THE FALKLANDS WAR 40 YEARS ON Mixed signals, wobbles from Thatcher and who really started it...

DENIS Thatcher called it “miles and miles of bugger all”. The Americans said any attempt to defend it would be a “futile voyage to nowhere”. And almost everyone – the Americans, the Soviets and even senior figures in the British government and military– thought that if Britain did go to war, it would lose, badly.

And yet that’s not what it felt like for David Cruickshanks. The 17-year-old from Glenrothes wasn’t really thinking about any of the big military and political ramifications in April 1982 when the war kicked off – and 40 years on from the Falklands conflict, it’s still not what’s uppermost in on mind. He’s thinking about the guys who were his mates and the guys who were killed.

“I’ve had 40 years of life the other guys never had,” he tells me. “I’ve been able to live my life and they never did.”

Now 57, David still remembers particular moments that punctuate the story of the Falklands, like the moment everything changed from being a bit of an adventure to something deadly serious. David was on HMS Fearless on his way to the islands but even as they headed out, they thought that half way across the ocean, peace would break out and they’d all sail back again. “We were sunbathing, swimming and having a good time,” he says.

But then HMS Sheffield happened. The destroyer was hit by an Argentinian Exocet missile early in May 1982 and sunk with the loss of 20 lives. Not only was it the first Royal Navy warship to be lost in combat since the Second World War, it was a signal to the crew of HMS Fearless that this was serious.

“Suddenly there was a change of mood,” says David. “Up to that point, the war had seemed like a bit of a one-way street. But after HMS Sheffield everyone took a collective intake of breath. This is serious.”

There are other moments, 40 years on, that are still vivid in David’s mind, like the first major battle of the war when HMS Fearless was in the thick of the action. And he remembers Fearless taking on board a group of Welsh Guards and one of them swapping David a sweatshirt for a pair of winter socks.

“A couple of days later they were targeted by the Argentine Air Force and they lost 50 Welsh Guards. I still think of that guy and wonder if he made it.” Six of David’s crewmates were also killed.

Forty years on from it all, the war that David and his friends fought still has a curious and difficult place in British