Falklands War: The English officer who buried enemy soldiers and was honored by the Argentine government

London, October 2008. Twenty-five years after the Malvinas War, in a pub three Argentine veterans share with their English peers. It is the last evening after ten days exchanging post-conflict experiences in talks and workshops. One of them, Julio Aro, tells the British about his recent trip to the islands. He had been moved to find that in 122 tombs of compatriots there were no names, but that it read “Argentine soldier, only known by God.”

Upon hearing it, the face of Geoffrey Cardozo change. “I was angry that nothing has been done to identify them. I thought my job was done,” the retired British colonel told Trade remembering the episode.

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Until that moment, No one at the table knew that Cardozo had been the captain in charge of collecting and burying the fallen Argentine soldiers. Before saying goodbye, she told Julio that he could help with identification. He gave her a copy of the report he had sent to the Red Cross in February 1983 after completing his work. The Argentine State at that time learned of the document. “But, they didn’t want to do anything,” summarizes Cardozo.

This London meeting It was the starting point of a work that in the last decade allowed more than one hundred Argentine families to identify the place where their children rested. Julio and Geoffrey, with the support of the communicator Gabriela Cociffi, the Red Cross and the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, promoted the recovery of the identities of the anonymous graves of the Darwin’s Cemetery through the forget me not foundation.

The report was essential in achieving this task. Cardozo had arrived in Las Malvinas in the epilogue of the combat (June 1982) with the mission of psychologically containing British troops. After a few days, the continuous finding of dead Argentine soldiers changed the plans.

Geoffrey Cardozo was the captain in charge of collecting and burying the fallen Argentine soldiers.

The English generals requested that Argentine experts come to identify the bodies. “Unfortunately in the petition the British Chancellery used the word repatriation and this was not a good word for the Argentines. For them it was their land. We did not succeed”, Cardozo mentions.

It was then that the generals entrusted Cardozo to collect and bury the soldiers on the islands with a ceremony. “But I didn’t know how to build a cemetery!” recalls the 32-year-old soldier.

Funeral specialists were advised to ensure a good job. However, he maintains that the main motive for running such a company was the mother figure. “The first dead soldier found was no more than 19 years old. His eyes were open. I thought of his mother, surely she had given him a big kiss and hug as she did mine when I left for the islands ”.

Avoid talking about bodies, since the term dehumanizes the combatants. “A corpse is not more important than a cup of tea, but if we talk about a person it is more important, because it has an identity,” he explains.

The meticulous work of collecting the belongings of each soldier (letters, books, bibles, photos, plates, numbers that could be your documents, among others) and also the indication of plans and the coordinates where they were found and buried are included in the report that Cardozo wrote in 1983. This was written immediately after the funeral ceremony in a cemetery created in the town of Darwin. 246 crosses were placed. Although half of them had no names and the captain was haunted by that frustration for several years.

“Those guys didn’t have dog tags. It was very difficult for me to bury someone without knowing who they are.”, he maintains. To alleviate that pain, he chose to place on those graves the phrase “A soldier known unto God”, which belongs to the English author Rudyard Kipling (Nobel Prize for Literature 1907).

The clues contained in the report served so that, three decades later, with the new technology (DNA tests, dental details, fingerprints), the identities of most of the soldiers buried in Darwin may be known. “Today we need to find less than ten men,” says the British soldier.

In 2018 he traveled with the mothers of the fallen to the islands. She considers that it was a refreshing trip for him, but above all for them who They could finally fire their children. “The mothers hugged me. They told me that my hands were the last ones their children had touched. It was very deep”account.

Thanks to the work of Geoffrey Cardozo, numerous Argentine families have been able to identify the place where their children rested.

In recent months, Cardozo has turned to bring a message of solidarity and peace to the new generations. He has shared talks with Julio Aro in Argentina and in England, finding a lot of interest in young people. “A war is always a pity. A war is the product of errors at the government level, of the absence of dialogue, ”she specifies.

He believes that claims to sovereignty over the islands are issues for diplomats and politicians, not for soldiers like him.. Although hope is in the youngest. “The youth on each side of the Atlantic, who don’t have dirty hands like ours, who aren’t indoctrinated, will be able to solve this problem,” she says.

These years have also allowed him to establish a more fluid relationship with the Argentine veterans, who forty years ago were on the opposite bench. “We have a very strong relationship. Among veterans we speak the same language, we laugh at the same jokes, we have seen the same horrors. That is not possible with civilians.” delimits

He never thought that Malvinas would return as a second chapter in his life. Now, at the age of 72, he takes the impulses of various institutions in moderation to nominate them, along with Julio Aro, for the Nobel Peace Prize. “We have already been awarded. The hug from each mother is the greatest prize we can receive ”, he concludes.

Source: Elcomercio