A fascinating account of a 1986 visit to the Falklands featured at a recent Largs event thanks to a military historian - who even brought a fragment from a bomb blast to his discussion.

Former navy armaments specialist Tom Ward was a guest at the recent Largs Probus meeting, and he spoke about how what he saw influenced his later life.

In his talk, entitled 'In the Footsteps of the Task Force and Learning in Later Life', Tom explained how he came to visit the remote South Atlantic islands as a member of the crew of the Greenock-built Royal Navy support ship Resource four years after the 1982 conflict ended.

Referring to the task force which sailed to the South Atlantic, he noted that some 42 Royal Navy warships, 24 Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessels like the Resource, and no less than 41 UK Merchant Navy ships participated in the operation to regain sovereignty over the islands.

Six of these ships were sunk by Argentinian aircraft and one, the Sir Galahad, with considerable loss of life.

During trips ashore, Tom inspected the damage caused to the island airport during the conflict and with his professional interest in munitions, he described how he managed to find and then bring home to Scotland part of the metal casing from one of the many bombs dropped on the islands.

This fragment was circulated at the Largs probus meeting and was surprisingly much heavier than it looked.

After his retirement, the casing fragment stimulated an interest in history and caused him to go to university and study for a postgraduate degree.

This involved research into the structure of the bombs, how they were dropped and the form of damage they caused on exploding, all of which Tom illustrated by photos from his Falklands collection.

Also during his time on land, Tom visited the various memorials to the 260 British servicemen and civilians who lost their lives during the conflict.

Again, his retirement interest was stimulated, leading to research into war memorials generally.

Through carefully collected statistics about the number of memorials commemorating wars British forces have participated in over the years, and the number of servicemen who were killed in each, he demonstrated the trend for large public memorials to be replaced by more private family ones.

John Riddell of Largs Probus thanked Tom for a thought-provoking talk about events from 40 years ago.

Largs Probus Club will next meet in the Willowbank Hotel on Wednesday, August 28 at 10am when three members will give ten-minute talks on subjects of their choice.