MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Falklands Conflict: this was not a war of Nuñez versus Clement.
War veterans Mario Nuñez and Gary Clement exchanging their berets Today, Wednesday 4th April, Mario Oscar Nuñez, late of the 12th Argentine Infantry Regiment and Gary Clement, late of 45 Commando, Royal Marines, set off from Stanley, the capital of the Falkland Islands, known to the Argentineans as Las Islas Malvinas, on a journey, which would take them approximately one hundred kilometres and twenty-five years back in time.
The destination on the map was the farming settlement of Goose Green, the location for a battlefield, which both had experienced at first hand in 1982: Mario as a conscript on the front line and Gary, as a lone green beret in a sea of red berets, who came along after most of the fighting had finished to gather up abandoned weapons, clear up booby traps and mines and generally make the area safe. With the help of an interpreter, because Gary does not speak Spanish and Mario does not speak English, this unlikely pair, whose acquaintance began last Saturday on a plane from Chile, explored more than the vast open landscapes surrounding Goose Green. Little by little as confidence developed they began to share experiences and discovered much in common. Mario, who was involved in a much reported incident at the Argentine Cemetery in Darwin, when photographs were taken of a group of veterans posing with an Argentine flag, was at pains to express his sorrow that the action had caused distress among certain sections of the Falkland Islands population. The action of showing the Argentine flag was, he said, intended to be simply a private and emotional act of homage to fallen comrades and was not in any way intended to provoke the local population or its government by making a political gesture. Despite the fact that Mario Nuñez had lost good friends at Goose Green, including one who, he claimed, had died of starvation before ever the British arrived, he bore no animosity either to the British or to the Falkland Islanders, "This was not", he said, "a war of Nuñez versus Clement." Both Nuñez and Clement agreed that although both were obeying orders, perhaps with different degrees of enthusiasm, there were no feelings of personal animosity towards the enemy. Like other returned conscripts before him, Nuñez said that the principal enemies of himself and his colleagues had been their own officers and hunger and cold. Coming from Corrientes in the north of Argentina, close to the Brazilian border, Nuñex told Mercopressthat he and his companions, who before arriving in Goose Green had spent a week on Mount Harriet waiting for helicopters to take them onward, had exchanged temperatures of 40°C for the cold of a Falklands autumn. While looking for the exact location of Nuñez's foxhole overlooking Brenton Loch to the West of Darwin, Nuñez said that he and his companions had been put in their trenches on day one and then abandoned, without information or proper food to fend for themselves until the British attacked weeks later. Like one of the antiheroes of the Argentine war film, Iluminados Por El Fuego,Nuñez had been at one point staked out on the cold ground for the heinous crime of killing a sheep for himself and his companions to eat. Now he reckons that it was only the action of a courageous junior NCO, who ordered his release, against the wishes of his superiors, that saved him from death from hypothermia. On return to Stanley, where Gary Clement now lives with the Falkland Islands-born wife he met and married before the Conflict which brought him and Mario Nuñez together, they exchanged berets; both green; Gary's with the coveted badge of the Royal Marines and Mario's with the 'celeste and blanco' roundel, as a token of their shared experience and of a friendship, which despite distances and differences, both hope will endure. It had been a long day, both in terms of miles covered and emotions shared, but it was difficult to avoid the feeling at the end that despite the burden of history and the actions of generals and politicians, the sun, which accompanied the journey had shone today on a small victory for the human spirit. John Fowler (Mercopress) Stanley
Top Comments
Disclaimer & comment rulesCommenting for this story is now closed.
If you have a Facebook account, become a fan and comment on our Facebook Page!