THE 1982 Falklands campaign was a brief but bloody battle, a triumph of arms fought under daunting circumstances in which many fine regiments added to the illustriousness of their battle honours.

Stephen Hopkins' war is the story of a Welsh soldier proud of his city and his regiment, the Welsh Guards, told by a man who suffered the physical and emotional scars of war and who, quite simply, believes the Welsh Guards' contribution should be be an enduring part of the record.

Today, on St David's Day, and eight thousand miles away in the Falklands, Stephen and former-comrades-in-arms will mark their regiment's part in the battle by presenting the island with a leather-bound volume of photographs taken by soldiers themselves during the campaign.

"I don't take it away from other regiments but I was a Welsh Guardsman and I see my job as making sure the regiment is part of the record," says the Newport-born soldier who fought from the initial landings at San Carlos Sound through to the Argentinian surrender at Port Stanley.

The road to war actually began for Stephen in 1976 when he joined the Army as a boy soldier before being sent to the Welsh Guards then stationed in Berlin. The routine of training and garrison duties was disrupted when, in 1982, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands to which it believed it had a claim.

Within weeks a powerful British task force was amassed and sent to the South Atlantic with orders to recover the British possession, among the crack units embarked being the Welsh Guards. When a Welsh Guards force landed at San Carlos Sound in the initial stages of the land battle Stephen was among them as Lance-Sergeant in the Milan anti-tank company.

"We headed in the direction of Goose Green but were ordered back aboard HMS Fearless so as to move round and attack the enemy on their right flank. I was on one of the landing craft that put troops ashore at Bluff Cove from where we went on to take Mount Challenger," he says.

"By this time the Argentinians were beginning to mortar us. On June 8 their planes caught the Sir Galahad. I remember emptying two magazines up into them as they flew into the attack. At that time we didn't know what ship it was and that fellow Welsh Guardsmen were aboard.

"Up until then it was all training but suddenly it was for real. We took Mount Harriet alongside the Royal Marines and, with the Third Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, taking Mount Longdon. When we went into the attack we hit a minefield and three guys had their legs blown off.

"The Argies knew where we were and started hitting us with a 120 millimetre mortar which is a beast of a thing. We'd been told that the Argentinians were poorly equipped but in fact many of them had rifles that were newer than ours."

In the final stage of the fighting Stephen Hopkins was wounded in the legs. Even so, he witnessed the capture of Port Stanley, the capital, and the restoration of the islands to British sovereignty.

"For years after the fighting I didn't want to know anything about it. I was running through it every night in my head and feeling guilt for the friends who had died. One of the after-effects of war is that the living feel guilty simply because they survived," Stephen says.

"The wounds are physical but they are also mental. It is a difficult to explain to anybody who has not been through it. Over 22 years you find ways to deal with it, but I can still see the faces of mates who never came back."

After demobilisation in 1985 Stephen, now 44 and living in Dos Road in Newport, trained as a business manager. Seven years after the conflict he met his partner, Anne, who has helped him through pain and nightmares.

He says: "When I was last down there in 2002 I saw a Welsh Guards beret in the little museum at San Carlos and a picture of the Sir Galahad, aboard which a lot of our lads died, in the museum at Port Stanley and that was about it.

"My chance came when Prince Charles, the regiment's colonel-in-chief came to Cardiff as part of the 20th anniversary of the islands' liberation. I told him about the lack of mementoes to mark the involvement of the Welsh Guards and he said 'Well, do something about it' which I have."

With the help of another Welsh soldier, Andy 'Curly' Jones from Brecon, Stephen set up a website in which he called for former Welsh Guardsman to donate pictures to be bound into an album for presentation to Port Stanley's museum. The album of dramatic photographs has a foreword by Prince Charles and was signed by him in the presence of the Falklands representative in the UK and of veterans. Three other veterans accompanied Stephen and Mr Jones to the Falklands' capital for today's presentation. In addition to the album a bench donated by a Welsh council will be taken to the Falklands by the Royal Fleet Auxiliary and placed overlooking the site of the Sir Galahad disaster.

It is autumn in those islands eight thousand miles away. Cold winds from the Antarctic pluck at the flags around the memorial to the fallen and whip around the former Welsh Guardsmen who have come to pay their respects.

There are few Welshmen more remote from their home as this St David's Day dawns. There are none more proud.