Operation Tabarin

In 1943, Churchill's War Cabinet met to discuss the opening of a new front. Its battles would be fought amidst the glaciers of the Antarctic. Intended to safeguard the Falkland Islands from Japanese invasion and to deny harbours in the sub-Antarctic to German U-boats, the expedition also sought to re-assert British territorial rights in the face of Argentine provocation. This would achieve its ultimate expression in the Falklands War - but the British bases secretly established in 1944 would also go on to play a vital part in a global 'conflict': the Cold War. Operation Tabarin tells for the first time the story of one of the most curious episodes in what Ernest Shackleton called 'the white warfare of the south'. The expedition leader was the redoubtable 'Scout' Marr, who had sailed with Shackleton. Captain Victor Marchesi spent three seasons looking for U-boats armed with a revolver and sent letters with British Falklands stamps to embassies all over the world to establish British sovereignty!