This Land Rover Forward Control 101 was once deployed to the Falkland Islands and now serves coffee, supporting military veterans
The short, sharp and brutal Falklands War of 1982 is still very recent history. Many will remember the hastily gathered naval task force: 127 ships ploughing 8,000 miles through the waves towards a distant archipelago in the South Atlantic. Famous liners the QE2 and Canberra, along with merchant ship SS Atlantic Conveyor, were requisitioned. The aircraft carrier HMS Hermes was the flagship of the task force, continuing to serve until 1984. The rescue mission to the Falklands carried national pride as well as thousands of British troops, bringing together the British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force in an urgent bid to rid a British overseas territory of an invading force.
Land Rovers had always been essential on the Falkland Islands, but the vast stretches of boggy terrain demanded amphibious, tracked vehicles such as the Scottish firm Cuthbertson’s ‘Water Buffalo’ tractor, which could extract heavy plant such as diggers and excavators even from marshy ground.
There are still two of these vehicles on the Falkland Islands from an original three sent out there for land dr…
