I am almost sixty years old, and although my body has aged, I still feel like a soldier in my early twenties. Every day, Malvinasfootnote comes to my mind, if only for five minutes. As if I miss it. I imagine things too. I wish I had not followed orders so meticulously and instead, brought my belongings back, as others did. I wish I had been more generous with my comrades there, but I couldn’t, because war makes you mean. And at nineteen or twenty, you just want to have fun. We were kids who were just starting to live. We were at war for just two months, and our whole life since has revolved around the experience. Many of us could never quite come back to life again.

In Malvinas, we tried not to think. We knew that relief was never going to come but, to tell the truth, none of us were prepared to die. I thank God I never had to kill anyone. Other comrades had to; they had no choice because that’s what war is: him or me. One dies and the other lives. I don’t know what it would have been like to carry that on my conscience. I realized these things later, but in the moment I only knew I had to fight. And still today, when they show something about the war on television, I go to my room and cry.

The hunger, cold, and damp were even worse than bullets. My daily thought was: I have to overcome the cold, I have to overcome hunger, I have to handle all this. But how could I do it if I had nothing in my stomach? I even ate potato and orange peels – I had them in my pocket and I ate them slowly. The physical difficulties we endured left aftereffects in our lungs and stomachs.

A Falklands War veteran in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Photograph by Jean Schweitzer / Alamy Stock Photo.

There was pain everywhere. I wanted to go home. There were soldiers who came back without a foot, or with one arm missing. But even without wounds it was hard to come home. That was the moment I had to shake hands with the darkness.

When I got back, I didn’t talk much about the war because I could see people didn’t care. Our military service was not recognized, and we had no pension or anything. I had thought that because I had been in the war I was going to get a job, but there were just rejections. I finally landed a few jobs painting or working as a blacksmith, but had to hide the fact that I had been a soldier. And then there was the mocking laughter because we had lost. They saw me as a boy, and said: “How did we expect to win with soldiers like this? Are we crazy?” I don't know how I coped with it.

Thanks to the struggle of many comrades, the Argentinian Malvinas War Veterans Centers were established, and in 2016 the government finally approved a pension plan. But as the years went by, most of my comrades turned to alcohol. Many committed suicide. More soldiers have fallen in the postwar period than in the war itself. Some civilians wonder, “If you have a pension now, why kill yourself?” But it’s not just about money; it’s about the trauma. There are things you just can’t take. There are six hundred or so Argentinian veterans of Malvinas, and I believe three hundred and sixty-five could not go on living. The last one who committed suicide in Bahía Blanca threw himself under a truck; he left a letter so the truck driver wouldn’t be blamed.

It’s hard to have risked your life in the service of your country and, when you return, find that no one values your sacrifice. I needed psychological help to understand what was happening to me. The psychologist explained that the pain was mine alone: what I experienced in Malvinas was not experienced by my neighbor, nor by my daughters, nor by my wife. If others wanted to join me, they would be welcome. But I couldn’t drag others into my trauma and take away their happiness. Destiny sometimes twists lives and you can’t do anything about it. On the islands there were boys who had been born into families that loved them all their lives. They called them, they sent them packages. And one day, a bullet struck them and that was the end of their journey. My mother didn’t show me affection, but I survived. Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if I had not gone to Malvinas.

Perhaps, when the last veteran dies, Argentina will pay tribute to the veterans of Malvinas. When we are no longer here, the celebrations will begin.

Almost forty years after the war, veterans from all over the country marched to the Ministry of Defense. That’s when I met up again with many members of my company. Some were doing quite well, but others had changed a lot.

Now I am in a WhatsApp group with many of them – mostly from Entre Ríos. We upload photos and encourage each other. Every day we greet each other as if we were in the islands, in the 5th Infantry Battalion: “Good morning, company. Good evening, company.” Or, “How are you today, brother mobsters.” Malvinas is always with us. Malvinas, the roaring of the wind and the roaring of the sea.

Through this group I got in touch with several comrades. One of them was my old friend Ocampo. He called me directly and started crying. “I feel like giving you a hug, Roldán,” he said. I also communicated with Espíndola. He lives in Monte Grande now, and in his profile photo he looks very well. Recently I asked if anyone knew anything about Putz, the one who had asked me for a spoon and I had refused. He was from Crespo. “Yes,” someone answered, “he’s still in Crespo. He’s a big guy and drives a truck.” I was very happy to hear that Putz was still alive. All my life I regretted not having lent him my spoon.

When I look in the mirror, I see that the years have passed, but inside my head, in my thoughts, it is as if I am still on the islands. If, for instance, I’m sweeping the floor, in a moment I can find myself sweeping in Malvinas. I would like to go back there one day to see the place where I fought. Some veterans don’t want to have anything to do with it until they see our flag flying there, but for me, it would be like closing a chapter. When we retreated and I had to empty the top of the backpack to load it with ammunition, I left some belongings and letters from home in the shelter. I hope to find them there. Most importantly, I need to go there to bring myself back, that soldier who stayed there in the islands. The soldier who is still in Malvinas today.

Excerpted from Ángela Pradelli, Dos soldados (Editorial Planeta Mexicana, 2022). Used by permission of the publisher. Translated from the Spanish by Coretta Thomson.

Footnotes

1. “Malvinas” is the Argentinian term for the Falkland Islands.