This note falls short of a full review but I am sure that a Service readership would find this book, which I found in my local public library, very interesting.

Marine Thomsen had just been made up to lance corporal when he found himself sent out in 1981 to join NP8901 on Falkland. Years later a civilian friend, Malcolm Angel, insisted that he put his story into print and helped him do it.

Much of the book is an amusing story of life for an ordinary bootneck on Falkland, but with accounts of a couple of breaks in Argentina itself - a week in a BA hotel with his sergeant major as couriers for Governor Hunt’s diplomatic bag and Thomsen could feel the atmosphere of fear on the streets; and three weeks in Mar del Plata on board HMS Endurance, Thomsen having parlayed his station leave into a break covering Endurance’s maintenance period - but preceded by a rather bouncy time while she was guardship for the Round the World race.

Only days before being relieved and sent home, Thomsen and others were sent on board Endurance on duty to beef up her embarked detachment. The ship then landed them near Grytviken and they all dug in to await the Argentinian invasion. The book closes with a vivid description of the firefight during which Lieutenant Mills and his booties take out a Puma and severely damage a frigate as well as inflicting significant casualties on their enemy, at a cost of one marine wounded. This is the real thing and I think Thomsen’s book deserves greater prominence. Good photos too and clear and relevant maps.

Seaweed

Too Few Too Far by George Thomsen published by Amberley Press
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