ON THE FRONT LINE: BBC TO MARK ANNIVERSARY OF FALKLANDS WAR

In April 1982, British forces sailed halfway round the world to fight a short, brutal war against Argentina. Ten weeks later they returned victorious.

Image Credit: IWM/Pete Holdgate

For many at the time it seemed a straightforward success story. But for its frontline combatants, its aftershocks persist to this day.

Marking the 40th anniversary of the Falklands War, this new 90-minute film, from the producers of the award-winning Gun No. 6, traces dramatic and deeply personal stories of the war and its long echo, through ten of the British soldiers who fought it on the frontline. Many have never shared these memories before.

These men who saw it all, side by side and up close, tell the story of their war in their words, beat by beat, with unflinching honesty.

Revisiting the excitement, the adrenalin and the horror, they put us inside the fighting without filter. Battles fought, at times hand to hand, with bayonets on rifles. But it’s a story that didn’t end with the war. In the years since, they’ve had to come to terms with experiences that have defined their lives.

For all of them it was a necessary war they were desperate to be a part of. For some it's been a badge of honour, for others it’s torn them apart and haunts them still. Society’s understanding of war trauma was hastened by their return.

Told with four decades of perspective, from a very different world, many of these men are barely pension age. You’d pass them in the supermarket and never know, but they were all changed forever by those weeks at war and they still carry with them what they witnessed.

The film will let these men take control of their story, give dignity to their experience and reveal the human truth behind the headlines.

Falklands: The Frontline Story, w/t (1x90) for BBC Two and BBC iPlayer.