To the Falklands at the Toss of a Coin

In his new memoir, “To the Falklands at the Toss of a Coin” (published by AuthorHouse - http://www.authorhouse.com), Brian Wilde provides an account of his time as a young man living on the Falkland Islands in the 1950s and ’60s. His engaging tale, at turns humorous and tragic, gives a glimpse into what life on the islands was like before the Falklands War of 1982.

“To the Falklands at the Toss of a Coin” chronicles Wilde’s 13 years on the West Falklands off the southeastern coast of Argentina, beginning in 1956 as a 21-year-old laborer on a sheep farm and continuing through 1969, by which time he was working as a handyman. It was a different world than the one he knew growing up in Portsmouth, England, and worlds away from our modern lifestyles.

“Then life was so very different,” Wilde writes,

… far away from the hustle and bustle of today, a world much smaller than ours, where life was much harder, more caring, more generous. When it took the best part of a month to travel to and from the UK by sea and things could be tragic with the turn of the weather. There were very few roads in the camp and the main mode of travel was done on horseback.

Accompanied by color maps and photographs, “To the Falklands at the Toss of a Coin” presents an honest, up-close view of the routine of camp life - of the work, of the people, and of Wilde’s maturation from a “very green young man.” Funny and surprising, somber and intimate, Wilde’s memoir encounters a range of events and emotions. He recalls a visit from the Duke of Edinburgh in 1957, a deadly accident in rough water, the time his mate Derek was shot by a penguin, and how he met up with the girl who would become his wife and mother to his two children.

But few stories are more unusual than how Wilde ended up in the Falklands:

It was one winter’s evening in 1955, I had seen an advert in the Portsmouth Evening News for young men wanted to work on sheep farms in the Falkland Islands. I had to change buses to go down to Pompey. While I was waiting for the bus I was thinking about the job in the Falklands. On the spur of the moment I decided to toss a coin. If it came down heads I would go to the pictures in Portsmouth and, if it came down tails, I would cross the road a catch a bus to Clanfield. It came down tails, so I crossed the road and caught a bus to Clanfield. Less than a month later I was off to the Falkland Islands!