25th anniversary of the Falklands War, Britain V Argentina
Army of lost souls ignored on their return
By Sophie Arie
28/03/2007
How Argentina's army, defeated by the British, were betrayed by Argentina's ruling military junta after the war
The Argentine veteran never talked about the war.
When Jorge Martire met his wife-to-be, Maria Laura, he omitted to mention that he had recently gone through hell in the Falklands.
The couple had three children, and Mr Martire found a job at a local government office in La Plata, south of Buenos Aires, while studying to become an architect.
Steel helmets abandoned by Argentine armed forces who surrendered at Goose Green to the British
Then in 1992, a decade after the end of the conflict in the Falklands, something inside him snapped.
"He got lost one day," his widow recalled. "And when he came home he couldn't recognise anybody. Not me. Not his daughter.
"He was very afraid of storms and rain and noises. His hands and feet started to get old and wrinkly. Then he lost his sight. He was looking but he couldn't see anything. He was lost."
In his hospital bed, being treated for atypical psychosis - known by veterans as "Malvinas syndrome" after the Argentine name for the islands - it all finally came flooding out.
"He told me how he had been hungry and thirsty. They were terrified," Maria Laura remembered. "Under cover but always wet. And all the time it was dark. Really dark with flashes of bombs and guns."
On March 1, 1993, he slipped out of the hospital and bought a gun. Then he had a coffee in a bar, and afterwards walked into the lavatory and shot himself.
Jorge Martire, who was 18 when he was conscripted, joined the ever growing ranks of Argentina's Falklands fighters to have died long after the country's brief and bizarre battle with Britain for control of the islands.
Britain lost 258 servicemen in the conflict. Twenty-five years later, there are no exact figures, but relatives of the Argentine dead believe that more of their countrymen have now committed suicide because of the trauma than the 650 men who were killed on the battlefield or at sea. The most conservative estimate is 350.
Maria Laura Capperelli's Falklands veteran husband killed himself
"Only now, is the reality of what we went through finally being talked about," said Edgardo Esteban, a veteran and journalist who has made the one and only feature film in Argentina about the conflict.
Illuminated by Fire is not a story of heroes and glory but a catalogue of military incompetence and cruelty, human suffering and shattered lives.
Several veterans committees are reportedly now preparing legal cases against wartime officers who they claim submitted them to torture as well as depriving them of food.
One conscript, now a public prosecutor in La Plata, describes how he was pinned in a crucifix position with tent pegs onto the sodden freezing ground on Wireless Ridge as a punishment for raiding the military food store rooms back in Stanley.
"The same military who were running the Dirty War went to the Malvinas," said Mr Esteban. "They did the same things to the conscripts as they did to political opponents at home. They saw us as civilians who needed softening up."
Unlike their British counterparts, when the Argentine troops came home, they were ordered by the humiliated military junta that ruled the country not to speak about their experiences and viewed with contempt and shame by much of the population. The young veterans slunk quietly back to their homes and struggled to find jobs or girlfriends.
Many of the veteran suicides have been recorded in the poor, hot northern provinces of Chacos and Corrientes, where conscripts had not only never used a gun but had never seen the sea or snow before being sent to the Falklands.
Even after the fall of the military junta in 1983, democratic governments have provided little support for the veterans. They were only awarded pensions - modest ones - in 1991. Many, particularly those left crippled, resorted to begging on commuter trains.
Today's government, under President Nestor Kirchner, a former victim of Argentina's military regime in the 1970s, is determined to set right the years of neglect for human rights.
He has increased veterans' pensions, but only after the more strident among them camped out for weeks outside his presidential pink palace in Buenos Aires demanding not to be ignored any longer.
And while determined to defend Argentina's continued claim to sovereignty over the islands, the Kirchner government has ambiguous feelings about honouring the veterans of a military force many of its officials personally despise.
"They have been much quicker to find compensation for victims of the Dirty War than for the Malvinas veterans. And they have found more money for them," said Maria Laura.
IN PICTURES: THE FALKLANDS WAR
Twenty-five years have passed since the Falklands War, when the British battle to liberate the islands from Argentinian invaders provided some of the most memorable images of the decade.
Smoke pours from the HMS Sheffield after she was hit by an Argentinian missile. The Falklands War was an overwhelming victory for the British against a despotic dictator.
All pictures courtesy of PA
--------------------
A queue for the public gallery at the Houses of Parliament on April 4 1982 where MPs sat in session for the first time on a Saturday morning since the Suez crisis, to discuss how to respond to the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands - British territory
---------------------
Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Invincible leaving Portsmouth to a patriotic send-off on April 5 1982
----------------------
British crewmen and Sea Harriers on the flight deck of the carrier HMS Hermes as she patrols with the British task force
----------------------
An Argentinian bomb explodes on board the Royal Navy frigate HMS Antelope, killing the bomb disposal engineer who was trying to defuse it
----------------------
Prince Andrew at Port Stanley in his capacity as a helicopter pilot with HMS Invincible
------------------------
Royal Marines guard Argentinian soldiers captured at Goose Green as they await transit out of the area
---------------------
HMS Sir Galahad after an Argentinian air raid at Bluff Cove on June 8
-------------------
British soldiers raise the Union Jack after recapturing the island of South Georgia
-------------------
Margaret Thatcher facing an enthusiastic reception from well-wishers outside No 10 Downing Street on June 15 after telling MPs of the Argentinian surrender
---------------------
Two members of the British Army look out over Goose Green beside a memorial to the Argentinian soldiers killed during the war
telegraph.co.uk
Army of lost souls ignored on their return
By Sophie Arie
28/03/2007
How Argentina's army, defeated by the British, were betrayed by Argentina's ruling military junta after the war
The Argentine veteran never talked about the war.
When Jorge Martire met his wife-to-be, Maria Laura, he omitted to mention that he had recently gone through hell in the Falklands.
The couple had three children, and Mr Martire found a job at a local government office in La Plata, south of Buenos Aires, while studying to become an architect.
Steel helmets abandoned by Argentine armed forces who surrendered at Goose Green to the British
Then in 1992, a decade after the end of the conflict in the Falklands, something inside him snapped.
"He got lost one day," his widow recalled. "And when he came home he couldn't recognise anybody. Not me. Not his daughter.
"He was very afraid of storms and rain and noises. His hands and feet started to get old and wrinkly. Then he lost his sight. He was looking but he couldn't see anything. He was lost."
In his hospital bed, being treated for atypical psychosis - known by veterans as "Malvinas syndrome" after the Argentine name for the islands - it all finally came flooding out.
"He told me how he had been hungry and thirsty. They were terrified," Maria Laura remembered. "Under cover but always wet. And all the time it was dark. Really dark with flashes of bombs and guns."
On March 1, 1993, he slipped out of the hospital and bought a gun. Then he had a coffee in a bar, and afterwards walked into the lavatory and shot himself.
Jorge Martire, who was 18 when he was conscripted, joined the ever growing ranks of Argentina's Falklands fighters to have died long after the country's brief and bizarre battle with Britain for control of the islands.
Britain lost 258 servicemen in the conflict. Twenty-five years later, there are no exact figures, but relatives of the Argentine dead believe that more of their countrymen have now committed suicide because of the trauma than the 650 men who were killed on the battlefield or at sea. The most conservative estimate is 350.
Maria Laura Capperelli's Falklands veteran husband killed himself
"Only now, is the reality of what we went through finally being talked about," said Edgardo Esteban, a veteran and journalist who has made the one and only feature film in Argentina about the conflict.
Illuminated by Fire is not a story of heroes and glory but a catalogue of military incompetence and cruelty, human suffering and shattered lives.
Several veterans committees are reportedly now preparing legal cases against wartime officers who they claim submitted them to torture as well as depriving them of food.
One conscript, now a public prosecutor in La Plata, describes how he was pinned in a crucifix position with tent pegs onto the sodden freezing ground on Wireless Ridge as a punishment for raiding the military food store rooms back in Stanley.
"The same military who were running the Dirty War went to the Malvinas," said Mr Esteban. "They did the same things to the conscripts as they did to political opponents at home. They saw us as civilians who needed softening up."
Unlike their British counterparts, when the Argentine troops came home, they were ordered by the humiliated military junta that ruled the country not to speak about their experiences and viewed with contempt and shame by much of the population. The young veterans slunk quietly back to their homes and struggled to find jobs or girlfriends.
Many of the veteran suicides have been recorded in the poor, hot northern provinces of Chacos and Corrientes, where conscripts had not only never used a gun but had never seen the sea or snow before being sent to the Falklands.
Even after the fall of the military junta in 1983, democratic governments have provided little support for the veterans. They were only awarded pensions - modest ones - in 1991. Many, particularly those left crippled, resorted to begging on commuter trains.
Today's government, under President Nestor Kirchner, a former victim of Argentina's military regime in the 1970s, is determined to set right the years of neglect for human rights.
He has increased veterans' pensions, but only after the more strident among them camped out for weeks outside his presidential pink palace in Buenos Aires demanding not to be ignored any longer.
And while determined to defend Argentina's continued claim to sovereignty over the islands, the Kirchner government has ambiguous feelings about honouring the veterans of a military force many of its officials personally despise.
"They have been much quicker to find compensation for victims of the Dirty War than for the Malvinas veterans. And they have found more money for them," said Maria Laura.
IN PICTURES: THE FALKLANDS WAR
Twenty-five years have passed since the Falklands War, when the British battle to liberate the islands from Argentinian invaders provided some of the most memorable images of the decade.
Smoke pours from the HMS Sheffield after she was hit by an Argentinian missile. The Falklands War was an overwhelming victory for the British against a despotic dictator.
All pictures courtesy of PA
--------------------
A queue for the public gallery at the Houses of Parliament on April 4 1982 where MPs sat in session for the first time on a Saturday morning since the Suez crisis, to discuss how to respond to the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands - British territory
---------------------
Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Invincible leaving Portsmouth to a patriotic send-off on April 5 1982
----------------------
British crewmen and Sea Harriers on the flight deck of the carrier HMS Hermes as she patrols with the British task force
----------------------
An Argentinian bomb explodes on board the Royal Navy frigate HMS Antelope, killing the bomb disposal engineer who was trying to defuse it
----------------------
Prince Andrew at Port Stanley in his capacity as a helicopter pilot with HMS Invincible
------------------------
Royal Marines guard Argentinian soldiers captured at Goose Green as they await transit out of the area
---------------------
HMS Sir Galahad after an Argentinian air raid at Bluff Cove on June 8
-------------------
British soldiers raise the Union Jack after recapturing the island of South Georgia
-------------------
Margaret Thatcher facing an enthusiastic reception from well-wishers outside No 10 Downing Street on June 15 after telling MPs of the Argentinian surrender
---------------------
Two members of the British Army look out over Goose Green beside a memorial to the Argentinian soldiers killed during the war
telegraph.co.uk
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