Last Letters from Stanley

Book excerpt: As the firing died down and the merciless bombardment ended, the Argentine forces in and around Stanley, the capital of the Falkland Islands, were forced to surrender. As the detritus of war was burned or buried over time, healing the scars across the land, which faded faster than the scars in the minds of the men who fought in this terrible conflict, one bundle of papers survived. They were the letters which never made it home on the last flight out of the war zone before the final battle ended: the letters of a group of Argentine soldiers who recount the hope and the horror of their daily lives alongside some of the most dramatic and famous events in the war's history, telling the story as it is - gritty and visceral - against the backdrop of the war which the junta's press machine tells their families they are winning. Carrying the hopes of their nation on their shoulders, the men who fought the war for a place they called "Malvinas" - a place they were taught to love but never knew - tell the untold story of the war first hand. As veteran historian Ricky D Phillips fills in the canvas around them and tells the story of the Argentine army at war, of the men who fought in the conflict, and attempts to track down the authors of the Last Letters from Stanley.