In 1982 we lived in Ottawa. I was eleven.

I was a bit of a military enthusiast growing up, so that spring, when the Falklands War was all over the news, I paid attention. I wouldn't say I was glued to the news per se, but I kept an eye from afar.

The moment that stayed with me was the Sheffield. A single Exocet missile, fired from a plane somewhere out over the water, and that was it. The ship was gone. The ship was made of aluminum, in large part, and that was my first memory of hearing what heat does to aluminum...and the crew inside it. It was pretty shocking and horrible. The plane didn't have to get close. It just came, and there was nothing you could do about it. That was the part that got into me.

Sea...skimming..missile...

I didn't know it had got into me.

Four years later, 1986, I'm in a movie theatre watching Top Gun, and there it is again — the briefing about the enemy having access to that weapon. Suddenly the final air battle isn't just a thrill ride. It has weight. There's something out there that can reach out and end you before you ever see it coming. The Exocet gave the whole thing a gravity a summer blockbuster had no business carrying. The war was long over. The weapon had outlived it.

After that, I wouldn't say it crossed my mind in forty years, explicitly. If it came up, I remembered.

Then, early in 2022, a colleague at work put me onto a band called Sabaton. They're Swedish, power metal, and they write almost entirely about war — real battles, real history. Their album Attero Dominatus ended up in the rotation.

One of the tracks is called "Back in Control." The song opens on a bass line that just crunches in, and grabs...control. I love a crunchy bass line.

Orders from the Iron Maiden, get the Islands back!

I didn't have some big feeling about it. I don't think there was a specific feeling. The song just resonated, immediately. Something I hadn't thought about in forty years was being screamed back at me by a Swedish power metal band.

Oh wow, I thought.

Who remembers this war anymore.