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banner Tuesday, 2 April, 2002, 04:37 GMT 05:37 UK
Falkland Islands: 2
It is twenty years since the start of the war in the Falklands.

The Argentine invasion of the islands in 1982 triggered the ten week conflict.

In the second of our series, Breakfast talked to Simon Weston, a soldier, who for many, has come to represent the Falklands war.

Watch his story by clicking the video icon at the top right of this page.

And Simon Weston recently returned to the Falklands with six other veterans to mark the anniversary of the war.

You can find out how he got on in 'Simon's Heroes' on BBC ONE tonight at 9 o'clock.


What Simon said on Breakfast:

The actual point where the bomb went off, that was one of those very vivid memories where it sticks with me and will forever I suppose.

I was on board the Sir Galahad on June 6 1982 and unfortunately the rest is history.

You see colours and lights on those moments of your life, that will never disappear...the heat and the choking smoke, and people on fire everywhere and just the brilliant colours the incredible swirling deep greys and blacks, the vibrant oranges and reds and yellows that were in there. It was just a charnel house, it was savage....it was very sad and it was a desperate place to be and it was a desperate place to get out of... I was just very lucky to get out alive, a lot of my friends didn't. A lot of my comrades and colleagues didn't.

When I left the army there was nothing. It was a very finite cut off now. I suppose I look back on it now with a degree of sadness that you give everything but the system gives nothing back. And that is a sadness because you give up your absolute best as a young man. You give your youth to the armed services. And there's not a huge amount to fall back on.

To be honest I really don't know what I expected about the final stages of my military career, I didn't know what I was going to do nobody told you.. nobody prepared you, nobody let you know that anything could happen, that you're going to finish now, that you would suffer depression, you'd feel lower than low, the huge catalogue of problems that would appear, nobody told you that. )

Life for me at the minute is incredibly privileged. I'm in a very privileged position where I've survived, and I've ended up being able to fall in love with somebody who loves me back I've got 3 wonderful children who are all doing very well The complaints I have are so irrelevant and trivial its just ridiculous. If I didn't have them I wouldn't realise how good life was anyway. You've got to have something go wrong just to realise how good life is. And life is fabulous.
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Simon Weston's story
War in the Falklands
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See also:

18 Mar 02 | UK Politics
The Falklands: 20 years on

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