MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

British veteran returns to an Argentine veteran the helmet he took in 1982

Aged 18, Andy Gatrick found two wounded Argentine soldiers, later captured, at Mount Harriet in June 1982 and kept one’s helmet, which bore a name: Hector. Photo: Mick Dawson

A former Royal Marine has travelled to Argentina to return to an Argentine veteran the helmet he took during the Battle of Mount Harriet in the 1982 Falklands War, in a reunion filmed for a documentary, BBC Sussex reported.

Andy Gatrick, who was 18 at the time of the war, came across two injured Argentine soldiers during the Battle of Mount Harriet, fought on June 11 and 12, 1982. Both were captured by the Marines. Gatrick kept the helmet of one of them, which bore a name: Hector. Now 63, he managed to track him down and on October 23 flew to Gualeguaychú, in Entre Ríos province, to return it in person to Héctor Pereyra.

 

 

 

 

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“I put my weapon down and as I bent down to put the strap over my shoulders, I saw movement and a cloth which looked like a white handkerchief. My eyes adjusted and there was two Argentinians, I didn’t know they were badly injured. I dived to the floor, weapon up. There was lots of shouting and swearing, bedlam,” Gatrick, from Bolton in northern England, said in footage sent to the BBC.

He was joined by another Royal Marine veteran, Mick Dawson, 62, who filmed the meeting for a documentary called Hector’s Helmet. According to Dawson, the British kit was poor and the Marines fought in berets, while the Argentines had American helmets, so Gatrick “borrowed” Pereyra’s. “In a very emotional day, he handed the helmet back in person to the guy he could have just as easily killed that night,” Dawson told BBC Radio Sussex. The two veterans “embraced like long lost brothers”, he said.

Dawson interviewed Pereyra about the moment when, wounded, he saw Gatrick emerge from the darkness. “He said, ‘I knew this man had the power of life or death over me and he chose life’,” Dawson recounted. “He then showed me a picture of his nine grandchildren and four children that wouldn’t have existed if Andy made a different decision that night. It was just the most amazing thing to witness.”

Dawson hopes to release the documentary next year. The 74-day war in 1982 left 907 dead: 649 Argentine military personnel, 255 British personnel and three civilian islanders.