there's massive moves in the world at the moment to protect children. I think a lot of people are realising that there's some awfully untoward stuff going on. And yet, next time we have one of these conflicts that the media shove in front of us, we need to base it on the children's perspective, not the adults. Yeah. You know, we need to base it. But they did that, they wouldn't have wars, would they? Well, let's hope that one day we can all start to, you know, have that same vision, Ricky, because it's easy to stir up a hornet's nest in it and get the fervour in the media and rule Britannia. And I'm not, you know, like in Britain, I mean the same thing was in Argentina, wasn't it? Same in all the wars gone by. But essentially, what we're talking about is taking parents away from their kids. And I think if we can reverse that, you know, what, reverse osmosis or extrapolate back from that, we're talking about, I mean, it's just beyond sadness and belief that a little boy, I mean, I see my relationship with my little boy. He loves me, you know. He'll whack me in the nuts, other than anyone else ever has done. And he does it quite regularly. Little bastard. But, you know, the thought that I could have been caught up in one of these conflicts that serves, you know, can quite often serve a purpose other than what that we're told it serves. And that he has to go through the rest of his life without me. But, Chris, you know, the thing is, it's happening now. I mean, somewhere out there in the world, there is a battle happening. There are people dying now. There are people shooting at each other right now. We get to, you know, we sit here. We've got a cup of coffee. I've got my dog just sat down here, nestling by my feet. And, you know, we're in our comfy places. And we forget, you know, that these things are happening right now. You know, I have a very, very good friend who, her name is Rosine. She's the most famous pop singer in the Middle East, oddly enough. She's a very good friend of mine. And she was down on the front line of the Battle of Mosul, doing a sort of, I don't know, Diana Dawes bit, you know, for the troops or have it. And she was down there with the YPF and the Peshmerga, etc. And she was sending me pictures directly from the front line from my phone. And I'm sat there at home. And you look out and people just walk around doing normal stuff. And they don't even know that this stuff is going on. You know, and you can go anywhere around the world, you've got a Syria right now, they're blowing each other up. But just because it's not on, when I say it's not on TV, to give you an idea, do you remember when Muhammad Ali was asked, do you ever know of Vietnam? He said, sure, it's on TV. And people just thought he was being thick. He wasn't being thick. He was actually saying that it could be anywhere in the world. It's all we're seeing is your control in the media, whether or not we're upset by it or not. And I think he was just well ahead of his time in answering that. People just thought he was being dim because he didn't know where it was. But he probably didn't know where it was. But his answer was so prophetic. Because now I think that's basically it was not on TV, it's not happening. You know, nobody really knows what's going on in the world or who's attacking who or can who right now, you know, and not just adults take away from their kids, but kids are getting shot or killed and what have you. By nasty people, by us as well, you know, we're supposedly the good guys. If it isn't allied jets blowing something up, guaranteed we sold someone the missile or the bomb that did it, you know. But that's not on TV if we don't want to know about that. And which probably brings us almost full circle in many ways back to why, say, something like casualty was all covered up, because we only had a certain press outlet, and we needed to control that news and that pace. Who's the good guy? Who's the bad guy? Why do how did we end up in this position? You know, just because we're nice innocent guys, that's so we didn't know nothing of course we did. But we haven't changed as a race, unfortunately, Chris, you know, people are ourselves to each other and blow each other up and I suppose people like me pick up the pieces and write about it and try and make sense of it. You know, but you're right, your sentiment is absolutely right, it would be lovely. But I don't think it's going to happen any time soon, mate, you know. Ricky, listen, you've been an absolutely wonderful guest. Thank you very much. I'm going to say here now, Ricky has a whole story of his own and we haven't covered that. Let's just dedicate what we have talked about to these, to the men of 8901. Thank you. And let's take your story another day, Ricky, if that's okay. I'm just conscious that I will come back any time you like, Chris, it's been an absolute you've been incredibly humble. And so to you as my guest, thank you so much. Thank you. I hope I'm allowed to say this on behalf of the Royal Marines. To the men that fought down there, don't ever think your story is forgotten. I don't know if this makes sense to people, but for being a Royal Marine, because it just means so much to me. And I think truly only people who've worn a green, very know what I'm talking about. So thank you. To our friends at home, again, massive thank you for tuning in to another edition of the Bought the T-Shirt podcast. We've got some great podcasts just been and just coming up. I'm talking to Peshmerga snipers, China makes a bit of sense of the world with a bit of, you know, pragmatism thrown in. So please like and subscribe. If you can support the podcast, if stories like this are important to you, have a look at my Patreon. The details will be below the video because some of you probably guess it's not an awful lot of money in this kind of YouTube business. So your support is, I really appreciate it is what I'm trying to say. And so Ricky again, thank you ever so much. Thank you, Chris. We will see you all soon. Hello, friend. I hope this finds you well. My name's Chris Thrall. I'm a former Royal Marine's commando. And I fought my way back from chronic trauma and addiction to live, work and travel in 80 countries across all seven continents, achieving all of my dreams and goals along the way. Now I pass my simple system on to other people, but I can only help you if you like and subscribe. So please do so because you get one life and if you live it right, one is enough.