Twenty five years ago today (April 25, 1982) Britain rejoiced when a squad of marines and special forces recaptured South Georgia in the Falkland Islands.

Three weeks previously, the islands had been invaded by the Argentinians, who, claiming it as their own, sparked a two-month conflict which would claim the lives of 252 Britons, 655 Argentinians and three Falkland Islanders. In the run-up to June 14, the 25th anniversary of the end of the conflict, the Oxford Mail will feature a series of interviews with Oxfordshire veterans, who risked their lives for a piece of Britain that few knew existed...

GUNNER Ian Lainchbury is the first to admit he didn't even know where the Falkland Islands were before 1982.

Aged 19 and still to do his first live exercise, he was due to go on Easter break when he was told: 'Leave's cancelled, you're off to the Falklands.' "I didn't even know where the Falklands was," said Mr Lainchbury, now 44. "I phoned my mum and she thought it was in Scotland.

"Then when she realised I was off to the other side of the world to fight the Argentinians, she got frightened."

Mr Lainchbury joined 29 Commando Royal Artillery straight out of Matthew Arnold School at 16.

"We'd been told the Argentinians had invaded the Falklands which belonged to us and that we were going to take it back," he said.

"I was a radio operator with the artillery. I was young, but I wasn't the youngest - some of the guys had to have written permission to go."

The journey to the Falklands took eight weeks aboard the Sir Galaghad. A couple of weeks later Gunner Lainchbury would watch as its giant sister ship The Sheffield was torpedoed and sunk in Ajax Bay.

He and his fellow soldiers took three guns to Goose Green, the battleground where 17 British paratroopers would be killed just days later.

He said: "We worked six hours on and six hours off, often with bullets raining down around us.

"Once, I was cooking when I saw a plane shoot down towards us. You could see the pilot's face and I had time to catch my breath, then he was blown up in front of me. I carried on cooking.

"I can't say we ever talked about what we were doing amongst ourselves. We were doing a job, killing them before they killed us.

"In artillery you fire from a distance, so you don't often see the devastation you are causing. But the day we went into Goose Green, we passed lines of body bags, each with a gun stuck in the earth beside it and the soldier's hat hanging on it.

"We knew we had caused a lot of this and we saw the blood, but you are almost cold to it. You look at it, then you walk on."

After four weeks of fighting, Gunner Lainchbury and his unit were entrenched outside Port Stanley when the Argentinians surrendered.

"We had been firing almost non-stop for 24 hours," he said. "The guns were literally falling apart."

While guarding prisoners, Gunner Lainchbury was hit in the leg by flying shrapnel and came home on the Canberra.

Back home in Botley, all the residents of Sycamore Road turned out for a street party.

Gunner Lainchbury went on to serve 22 years, seeing action in Bosnia and Iraq. He now works in security.

He said: "The conflict is important to me in that it was my first action, but I've never marked the Falklands war and I don't think this year will be any different. To me I was serving as a soldier there.

"But I do feel proud I was part of it. It was a job well done."