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I know very clearly what I was doing at around the times of this war, I was having a big career change. It struck me very forcibly at the time that from a year or more from the start of the whole thing, fashions and types of all sorts of goods took a very warlike look, BEFORE anything happened. We were in a very martial mood in a peripheral way. This is not 20/20 hind sight, it was brewing long before The Malvinas thing. We were looking for a fight, when we got it it did that Old Trout Thatcher immense good.
So many wars are really about playground scraps. I am reading about Younghusband's trip to Lhasa, at the moment he is assailed and besieged miles away from anywhere in a foul place in shocking weather with short rations and 1 thousand Russians about 10 miles away (but causing no problems). What he is wrestling with is one of his officer's expenses, he travelled out on a ship and is entitled to wine and sustenance but had not obtained a signed chit from the Ship's Captain listing the dates he was eating and drinking, so Francis has had to write and explain that it was under unusual circumstances. I can imagine the correspondance. I believe Wellington wrote that he could win the Peninsular Campaigns or fill in the paper work associated but not both.
None of this helps when you lose a husband, son, father. The Falklands has always been about off shore rights to extract oil etc.
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Buvez toujours, mourrez jamais.
Rabelais
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