Soldiers returning to the scene of one of their battalion’s deadliest engagements in the Falklands paid an emotional tribute to their fallen comrades.

The 1st Battalion Welsh Guards, currently based at Hounslow Cavalry Barracks, suffered some of the biggest losses in the Falklands War in 1982.

On June 8 that year, 32 Welsh Guards were among the 48 troops killed when an Argentinian jet bombed the British warship Sir Galahad off the coast of the islands in the South Atlantic Ocean.

It was the Army’s highest death toll in a single incident since the Second World War, and the ship’s hulk, which rests on the sea floor 10 miles off the islands’ east coast, is an official war grave.

The battalion’s Number Two Company was last month deployed to the British overseas territory for the first time since that fateful mission.

The company of 140 soldiers is tasked during its two-month stay with deterring military aggression and maintaining UK sovereignty of the islands.

Members of the company visited the Welsh Guards memorial in the village of Fitzroy, overlooking Port Pleasant, on Sunday, January 5 for a service led by Padre Al Nicoll.

Only three Falklands veterans are still serving in the Welsh Guards but two members of the company, Lance Corporals Neil Forde and Leon Parr, had uncles who were killed during the war.

They flanked the commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Dino Bossi as he laid a wreath at the memorial.

Carol Green, who moved to the islands after her brother Guardsman Paul Green was killed in action there, and who still lives in Fitzroy, also attended the service to pay her respects.

Afterwards, she and her husband Phil Ovendon, who has tirelessly researched the battalion’s role in the Falklands, met members of the company in the village hall.