Cassandra's Song

War in the South Atlantic - Part 4

By: James Philip

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

CASSANDRA’S SONG is the fourth book in the five-book strand about the FALKLANDS WAR OF 1969-70, and the twentieth book of the core MAIN SERIES OF TIMELINE 10/27/62.

The waters around the Falkland Islands have turned into a windswept, storm-tossed killing ground as the troops have gone ashore. In the absence of the Hermes, half-crippled eight hundred miles away at Leith Harbour, South Georgia and the its screening nuclear submarines, an astonished world has seen the Argentine Navy and Air Force hurl itself at the South Atlantic Task Force in a paroxysm of near suicidal violence. Thousand are dead, the politics of the Americas are dissolving into chaos and the shaky Anglo-American ‘special relationship’ is in tatters…yet again.

Meanwhile the tragedy in the South Atlantic seems to be only gathering pace as politics and war jockey for victory; is the killing over, or has it only just begun?

In Puerto Argentino the siege is complete. What will become of the women and children, hundreds of them, trapped on the Malvinas? In London and Washington war to the knife and peace at any cost balance precariously on the scales of history. In Buenos Aires, as euphoria turns to despair and riots rage on the streets the generals and the admirals play a deadly game of musical chairs in the Casa Rosada. And the men on the battered surviving ships of the Task Force, and ashore on the cold, wet ground of the Camp know that the aircraft and the war supplies that might have enabled them to win the war against an enemy that still outnumbers them two, perhaps three to one on the ground, may be lost forever.

Now as the final act of the last tragedy of the decade in which the October War has already claimed hundreds of millions of lives, British forces find themselves fighting a war to re-conquer a remote archipelago eight thousand miles from home that until April 1964, hardly any of them had heard of, and…cared less.

The race is on; between the steady erosion of support at home and the physical deterioration of the troops ashore exposed to the damp, the cold and the Austral winds, and an enemy who has had five-and-a-half long years to prepare for exactly this day…

Please be aware that this book was originally published as a much longer novel, which as of August 2025 was split into two books, the second being published as THE ROAD TO STANLEY.

Author’s note to readers: since the publication of OPERATION ANADYR in October 2014, the Timeline 10/27/62 series has branched into and explored a number of additional narrative arcs and themes, and in several standalone stories.

For my readers who prefer to read the Timeline 10/27/62 books in the chronological order of the overall narrative arc CASSANDRA’S SONG = 47.