Return to the Falklands, ITV1: "The Paras had killed with bayonet as well as bullet" I had been on one of our warships, HMS Fearless, on May 21, the first day of the land battle. The ships around us began firing together and I followed the line of black explosions in the sky. Then, from nowhere, on our port bow, two Skyhawks attacked. Then four Mirages. The leaders hit HMS Argonaut first then went for HMS Antrim. I could see their shells cutting the water and splintering her bows. Two bombs opened up Antrim's aft deck and she went out of control at 18 knots. Our ship shuddered with the shock. We were helpless, sitting ducks, nowhere to hide. My next stop last Christmas was the sheep farming settlement of Goose Green, about 13 miles south of San Carlos Bay. It was here, on May 28, that the Paras won in the first British offensive - and I had my first sight of British dead in the aftermath of a British victory. I remember too the Argentinian dead still lying out in the gloom a day later, half-submerged in the mud and water of their trenches. The Paras had killed with bayonet as well as bullet. And they'd used phosphorous grenades which burn a man alive. Nothing I had seen since Vietnam compared to the horror on those small dead faces. Further up the coast I came across a tall plinth overlooking the cove at the settlement of Fitzroy where an Argentinian bomb had hit the Sir Galahad, killing 51 aboard, including 38 Welsh guards, on June 8. This was part of my commentary to ITN that day: "The ship was enveloped in thick black smoke... but the Royal Navy helicopter pilots ignored the explosions and flew their machines into the blackness to rescue the desperate men waiting below. I watched one pilot deliberately hover, completely blinded by the smoke, and saw his crewman winching down to pluck a man out of the water. Three times he went down and brought men up from the burning oil that flowed from the ship. This has been a day of great tragedy but I vouch it has been a day of great heroism and selflessness by every man who witnessed it. My final journey last year took me across the Falklands" battlefields, along the line of mountains British troops fought over so furiously: Mounts Tumbledown, Longdon, Sapper, Wireless Ridge, William and Harriet. I had lain there then on the sheer edge of the mountain Two Sisters trying to do a freewheeling commentary into my tape recorder. It was snowing hard and bitterly cold. Who would have believed what I was seeing: the arcing red tracers marking their targets, the flash of mortar, the thump of the Browning machineguns, a flare parachuting down and sudden daylight with men running like rabbits caught out of cover. Shells were landing close to us now. My foxhole was not deep enough. Rock splinters would be as lethal as shrapnel. The Falklands are not the place I left three decades ago. The islanders are in good health and not fussed by the distant sound westwards of rattling sabres. Victory has propelled them into a new age. Their society has not simply recovered: it has been rejuvenated and transformed into a thriving economy. It has new housing estates, a fully equipped hospital and a busy hotel. Those of us who witnessed the war and those of us who have been privileged to return can never doubt that it had to be fought and we had to win it. And you will understand that, for a British correspondent, it was a very special war and the Falklands remains a very special place. "Return to the Falklands" is on ITV1 on Tuesday 20 March at 9.00pm. Michael Nicholson's book "A State of War Exists: Reporters in the Line of Fire" (Biteback) is out on the same day.