It was as if the war were being waged not in the rough winter seas around the Falklands but in stormy government conference rooms in the capitals: London, Buenos Aires and Washington. "Never in my 20 years of covering Britain," says TIME Reporter Frank Melville, "can I recall a major crisis here that blew up so suddenly from out of nowhere." Says TIME London Bureau Chief Bonnie Angelo: "Even though the confrontation is in Falkland waters, the nerve center of the fleet is London--at No. 10 Downing Street."

The challenge was much the same in Buenos Aires. To get the story, TIME Argentine journalistic alumni were reunited, headed by South American Bureau Chief Gavin Scott, who also served a tour in Buenos Aires from 1962 to 1966. Barry Hillenbrand, currently Boston bureau chief and Rio bureau chief from 1974 to 1977, arrived to join Scott in Buenos Aires last week. "Since my return," Hillenbrand says, "I have been amazed at the unanimity on the Falklands issue." Associate Editor George Russell, who wrote the cover story, was the Buenos Aires-based bureau chief from 1979 to 1981. He found that "Argentines regard the Falklands issue as an article of faith." Caribbean Bureau Chief William McWhirter, on the scene in Buenos Aires for three weeks, headed south to Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego; until ordered back to Buenos Aires late last week by the authorities, he had been the only non-Argentine correspondent in the coastal area close to the Falklands after three British journalists were arrested there and charged with espionage. Says he: "Communications out of Argentina were the only real exasperation."

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The Overseas Press Club last week presented its 1981 award for best magazine interpretation of foreign affairs to TIME Associate Editor Walter Isaacson and Correspondents Bruce van Voorst and Johanna McGeary for their cover story "Arming the World" (Oct. 26, 1981). The esteemed Robert Capa gold medal for photographic reporting was awarded to TIME'S Rudi Frey for his intimate coverage of Poland's Solidarity movement and the imposition of martial law. The Olivier Rebbot award for magazine photography from abroad went to Nakram Gadel Karim for his photos in TIME of the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

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