‘What is it that makes people go forward when every instinct is to go back? I think it’s to do with the people you’re with, not letting them down…’ The tumble of rugged hills that shelter Port Stanley, the capital of the Falkland Islands, were to become the bleak setting for the final struggle of the conflict - break the Argentine lines and Stanley was there for the taking, the war would be done and dusted. Easier said than done - for the young men of the Scots and Welsh Guards, the Paras and...

‘He was a real leader - he had grown up with the philosophy of soldiering.’ As dawn broke on 22 May, 1982 daylight revealed the British were back - troops poured ashore in San Carlos Bay. But it was all taking too long for the impatient war cabinet 8,000 miles away in London. With losses mounting as the navy fought off Argentine air attacks, London demanded a victory, something, anything on the Falklands itself, some sort of trophy to show this was worth it. So Colonel H Jones and 2 Para were...

‘I wanted to get out alive - I didn’t want to die.’ The taskforce hurriedly assembled to retake the Falkland Islands departed in a blaze of red-white-and-blue and sailed south - how would Argentina and her navy respond? As the diplomats shuttled back and forth across the Atlantic trying to prevent conflict, the taskforce steamed ever closer to the danger zone. Ahead of them British submarines kept watch - and spotted a potentially lethal threat, an Argentine battleship, the General Belgrano....

It was early in the morning of 2 April, 1982, that the first British shots of the Falklands War were fired when a handful of outnumbered Royal Marines opened up on the invading Argentines. Hours later the Marines were lying face down on the road, surrendered and humiliated - the photograph shocked Britain and stunned her struggling Prime Minister. Margaret Thatcher and her government were unpopular and unready but their response was emphatic; the Falklands would be taken back by force…...

The Crimean War had become a conflict of cruel attrition. Who was prepared to sacrifice the most men? The British and French attacked, the Russians resisted. Thousands were killed, many thousands more maimed and scarred for life. The Russians broke first, set Sevastopol alight and retreated beneath the flames across a bridge of boats. The first modern war was over – but what impact did it have on the future of Europe? Narrated by Paul Waggott Written by Robin Scott Elliot Production and...

As winter swept over the Russians in Sevastopol and their French and British besiegers huddled on the surrounding heights, the Crimean War settled into a deadly pattern – this was modern warfare, trenches, artillery and death rates as high as anything later found in the First World War. The toll was taken far beyond Crimea too – the Tsar, worn down by war, died, Britain’s Prime Minister was forced out. But the fighting went on. Narrated by Paul Waggott Written by Robin Scott...

’Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do or die…’ Few moments in Britain’s long history have been celebrated and mythologised like the Charge of the Light Brigade, six hundred and sixty one men riding gloriously into the pages of history, their heroism recorded forever by Tennyson’s words. But what really happened on that autumn day? Was there any glory found on the stony ground of the Crimean peninsula? Who was to blame for the massacre that followed? And was it even a...

The Crimean War began in 1854 and changed the course of European history. This gruelling conflict, with the British and French alarmed by the rising threat of Russia, marked the changing face of war – the beginning of the end of the cavalry, the beginning of trench warfare and the development of lethal weaponry and technologies that would forever alter how wars would be fought – and how their stories would be told.  Narrated by Paul Waggott Written by Robin Scott Elliot Production and Sound...

The war is at a tipping point. Retreats, secret meetings, religious reasoning… conventional warfare develops into vicious guerilla warfare tactics and struggle. British reprisals will utterly change the face of South Africa in the twentieth century. Narrated by Paul Waggott Written by David Thomas Production and Sound Design by Holy Smokes Audio Executive Producers Tony Pastor + Neil Fearn A Goalhanger Podcasts Production Cast; Conrad Reid Thomas Mitchells  Learn more about your ad...

Kimberley, the diamond mining capital of South Africa and the heart of the De Beers diamond empire is surrounded by the Boers. Cecil John Rhodes - politician, businessman, imperialist and believer implicitly in white domination, lobbies Britain help to free ‘his’ town. Narrated by Paul Waggott Written by David Thomas Production and Sound Design by Holy Smokes Audio Executive Producers Tony Pastor + Neil Fearn A Goalhanger Podcasts Production Cast; Conrad Reid Thomas Mitchells  Learn more...

The conflict had now begun and was expected to result in a swift decisive victory for the British, the world’s most powerful Empire. The butchery of Spion Kop to the resistance of Mafeking however were stops on a journey to a series of humiliating military reverses and devastating sieges.  Narrated by Paul Waggott Written by David Thomas Production and Sound Design by Holy Smokes Audio Executive Producers Tony Pastor + Neil Fearn A Goalhanger Podcasts Production Cast; Conrad Reid Thomas...

A death at police hands is the final ingredient added to a toxic brew of British grievances against their Afrikaner rulers. For the Boers the British are little more than foreigners, and both see the tens of thousands of black Africans worthy of no rights whatsoever.  The debate is simply over which white men will rule. Narrated by Paul Waggott Written by David Thomas Production and Sound Design by Holy Smokes Audio Executive Producers Tony Pastor + Neil Fearn A Goalhanger Podcasts...

After being stunned by China’s Red Army, Douglas MacArthur wanted payback – MacArthur demanded President Truman allow him to use the US military’s deadliest weapon, the nuclear bomb. MacArthur wanted to drop 50. The president thought it over; and decided against it. It was the end for MacArthur but not the war. A bloody stalemate settled over the Korean peninsula.   Narrated by Paul Waggott Written by Robin Scott Elliot Production and Sound Design by Holy Smokes Audio Executive Producers...

They came out of the gloom of the Manchurian winter, bugles blowing, and swept all before them – the Chinese had arrived and once again the Korean War took a dramatic turn. The threat of China’s Red Army had been dismissed by General MacArthur, but it proved a catastrophic mistake. The United Nations force was swept out of North Korea, a humbling for MacArthur as his forces endured the worst retreat in US military history. Narrated by Paul Waggott Written by Robin Scott Elliot Production and...

Douglas MacArthur had no military equal, at least in his own mind. The veteran and hero of the victory over Japan believed he could do the same in Korea and with an audacious amphibious landing at Inchon turned the war on its head. The Reds were on the run, victory for the US, British and rest of the United Nations forces seemed inevitable. Could anything stop General MacArthur’s final triumph? Narrated by Paul Waggott Written by Robin Scott Elliot Production and Sound Design by Holy Smokes...

At 4am on June 25th, 1950, the Land of the Morning Calm was shattered by the sound of artillery firing across the 38th parallel dividing Korea into north and south. Soon the growl of tank engines, Soviet-made T-34s, confirmed what was coming. Invasion. North Korea’s surprise attack on their ill-prepared southern neighbours began the first major conflict of the Cold War, a war of sweeping advance and hurried retreat whose consequence is still felt today. Narrated by Paul Waggott Written by...

‘It looked like what you’d always imagine hell would.’ General Norman Schwarzkopf masterminded the US-led coalition’s crushing victory. Afterwards Stormin Norman flew along the Highway of Death, the road out of Kuwait, looking down on what his troops had done. Schwarzkopf’s men freed Kuwait and shattered the Iraqi army, its charred remains littering the highway – but did the outcome make further conflict inevitable? Narrated by Paul Waggott Written by Robin Scott Elliot Production and Sound...

In the early hours of Sunday, 24 February, 1991, the still of the desert night was disturbed by the sound of helicopters, packed with paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division, rising into the dark. The land war to free Kuwait from the Iraqi invaders had begun. It was to last a matter of days, but for the men who fought it Operation Desert Storm would stay with them for the rest of theirs. Narrated by Paul Waggott Written by Robin Scott Elliot Production and Sound Design by Holy Smokes...

Welcome to the first 24-hour news war. Saddam called it the ‘mother of all battles’. American jets, he proclaimed, would be blasted from Iraqi skies. The world was glued to rolling news channels as a very different conflict unfolded. Missiles and smart bombs rained down on Baghdad. In response Saddam launched Scud missiles at Israel, trying to explode the conflict into a Middle East-wide war. The world watched, and held its breath.  Narrated by Paul Waggott Written by Robin Scott...

August 2, 1990. They came out of the darkness… tanks, column after column of the Republican Guard, Iraq’s feared and battle-hardened elite. Kuwait’s small and under-prepared army had no answer - within hours their country was under the brutal control of Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s feared dictator, and his army. How would the world respond? Narrated by Paul Waggott Written by Robin Scott Elliot Production and Sound Design by Holy Smokes Audio Executive Producers Tony Pastor + Neil Fearn A...

“I know the longest day and all that stuff, but this really was a hell of a long day.” The first 24 hours of D-Day were make or break – on Gold, Juno and Sword beaches the British and Canadian forces had to get inland and dig in before the panzers arrived. Fail and they faced being thrown back into the sea.  Narrated by Paul Waggott Written by Robin Scott Elliot Production and Sound Design by Holy Smokes Audio Executive Producers Tony Pastor + Neil Fearn A Goalhanger Podcasts...

“As our boat touched sand and the ramp went down, I became a visitor to hell.” Death was coming to Omaha beach, only few on the Allied side expected it to be directed their way with such devastating consequences. The Americans presumed they’d brush aside meagre German defences; instead they found themselves plunged into hell and history. Narrated by Paul Waggott Written by Robin Scott Elliot Production and Sound Design by Holy Smokes Audio Executive Producers Tony Pastor + Neil Fearn A...

”I was sitting in on the greatest show ever staged!” As the brave men and women of the Resistance hurried through the pre-dawn darkness, risking lives to sabotage the Germans, off the Normandy coast the first landing craft were ferrying Captain Moose Schroeder and his men towards Utah Beach – the Americans were coming. And just in time for their airborne compatriots, fighting desperately to survive inland. Narrated by Paul Waggott Written by Robin Scott Elliot Production and Sound Design by...

Tuesday, 6 June 1944 was barely an hour old when Major John Howard and the men of D Company, Ox and Bucks Light Infantry, hurtled out of the night sky above Normandy. Behind them the largest invasion force ever to set sail was approaching the French coast. After four long and brutal years of Nazi occupation, the liberation of mainland Europe was underway – D-Day had begun. Narrated by Paul Waggott Written by Robin Scott Elliot Production and Sound Design by Holy Smokes Audio Executive...