Good War or Bad War. Honour Those Who Served Regardless

My father served in a bad war. He was conscripted in 1943 and joined the Army Corps of Signals and then volunteered to join the relatively new Airborne Division. After training he missed the action in Europe and was sent to Palestine as part of the British Mandate and served as a Red Beret until he was demobilized, and the State of Israel was declared, in 1948. His contemporaries returned home to a hero’s welcome after the defeat of Germany; he returned unheralded after a perceived defeat in Palestine and was never the same afterwards.

Many who fought for Argentina in the Falklands War must have felt the same way. Today we visited the Monumento A Los Heroes De Malvinas in the naval town of Rio Grande in Tierra Del Fuego, Argentina. As we stopped for photographs in the cold cutting gale, we were greeted by Jose Salas who is one of 120 Malvinas veterans who maintain a vigil at the monument to honour their fallen and their veterans of this needless conflict. There is one link in the chain around this monument for every one of the 648 Argentinian dead.

He handed us stickers and then led us to the museum that is self funded by the veterans in town so that the fallen are not forgotten. We discussed his experience and that of my Dad and he was very careful to point out that the monument and museum are not there to point blame at the British but to remember their old friends.

I started the day joking with my Argentinian traveling companion, Pablo Vadillo, but could not talk to this man without a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye thinking about my own father and his war time experience.