I am referring to "Our Boys: The story of a paratrooper" by Helen Parr. She is now a distinguished academic but earlier in her life as a young girl she was distressed to learn that her uncle, Dave Parr, had been killed in the Falkland Islands whilst serving with the Paras. Now, later in life, she has returned to this sensitive subject and has used it as a base from which to examine the nature of the Parachute Regiment before, during and after the Falklands war.
She has the essence of the regiment exactly right with its emphasis on stamina and aggression - both of which could not have been more severely tested than in that freezing, bleak landscape in which virtually everything a soldier needed had to be carried - by the soldier! She has not flinched from investigating and telling in some detail the nature of very close combat, so close that frequently the bayonet was required. Nor does she flinch from pointing to some brutal details of the behaviour of some of the 'Toms' when hand-to-hand combat ceased.
Moving back from the 'cut and thrust', so to speak, of the combat, she sets the entire war into the background of UK society then, at the beginning of Margaret Thatcher's premiership, and now, when it seems impossible to imagine British troops going halfway round the world to fight a war - which, of course, was exactly how things were back in 1982! Not the least of her concerns was, and still is, the nature of the relationship now between British civilian society and its armed forces.
Even so, above and beyond everything is her judicious admiration for 'the Paras', their history and their ethos. Not a book for everyone but I, an ex-Para who (thank God!) never fired a shot in anger, enjoyed it immensely.
Inspite of the left the British Army is still held in high regard here in Scotland. One of our RAOC veteran members was in a combat supply platoon during this war. He visits the Falklands every other year and is made welcome by the Falklanders. Sua Tela Tonanti.
Posted by: Glesga | Saturday, 05 October 2019 at 20:14