The Good Soldier Spike
By Wilfred Southall
First published: March 2012 (first Kindle edition)
The Falklands War has broken out and it's none of Spike's business.
Spike was discharged from the British army years ago on the grounds that he was mentally subnormal and also profoundly mentally subnormal. Now he’s a waiter aboard the Cunard liner SS Canberra, enjoying the fruits of peace.
But a series of historical accidents leads to the return of ex-Private Spike J to the Parachute Regiment in time for him to intervene in the Falklands Crisis. And Spike is destined to play as important a role in the campaign as Leopoldo Galtieri or Margaret Thatcher.
But as Destiny marches forward, it doesn’t always go in a straight line. Before he gets the chance to save the San Carlos Landings, Spike must negotiate the shortcomings of an African city’s sewage system when the Task Force stops briefly to refuel in Sierra Leone. And after he has played a major role in the British victory at Goose Green, Spike finds himself deposited in mainland South America by another series of cock-ups of the kind that happen all the time in war. Thus the Good Soldier Spike sets out on a Latin American anabasis, marching steadily northwards in the conviction that all roads lead to the Falkland Islands and he will yet return to his unit in time to take part in the Glorious Licking.
There are thousands of Argentinian soldiers dug-in in the impregnable mountain fastnesses of the Falklands, in strongholds that they could die of old age defending. So who is there in the British Landing Force who could possibly induce the Argentinians to lose the war?
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