Fitted for Service | Episode One: Phil, 2 Para — San Carlos, Goose Green, Wireless Ridge
Launching 7th August 2026 at 8PM — watch on the Lockwood Clothing YouTube channel.
Forty years on, the men who fought for the Falkland Islands are still here. And they still have things to say.
Fitted for Service is a new series from Lockwood where I travel to meet Falklands veterans in their own homes — sitting with them, hearing their stories, and fitting them personally in the smock that carries the name of that conflict. This isn't a history documentary. It's a conversation. Honest, unhurried, and told by the men who were there.
Episode One is with Phil. He served as a mortarman with 2 Para — one of the most decorated and battle-hardened regiments in the British Army — during the Falklands War of 1982. What follows is a brief account of his story. The full telling is in the video, and I'd encourage you to watch it in full.
San Carlos — The Landing
Phil landed at San Carlos Water as part of the 2 Para force that came ashore in the early stages of the campaign. San Carlos — known to the men who were there as Bomb Alley — was the beginning. From the moment boots hit the ground, the war was real.
From San Carlos, the battalion tabbed up into the Sussex Mountains. Carrying weight that most people today couldn't imagine. In conditions that the South Atlantic in winter does not make easy. Moving toward a fight that was still some way ahead of them, but getting closer with every step.
Goose Green — The Battle
Goose Green is, for many people, the defining engagement of the Falklands War. For 2 Para, it was a fight that cost them their Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel H. Jones — killed leading his men forward, and later awarded the Victoria Cross. It was brutal, it was close, and it was won.
Phil was in the thick of it. As a mortarman, his job was to provide indirect fire support — putting rounds down on enemy positions to allow the infantry to advance. It is relentless, physical, demanding work. And at Goose Green, the demand was at its highest.
Tumbledown and Wireless Ridge — Where His War Ended
After Goose Green, the battalion pushed on. Tumbledown. Wireless Ridge. The hills above Stanley that stood between the Task Force and the end of the conflict.
It was here that Phil's war came to an end — not from enemy action, but from the cumulative toll of operating mortars on the soft peat ground of the Falklands. The base plates and barrels, improvised and operated on terrain that gave no firm footing, transferred enormous force through the body with every round fired. Over time, the injury became one he couldn't continue through.
He gave everything he had. And then some.
The Fitting
I sat with Phil in his home, and we talked through all of it. His journey from the landing craft to the mountains. The battle. The injury. What it meant then, and what it means now.
The Falklands Smock carries that name deliberately. It exists as a piece of British-made clothing that honours the conflict and the men who fought it. Fitting Phil in it — hearing his story first, and then watching him put it on — was one of the most meaningful things I've done since starting this company.
I hope it comes across in the video. I think it does.
Watch Episode One
Fitted for Service — Episode One: Phil, 2 Para launches on the 7th August 2026 at 8PM on the Lockwood Clothing YouTube channel.
Subscribe so you don't miss it — and the episodes that follow, as we continue to sit with the men who were there and hear what they have to say.
The Falklands Smock is available now at lockwoodsmocks.com. Every one of them is handmade in Britain.
