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Argentinian navy veteran Roberto Herrscher and former Royal Artillery soldier Tony McNally discuss the legacy of one of the UK's most controversial conflicts 30 years on
Next month is the 30th anniversary of the Falklands war. Roberto Herrscher was conscripted into the Argentinian navy, while Tony McNally joined the British army at 16. Susanna Rustin asks the two veterans what they think about the conflict now.
Susanna Rustin: How did you find out you were going to the Falklands?
Roberto Herrscher: I was about to finish my year of military service when I learned the navy had taken the Falklands, or Malvinas. I was called up on 11 April at the end of the Holy Week. I was getting back with my parents from a Sunday out and the police were waiting for me at the door. I always used to say the police took me, but the truth is they left a note. My father took me and for a long time I didn't want to remember that. He still feels guilty that he sent me to the war when he could have tried to take me out of the country. We were used to obeying orders.
Tony McNally: You speak good English – good thing, because the one thing they taught us was "manos arriba!" – hands up!
RH: Were you also 19 when you went to the war?
TM: It was the same, we were waiting to go on Easter leave, all excited, and we'd never heard of the Falklands. We assumed they were somewhere off Scotland and we were thinking, why are the Argentinians invading Scotland? Then we watched the news and everything changed. We ended up being sent to Plymouth on buses. My mother was upset. She was an Irish Catholic and didn't want me to join the army in the first place. But we didn't think it was going to end in actual fighting. Even when we got on the ships, we thought it would all be resolved. I had my 20th birthday on the Falklands in July.
SR: What happened there?
RH: I spent the first weeks in Port Stanley, or Puerto Argentino, sleeping in a transport ship. But after the Belgrano was sunk the Argentine navy started taking little ships from the islanders, so I spent the bigger part of the war on a wooden ketch built in 1927. It was the most unlikely war vessel ever. We did lots of dangerous things and almost got killed when sea harriers bombed us, but when we went back to Port Stanley, or Puerto Argentino, we really thought we would all die. General Menéndez [commander of the occupying Argentinian troops] said we would fight to the last man, but finally they surrendered. My worst experience was after that when the corpses and wounded started coming down the mountains.
TM: My job was in the Royal Artillery. We were in our mess desk one night when an officer came down and informed us the HMS Sheffield had been destroyed. We knew then there was going to be a war, and we were scared. We were still at sea, on a flat-bottomed troop ship, so we were thinking, if they can sink a state-of-the-art destroyer like the Sheffield, what chance have we got?
When we got there it was surreal. I grew up watching war films, and you think of guys running up the beaches but when we landed I remember saying to my friend, this is just like Lake Windermere in the Lake District, where I live. Then the air attacks started. I managed to shoot down two aircraft at San Carlos and those aircraft to me were just enemy weapons platforms. It was only after I left the forces that I thought, there were guys flying those aeroplanes, and I've killed two men. But the worst thing that happened to me was that my equipment malfunctioned when I tried to fire Rapier missiles at your Skyhawks. The result was that the Sir Galahad was destroyed, with 50-odd men killed.
RH: Thank you for telling this story to me.
TM: That was when I developed PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). You get this guilt. It was seven years after I left the army that a civilian doctor diagnosed me. No one in the army had even mentioned the term. In the early years, I couldn't speak at all about what had happened but then a counsellor advised me to write it all down. I don't know the statistics from your side, but more than 300 Falklands veterans have killed themselves – that's more than were killed during the war. A royal marine who lived about 10 miles from me killed himself just before Christmas, and that's what I was worried about with the 30th anniversary.
RH: The same thing has happened in Argentina. More veterans have killed themselves than were killed in the war, and that was more than double the number of British soldiers. I think I have escaped more or less complete. I've had nightmares, but nothing like what you went through, and many Argentines. And in our case, we were not heroes, we had lost a war. Our commanders said people would throw eggs and shout at us. The way I see it, you were not responsible, it was General Galtieri and Margaret Thatcher and the warmongers on both sides. That piece of land was not worth all those lives.
TM: The way I see it, the Falklanders pay their taxes just like everyone else, so they're entitled to a military defence, if that's what they wish.
SR: The war was short, but it has cast a long shadow over your lives. How does that feel?
TM: You're obviously naive when you're a young man – how can you know what war is going to be? But I had tunnel vision. When other people were thinking, I'll get a job in the shipyard or be a mechanic, I said, "I'm sorted, I'm going to be a soldier." It was all too easy. My father said, you're better off getting a trade, and he was right. But I don't regret joining. I always wanted to be a soldier.
RH: I left Argentina shortly after the 10th anniversary in 1993. I became a journalist and wrote about my experience. Then I went to Costa Rica and covered the central American wars. Now I'm a professor of journalism in Barcelona.
TM: That's brilliant Roberto. You haven't been a victim of the war, you've flourished.
RH: I don't know if I can say that my trade saved my life, but it helped me. When I went back to the Falklands, someone said to me, "Why are you here? Are you trying to bury your ghosts?" I think that in a way that is what both of us have been trying to do for 30 years.
TM: I went back too, to Fitzroy, where the Galahad was hit. There was a guy there whose father had been killed on the ship, and another lad with false legs. These guys came up to me and said, "It wasn't your fault."
Roberto Herrscher's book The Voyages of the Penelope is published (in English) by Sudpol. Tony McNally's book Watching Men Burn is published by Monday Books.