On a bleak, misty spring morning in Staffordshire, two stonemasons work silently on the country's newest war memorial – the serenity of the scene in marked contrast to the pounding artillery and searing screams of the battlefields they are commemorating.
Nearby, Margaret Allen watches pensively through the tall window of the simple chapel at the National Memorial Arboretum, her cheeks wet from tears. Though now a middle-aged woman, devoted to two teenage children, part of her remains stuck on the day in early March 1982 when she said goodbye to Able Seaman Iain Boldy. They had been married just two weeks.
On 2 April, in that same chapel, a candle will be lit to mark the 30th anniversary of the start of the Falklands War. And it will burn for the 74 days of the conflict.
As April began in 1982, few in the UK had heard of the Falkland Islands – an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean where the penguins vastly outnumber the 3,000 residents – when news broke that Argentinian forces had invaded the islands and nearby South Georgia.
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