REPUTATIONS
Michael E Haskew reviews the career of the fighting commander of the Royal Navy Task Force that liberated the Falkland Islands.
FRANK AND FORTHRIGHT NAVAL COMMANDER
As part of a monumental military task, it was the defining few weeks of his 43-year career in the Royal Navy. The location was the South Atlantic, and Rear-Admiral John Forster ‘Sandy’ Woodward faced command decisions from which he could not simply shrink away. A war was on, and the British armed forces, land, sea and air, were thousands of miles from home. Their mission was straightforward – eject the Argentinian invaders who had seized the sovereign British territory of the Falkland Islands, roughly 300 miles (480km) off the coast of the South American nation.