The new commander of the Second Battalion of the Parachute Regiment dropping from the night sky, with a black parachute, through howling wind and swirling mist, to join his men in the Falklands after his predecessor had been killed leading the attack on an Argentine machine-gun post; men of the Special Boat Services slipping ashore ahead of the invasion to spy out the land; dead soldiers being given a last salute by their comrades as they were buried on a bleak hillside; great ships sailing to war from England’s historic ports while wives and mothers watched from the jetty—images like these have filled British television screens and newspapers, and British hearts and minds, for, the past two months.
America, I suspect, may still not fully understand the impact which the Falklands affair has had in Britain. It has been, since it began, almost the only subject of interest or importance. The remoteness of the islands, and the small number of inhabitants living there under the British flag, rendered the colossal effort being made to vindicate them only the more poignant. To send a fleet of one hundred ships eight thousand miles was indeed a gesture in the grand style. To us it never seemed in the least like a comic opera.
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