Tom Hickman
Mr. Hickman is author of The Call-up (A History of National Service), which has become a best-seller in the UK.

You could say Limbang was nothing more than a skirmish. But wars are simply the accumulation of countless skirmishes and Limbang, for all the brevity of the encounter, was a classic microcosm of war.

In the last few years television viewers must feel as though they've overdosed on World War Two - there seems to be no end to 60th anniversary programmes. As the seam has become exhausted, some of the series have taken more and more liberties, moving away from the historical to the hysterical. What is different about 'Return to Limbang' from much of this stuff is that it doesn't sacrifice truth for impact.

'Return to Limbang' is deliberately low key. The story unfolds in a measured way. The virtue of the small canvas is that the details are blocked in: this was the mission, these were the individuals involved, this is the order in which events happened.

One of the great strengths of the programme is how it uses very simple maps of Southeast Asia, redrawing them with the changing political and ideological situation, to counterpoint a narrative that is a succinct lesson in how complexities should be explained. And you will rarely see all the usual techniques of true-life television storytelling used to better effect: reconstructed material is all but indistinguishable from original footage and is used sparingly to real effect. (Why, oh why do so many programme makers make a meal of their dramatised insertions?) In human terms, 'the return' - the meeting of men who 40-odd years ago tried to kill each other - is a coda that says much about loss as soldiers experience it... and never forget.

At the beginning of World War Two, when things were going badly, Churchill was minded to take over the BBC and boost the nation's morale with blatant propaganda. The BBC countered that if it continued to tell the truth when Britain was losing, the world would believe it when it said victories had come. 'Return to Limbang' brought that to mind. It's a gripping tale and an emotional one. But above all, when it's done, you believe it. This was how it was.