Argentinian Falklands war graves vandalised

[NutLoose]

Argentine war cemetery in Falkland Islands vandalised - Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/falklandislands/9441941/Argentine-war-cemetery-in-Falkland-Islands-vandalised.html)


One hopes that everyone on here feels the same sickened abhorrence for what has happened, regardless of what side anyone fought on during the war, these guys deserve to Rest In Peace regardless of Nation or side and at a place their families can visit to grieve free from the worry that people can do such a despicable act to their graves.... It is beneath me the contempt and loathing I feel for these individuals that have besmirched both the reputation of the islanders and service personnel on the Isles by this cowardly act.

[JFZ90]

Not cricket.

Seems odd that the islanders would bother stooping.

May actually have been an Argie op to stir up trouble?

Was this before/after the hockey?

[ShyTorque]

Speaking as an ex-military Brit, this is outrageous and very, very sad.

[Duncan D'Sorderlee]

Outrageous!

Hopefully, this will be properly resolved PDQ.

RIP

Duncs:ok:

[Hubstrasse]

one may not agree with one's opponent's political views but to treat his dead with respect costs noting but demonstrates your own humanity and decency. In a small rural cemetery with a few Allied WW2 war graves, the local ladies of the time turned out to pay their respects at the burial of German aircrew KIA on raids to Liverpool. Perhaps not following popular sentiment at the time but the highest standard of humanity, reasoning they would wish the same decency for their menfolk far away. Do unto others as you would unto...

[Lima Juliet]

I have to admit, seeing as the Argies have a history of the "school of dirty tricks" (BBC News - UK criticises 'tasteless' Falklands Olympic ad (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-17946838)), I wouldn't be surprised if the Buzos Tácticos (Argie SBS) weren't tasked by the whack-job Cristina Fernandez de Kercher.

I just can't imagine our sailors, soldiers or airmen or the Falkland Islanders doing this :confused:.

LJ

[Navaleye]

Neither can I. Its completely wrong. I hope the culprits are caught and punished asap.

[ericferret]

After the war the german war graves in the UK were grouped together at Cannock.
There were exceptions when local people preferred that they remained in situe.

A good example being North Coates in Lincolnshire where the German war dead rest alongside casualties from the Strike Wing.

War graves are an emotive subject and I also hope the culprits are caught, they shame us all.

[November4]

A good example being North Coates in Lincolnshire where the German war dead rest alongside casualties from the Strike Wing.

And in Brookwood Military Cemetery.

In Haycombe Cemetery, Bath are the graves of a number German airmen next to the Military plot and not too far from the mass grave of civilians killed in the Baedeker Raids.

[Navaleye]

I suspect the Falklands Police Force, RMP and RAFP will be checking on everyone's movements that night, its all small place and I suspect they will be found quite quickly and made an example of. Lets hope so.

[Squirrel 41]

Hear hear - all be said better by others already.

S41

[Milo Minderbinder]

Any cruise ships in at the time?

[Airborne Aircrew]

but to treat his dead with respect costs noting but demonstrates your own humanity and decencyHumanity and decency aside, (that's all a bit too PC and touchy bloody feely - they were the enemy after all), one respects the warriors of both sides. They stepped forward and gave their lives in combat. Each and every man or woman who does so for their country, whether the cause be right or not, deserves the eternal respect of all.

Those who would desecrate a grave of a fallen soldier should be buried face down just over the nearest ridge and their arsehole used as the resting place for a flagpole.

[Abbey Road]

It does leave one wondering, whoever the actual miscreant was, that the idea behind it was to stir up anti-Brit feeling back in Argentina. :hmm:

[OldnDaft]

Having visited this site in 07, it is desperately sad to think someone has damaged it in any way. It was in pristine condition (Maintenance was overseen by the Command WO at MPC) and was visited by many members of the SAMA82 veterans who attended the 25th anniversary remembrance activities. I simply can't believe that a local or a member of the British Forces would have acted in this way - it does leave me wondering about who may have done it.

[mad_jock]

It will be some wee ****es that are pissed off having to come home from boarding school or civi family has just been posted in.

I suspect they will be under 14 and wern't strong enough to toppel the grave stones.

A group of us divers caught similar up in the Scapa Flow services grave yard and got a mouthfull off them when they were told to bugger off.

The old boy that keeps it pristine says its quite a common problem, under 14 there is nothing that can be done apart from take them home by the police. And then he has to tidy up the mess.

The kids had been doing slides on the grass with mountain bikes on the slope down to the german sailors graves. The rememberance book had been damaged the previous month.

The auld boy said they wanted to keep it open all the time and had left a pen so people could write in the book and also read what others had written but he was getting tired of having to fix things constantly during the summer.

[Laarbruch72]

Any cruise ships in at the time?

Not really relevant, the cruise ship passengers are offloaded in Stanley harbour on their own small boats, Customs perform passport checks on the cruise liner, and the crew do head counts. The passengers wander around Stanley for a couple of hours, visit the shops, then get back on the boats, all counted back in.

There's not really scope for passengers to get to Darwin as it's a 4 hour round trip if you have transport, and Falkland Islands Travel doesn't arrange transport there. Most passengers are ashore about 5-6 hours and take in a chaperoned trip to Gypsy Cove if anywhere.

In any case it's not cruise ship season anyway.



“The impacts on the glass appear to be caused by bullets,” Cesar Trejo, who heads the commission of families of combatants who died during the conflict, said.


Interesting, if true.

[mad_jock]

Pointey rock on laminated glass has the same effect.

As a student I helped install in a school toughend glass windows to stop said effect, these things could take a bowling ball battered off them by a 20 stone labourer chucking it from height off the back of an artic and the window being at the bottom of a skip.

Had to change them all back a month later because health and safety decided there was a chance the little darlings might get hurt because the stones had a tendency to bounce straight back from where they were thrown.

[Wensleydale]

“The impacts on the glass appear to be caused by bullets,” Cesar Trejo, who
heads the commission of families of combatants who died during the conflict,
said.


So lets excavate the bullets and look at the calibre. I am sure that the gun can be traced if it came from a Brit Mil weapon. The truth is out there.

[Shack37]

So lets excavate the bullets and look at the calibre. I am sure that the gun can be traced if it came from a Brit Mil weapon. The truth is out there. 2nd Aug 2012 10:34


I think the bullet theory has since been discarded to be replaced by an axe attack. Whatever it was, I hope the culprits are identified quickly, named and shamed.

[Marcantilan]

I can´t imagine an Argentine soldier attacking the grave of a fallen comrade, less by an order of the current government.

Hope the culprits will be caught soon.

[ericferret]

In 1934 Atatürk wrote a tribute to the ANZACs killed at Gallipoli:

Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives... You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side now here in this country of ours... you, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land. They have become our sons as well.

This inscription appears on the Kemal Atatürk Memorial, ANZAC Parade, Canberra.

This brings tears to my eyes every time I read it.
It is something that we should all live by.

[Clockwork Mouse]

Not just the ANZACs who died at Gallipoli. Many other British and Empire soldiers and sailors also gave their lives there.

[glad rag]

Does it really matter? the fact that the man did what he did as an act of reconciliation.

Shocked by this desecration, because it is just that. I sincerely hope that the miscreants are traced.

[fallmonk]

Cant understand the people who do this ,yes we was at war with them and they paid the ultimate price isnt that enough .
i can only hope the police catch who ever done this quickly .

[Genstabler]

Absolutely does it matter who died there and were remembered with respect by their brave and chivalrous enemy. Gallipoli is believed by a large chunk of the public to have been a solely ANZAC battle and disaster. The ANZAC troops played a major part, but the many others should not be forgotten.
The desecration of the Argentine memorial is shaming and I apologise to any Argentines who might read this. The graves of those young Argentine soldiers lie in British soil where they died and it is our duty to respect, care for and protect them.

[unclenelli]

It could even have been nobody.
The week I left MPA we had 65kt winds at MPA, which out there could have easily been higher and whipped up some of the gravel.

The glass was fine when I visited on 8th Jul 2012 (although the Bible under it was a tad soggy)

[ORAC]

Bravo Zulu.

Falklands: Argentinian soldiers' relatives to put names on graves (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/11/argentinian-soldiers-names-graves-falkland-islands-dna)

[Heathrow Harry]

The least they deserve - doing their duty & died for their country in a totally political adventure where the perpetrators got off scot free.............

[NutLoose]

Isn't that always the way HH,

I am pleased for the families that they will now have a known grave to grieve at, it's those things that makes a difference and in a way helps heal old wounds, the graveyard from the images I have seen online does them proud and is a credit to the work of those that work tirelessly to maintain them.

[[email protected]]

Having visited that cemetery several times in the last 18 years, I always found it a sobering and respectful place honouring some of the poor conscripts who were pushed into a war they weren't interested in or trained for.

Like others, I can't imagine it was Brit Mil - a great shame and disgraceful behaviour whoever it was.

[ORAC]

It seems people aren’t reading the contents of my latest link - to show the difference between then and now. So I have decided to post the full text.

Falklands: Argentinian soldiers' relatives to put names on graves

The relatives of 89 previously unidentified Argentinian soldiers killed during the 1982 invasion of the Falkland Islands will travel there this month to put names on their graves. Their identification has been made possible due to painstaking DNA testing and the humanitarian initiative of a British captain who in 1982 gathered more than 120 dead soldiers, with their effects, and placed them in graves each marked with the words “Argentine soldier known only to God”.

The testing of the exhumed bodies by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was agreed by the British and Argentinian governments in 2016 after a campaign led by both British and Argentinian veterans. Key figures behind the campaign, including forensic experts from the ICRC, Roger Waters from the band Pink Floyd, and relatives of the unidentified soldiers, met on Friday at the Argentinian embassy in London to celebrate their joint act of reconciliation. Osvaldo Ardiles, the former Tottenham Hotspur footballer whose cousin was a pilot killed in the war, was also present.

A Foreign Office diplomat spoke at the ceremony, calling for further reconciliation. Juan Carlos Pallarols, an Argentinian goldsmith, presented to the chief campaigners metal “peace roses” carved from bullets, pistols and parts of planes from the Falklands.

The relatives will travel to the islands on 26 March in two chartered planes to put names on 88 graves in Darwin cemetery.

The process of identification, including securing the agreement of the Falkland Islands’ people, has been sensitive at a diplomatic, humanitarian and personal level. A total of 649 Argentinians and 255 British soldiers died during the conflict. Nigel Baker, head of the South America department at the Foreign Office, said: “We were clear this was a humanitarian issue in which the wishes of the family were paramount.” He paid tribute to the veterans’ groups who “continue to teach us the real meaning of the words dignity and reconciliation”.

The identification process was only possible thanks to Geoffrey Cardozo, a British army captain who speaks Spanish. Dispatched to the Falklands in 1982, initially to deal with post-combat discipline, he spent six weeks helping build a cemetery for the largely conscripted soldiers that British forces found scattered – sometimes half-buried – across the islands. He put white sheets and plastic bags over each body and buried each soldier with a casket containing any effects he could find on them such as ID numbers or letters for home. He compiled a logbook of where he had found the bodies, any identifying marks and where they were buried. Cardozo said: “I am an army officer, I am a soldier but before everything else I am a human being. Nine hundred little hearts stopped beating in 1982, although they still beat hard in the breasts of their loved ones.”

In 2008 he gave the logbook to three Argentinian veterans. One of the three was Julio Aro, who had visited the cemetery in 2008 and formed the No Me Olvides (do not forget me) foundation. Aro said he had been driven to identify the dead because his mother had told him: “If you had ever gone missing, I would have searched for you until the end of my life.” He said he knew that if he had died he would not have been identifiable since his name was not engraved, just scrawled on a piece of paper with sticky tape.

Waters said he joined the campaign when touring in Argentina in December 2011. At that time he received an email from an Argentinian war correspondent, Gaby Cociffi, which led him to lobby the Argentinian president. Waters said: “These families has suffered a double bereavement of losing a child to war and having no specific place to shed a tear, or lay a flower.” At the embassy he read out part of the appeal he had sent to Falklands legislators urging them “to imagine the anguish of the families, rise above the melee, take the higher moral ground and that it would be a beautiful thing if they were able to do that”. Eventually they did take that higher ground, he said.

As a result of the campaign, in December 2016, the two governments finally reached agreement on a DNA process in which the ICRC was given the task of identifying the former soldiers. Laurent Corbaz, head of the ICRC humanitarian project plan, liaised with relatives of the dead soldiers and obtained DNA samples from members of the 107 families to attempt to match against the DNA found in the graves. No one could predict the state of the bodies. Corbaz said: “For seven weeks in July last year, the Falklands winter, we worked at the cemetery exhuming 122 corpses, taking DNA samples at a morgue and then placing the remans back in new coffins. It was unlike anything we had done before. We had to deploy sensitive equipment and a hi-tech mortuary.” The DNA samples were sent to a morgue in Argentina and were cross-checked in the UK and in Spain.

Morris Tidball-Binz, head of the Argentinian forensics team, said: “Sometimes we had to resample the relatives’ DNA for missing soldiers if the family relationship was not close. We set a standard of 99.8% certainty. It was very exacting: a few years back the science would not have allowed us.”

Asked how he felt on meeting fellow campaigners such as Cardoso for the first time, Waters said: “It is a gift from time and space to be allowed to show empathy and love for a fellow human being.”

Or as the Argentinian ambassador put it: “Sometimes great tragedies bring great gestures and exemplary actions.”

[[email protected]]

Ossie Ardiles came out to the FI when I was last there to make a film about his cousin and they visited the cemetery.

Unfortunately, he and his team discovered how treacherous the roads are there and speared in, rolling into the ditch.

As RAF SAR we picked them up and took them to the hospital at Stanley where they were treated for various injuries (head for Ossie) and then medevaced back home.

[Heathrow Harry]

Ahh the ditches!! I was told that the when they were building the Mt Pleasant - Stanley post-war they contractor asked for rainfall figures so they could calculate run-off and so size the ditches correctly... they were given ANNUAL figures but had it in their minds that the FI was a very wet place (which it actually isn't) and thought they were MONTHLY figures

hence ditches that would stop a Russian Armoured Division...........

[[email protected]]

HH - correct and they have trapped a lot of unwary 4x4 drivers.

The problem is exacerbated by the surface and the relatively scarce traffic - people tend to drive in the middle which pushes the loose stuff towards the edge (think marbles on an F1 track) so when deviating from the middle of the road for oncoming traffic, the surface tends to 'snatch' at the big 4x4 tyres which would be OK if there wasn't a 4 foot drop!!!

[MAINJAFAD]

Ossie Ardiles came out to the FI when I was last there to make a film about his cousin and they visited the cemetery.

Unfortunately, he and his team discovered how treacherous the roads are there and speared in, rolling into the ditch.

As RAF SAR we picked them up and took them to the hospital at Stanley where they were treated for various injuries (head for Ossie) and then medevaced back home.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHibzBDujkg

And a very good film it was to.

[hunterboy]

I’ll second that...well worth 50 mins of anyone’s time, especially if you lived through it at the time.....

[Wander00]

The Stanley to Mt Pleasant road was originally going to be all blacktop, but money became scarce hence the blacktop on the hilly bits and the rest scalpings. When it opened it had no speed limit. One of the first soldiers to drive it in a SWB Land Rover was a signaller from 216 Sig Sqn who came of blacktop onto shale at speed, rolled and sadly died. There was then a lot of toing and froing on who had the authority to set a speed limit, FIG or the Military. Finally resolved and 40mph limit set several days, maybe weeks later (Long time ago). For 48 hours in 86 the road was on my personal slop chit.

[TBM-Legend]

Lest we Forget...

...How we Forget!

Young men dying for the foibles of the politicians...

It doesn't matter which side they were on...

[unclenelli]

Ahh the ditches!! I was told that the when they were building the Mt Pleasant - Stanley post-war they contractor asked for rainfall figures so they could calculate run-off and so size the ditches correctly... they were given ANNUAL figures but had it in their minds that the FI was a very wet place (which it actually isn't) and thought they were MONTHLY figures

hence ditches that would stop a Russian Armoured Division...........

HH
I was told it was a metric/imperial error:
They thought in inches, but were told figures in millimetres!
Either Or, still a factor of 12 or possibly even 25 out!

[Fareastdriver]

Like the long road between El Adem and the main east/west highway. Put the telephone poles on the left hand side of the road.

Two teams started at either end...........

[ORAC]

Argentinian families to visit newly identified soldiers' Falklands graves (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/25/falklands-families-reunited-argentinian-soldiers-killed-in-war)

In the early hours of Monday morning, more than 200 relatives of Argentinian soldiers killed in the Falklands war are to take a three-hour flight to RAF Mount Pleasant, the remote islands’ main airport. They will then travel by coach to an isolated, often windswept cemetery where, for the first time, they will know they are standing by the grave of their loved ones.

For many Argentinian families that have been able to visit the islands occasionally since the war in 1982, there has been no specific grave by which to mourn and grieve, only a graveyard. The bodies of 121 soldiers were never identified and the stark inscription on each gravestone reads only “Argentinian soldier known only to God”. In desperation, some mothers kissed every grave, knowing one kiss at least was being given to their son.

Now, through an extraordinary blend of sensitive humanitarian cooperation, individual perseverance over sometimes government indifference and advances in DNA, the bodies of 90 soldiers have been identified.

In a simple, deeply emotional ceremony, including a Catholic mass delivered jointly by Enrique Eguía Seguí, the auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires, as well as Anglican and Catholic priests from the islands, the families will be reunited with their lost sons. Inscriptions with names will have been placed on the graves. The soldiers will no longer only be known solely to God, but once again to their families.

The reunification after 36 years became possible when last June a team of scientists working with the International Red Cross, including both Argentinian and British forensic experts, spent a fortnight on the islands taking DNA samples. The samples were then matched against those of their relatives.

One of the relatives, Maria Fernanda Araujo, told the Guardian: “It will be a difficult day, with so much strong emotion, but it is necessary. Many of the families come from isolated and quite humble parts of Argentina. Some are very old and in wheelchairs. It is going to be very difficult for some – it will be the first time they will be in front of the grave of their child. It will be hard to get them to leave.”

At the age of nine she lost her brother Elbio Eduardo Araujo, killed on 11 June 1982 in the final days of the war at Mount Longdon, a bitter and decisive battle. She still carries pictures of the two of them together. Now chair of the Malvinas Fallen Relatives Commission, Araujo stresses she hopes the day has a wider meaning. “In that moment, and in that sacred place, we will give a symbolic embrace of our families and our beloved to put aside the differences we had in previous years. In the name of the families, again as a symbol, we will give a wreath of flowers to be taken to the British soldiers in their cemetery in San Carlos. The hope is that we can get over this pain by releasing love and trying to stop conflict, either internal or external.”

The planning for the day has been meticulous. There will be no flags at the mass, either British or Argentinian, but a guard of honour with Scottish pipes will sound in homage. The relatives, on two planes flying half an hour apart, will be accompanied by doctors, psychologists and Claudio Avruj, a member of the Argentinian human rights committee. They will land close to 9am and depart in the afternoon, spending no more than 10 hours on the islands. Contingency plans have been laid if the notorious Falklands weather makes it impossible for the planes to leave.

Araujo said it was not straightforward to persuade all the families to cooperate with the voluntary identification by giving finger samples of blood. Similarly, many in government until recent years were indifferent, regarding the dead soldiers as victims, not heroes. The state’s focus was instead on the disappeared of the dictatorship.

She said: “Those that opposed the identification process filled our heads with phantoms – that in the cemetery you would find nothing, and if they found anything the bodies would be taken back to the continent. My mother felt there was no need to open the tombs because she said she knew he had died in the Malvinas [the Argentinian name for the Falklands]. But she came to understand that other families wanted to identify their children’s grave.”

She added: “The more we can travel to the island, the better the relationship has become. They have always been very respectful, and us to them.”

[Dan Winterland]

I was told it was a metric/imperial error:
They thought in inches, but were told figures in millimetres!
Either Or, still a factor of 12 or possibly even 25 out!

The few married quarters there have conservatories. The plans were drawn up in the UK. The architect paced the conservatories on the South side of the buildings, just like you would in the UK. Not much use in the Southern hemisphere!

[Wander00]

My memory of signing for most of the buildings at MPA from the contractors in 1986 was that the expected life was to be 15-20 years. I saw on Island Parish on TV a few months ago that they still looked pretty good after 30 years

[Fareastdriver]

The used to be an Indian Army barrack block, complete with verandas, in Aldershot when the plans got mixed up.

[Heathrow Harry]

Dem it ! If it was good enough for the Mesahib out east it's dem well good enough in this god forsaken hole in S England...................... and you STILL can't get the servants.....

[Yellow Sun]

The used to be an Indian Army barrack block, complete with verandas, in Aldershot when the plans got mixed up

There is a former Range Warden's cottage (http://www.secretscotland.org.uk/index.php/Secrets/FoxbarRifleRange) just outside Paisley that was based upon an Indian pattern bungalow.

So, the habit is far from new or unusual.
YS

[ORAC]

To be fair, there are at least a couple of million bungalows scattered across the UK....

[FantomZorbin]

The Officers' Mess at Farnborough was said to be based on an Indian bungalow but I believe it has been demolished.

[Haraka]

The Officers' Mess at Farnborough was said to be based on an Indian bungalow but I believe it has been demolished.
The R.A.F. Officers' Mess at Farnborough was the No.1 Officers' Mess of the Royal Air Force. I can vouch for the fact that it had covered walkways and storm drains. I was told that it was based on the plans of an Army Mess at Poona.
Yes, sadly demolished years ago to make way for an upmarket airport hotel after the sell off.

[parabellum]

The used to be an Indian Army barrack block, complete with verandas, in Aldershot when the plans got mixed up.


May have happened more than once, there was a barracks in Gosport, Hampshire, that was said to the result of mixed up plans and was of the design that should have been built in India, it was a REME barracks back in the mid 1950s. All wood and with verandas etc.