It seemed like a great idea at the time. A job, money, pubs and discos, a bit of disciplined learning to help me get my lazy-arsed shit together, and most importantly my best shot at losing my virginity before by 17th birthday. And so on I went, signing up to join the Navy rather than the Army and Marines because I never wanted to have to shoot anyone, and choosing it above the RAF because quite frankly I had seen more 'tally ho' war movies about poncy pilots than I could handle.

Now those who know their history will be able to work out that, if my RN career lasted 4 and a half years, this crossed the 1982 Battle For The Falklands between the British and Argentine armed forces. Firstly let's get this straight now once and for all - I am not going to glorify war, and neither am I going to mock it's seriousness.

HMS ARDENT
Sunk by Argentine war planes in Falkland Sound, 1982

I will however recount one or two tales from the conflict, and this is one of my favourite quickies ...

I was on board HMS Broadsword working as a Junior Rate Catering Accountant and we were parked up in Gibraltar taking on stores for a trip to patrol the Gulf. Strolling comfortably through an all-day piss-up around the bars of Gib, I remember how some mates and I drunkenly discussed the reported newspaper topic of Argentina's 'invasion' and how, if we ever did go to war, we'd jumped ship because quite frankly, that was not what we had joined up for. We knew however that we were safely on our way to take on the more important role of Gulf Patrol, and stacked up with sun cream and high expectations of fun and frolics we had nothing to fear even if there was a problem looming. We did after all have one of the most professional and largest, best equipped Navy's in the world, America was on our side and as usual looking for any excuse to fire first, and so all in all we reckoned we would be the last ones in the firing line. So we thought ...

We set sail for our next port of call, the glamorous city of Naples. That first night out of Gib a good night's kip was most certainly needed, however at approximately 3am virtually the whole of our mess deck was turfed out of it's pit as the ship lurched around a 180 degree turn. Then came the announcement: "This is the Captain speaking. We have been ordered back to Gibraltar to take on stores and make haste for The Falkland Islands".

dp age 18

And so, with work to do preparing store rooms and rotating stock, a bunch of us decided to indulge in a couple of cans of wakey-wakey juice in the mess lounge. It was then that the immortal line that I shall never forget was uttered. A line that captured and nurtured like no other, the frustration of a bunch of young guys who've just been told that their long worked for jolly in the sun has been cancelled: "The Falkand Islands - sp which part of Scotland is that then"? And it was said in all seriousness. We could not believe that Argentina could be so stupid as to send a fishing boat all that way to Scotland to lay claim to an island just off the coast of Britain.

But hey we thought stupidly, not every country in the world is as wise, civilised and politically correct as we are, and so with our collective British school educated ignorance intact we set about the task of working through the night.

Following breakfast that morning, I like many others made haste for a couple of hours sleep prior to making port. Down the corridor I went, two decks below, only to be confronted by a crowd of puzzled ship-mates. "What is it?" I enquired.

"It's a map showing where The Falkland Islands are" came the answer.

Intrigued I waited my turn and when I got a glimpse, the sight before me left me, like many others, deeply shocked. Not only were The Falkland Islands not a part of Scotland, they were actually nothing more than a small dot situated just off the coast of the land mass that is South America and more poignantly, Argentina. The rest as they say is history, and history my friends is nothing more than one side pulling the wool over the eyes of its children in order to justify conflict with another .