Small British Blitzkrieg

Off-Topic Off Topic - Militaria
#1

Against Argentine restaurant in Spain.

13.02.2010 - Four people were hospitalised after the soldiers, went on the rampage in the Vaca Loca restaurant in the popular resort of Costa Teguise. Witnesses say the violence was triggered when staff challenged one of the soldiers who tried to steal a bottle of wine. Customers, including several young children, had to dive for cover under their tables as some of the soldiers hurled tables and chairs across the restaurant while the others took it in turns to punch and kick the owner and his staff. One of the customers, an Italian who was dining with his wife and 75-year-old mother and tried to aid the owner, received a brutal beating and requires facial surgery to rebuild his cheekbone and jaw. Another customer, German Thomas Salewski, almost lost an eye.

The customers and staff have published an open letter on the Internet to the British Prime Minister urging him to step in to make sure the soldiers are punished. Accompanying their letter with horrific pictures of the injuries, the customers called on Mr Brown to review the training methods used in the Army if they are to be put into practice on innocent people: “Your highly trained and perfectly coordinated soldiers wrecked a restaurant and ran off after their bloody assault. As a civilian like us, we call on you to keep better control of your Armed Forces to ensure that when they go on holiday to another country they do not use their training to attack defenceless civilians. We also ask you to personally contact their Unit (your Consulate knows who they are) and investigate the type of training these men have received. It is appropriate for your soldiers to be trained as human weapons to protect the civilian population, but we cannot tolerate their presence on our island if, like so many of your com*patriots, they come here to cause damage, get drunk and annoy others. We have been physically hurt by the actions of your soldiers but that is nothing compared to the psychological suffering of the children and elderly people in the restaurant who had to witness such a bloody spectacle”.

The letter, signed by the ‘Vaca Loca Restaurant victims’, ends with ironic congratulations to the Prime Minister for having trained ‘such highly skilled professionals whose ‘team work’ and ability to dish out violence was very much in evi*dence in their brutal assault’. Chef Martín Vessecchia, who needed several stitches for the head and facial injuries sustained during the attack, described the soldiers as ‘drunk but totally in control of what they were doing. They were on automatic pilot, they did not care who they hit’. The Vaca Loca’s owner, Hernán Martín, who had to close temporarily to repair the damage caused, said he was shocked at the level of violence used and would do everything in his power to make sure the soldiers are not allowed to return home without punishment.

The Ministry of Defence has refused to release any details of the incident, say*ing it had ‘a duty of care to uphold and it would be highly inappropriate to give any personal details’.
By Karl McLaughlin

http://www.islandconnections.eu/1000003/1000003/0/27339/canary-islands-article.html

http://momento24.com/en/2010/02/09/argentine-is-brutally-attacked-by-british-soldiers-at-his-restaurant/

#2

Well, what do you expect?

We have an Argentinian restaurant called, in Spanish, The Mad Cow with staff including an Argentinian, an Italian and a German.

We also have drunken British (to the extent that the Welsh can be called British) soldiers looking for a fight http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/7197179/Six-British-soldiers-arrested-in-Lanzarote-for-bar-brawl.html confronted by all these former enemies assembled in a venue mocking the mad cow disease epidemic which decimated the British cattle industry and caused many deaths in humans in Britain.

We also have, and not for the first time, Argentinian provocation of British forces on an island not belonging to Argentina.

I think the Canary islands should be grateful that Margaret Thatcher isn’t running things at the moment or there could be much worse trouble.

:wink: :smiley:

#3

Evidently there are some standars of discipline in service and there are others outside service in the bratish Army. I know 2 or 3 armies in South America that if you do things like that outside the quaters you risk your neck to a hard punishment.

Even here an humble forum there are some evidences of it, it seems to me that this kind of behavior of british towards non-british is not only unpunished by the military but also celebrated.

I could be completely wrong of course but that is the impression.

#4

But apparently if it is done within quarters nobody gets punished, even for murdering their own troops.

The British approach is rather different. Well, it would be if we could find examples of British officers torturing and murdering their own troops.

The British, like most sensible armies, prefer to use their soldiers to kill enemy troops. And the British are rather good at it, as they have been for several centuries.

Seventy former Argentine army officers are accused of crimes against humanity for the alleged abuse, torture and, in one case, murder of their own troops during the 1982 war with Britain over the Falklands, or Malvinas, Islands. As the BBC’s Angus Crawford reports, the case has divided Argentina’s veteran community.

In 1982, Michael Savage was a student doing his military service, part of a force sent to invade the Falkland islands by the dictatorship then in power in Argentina.

One morning on patrol, his platoon came across a front line position.

“It was the coldest day of the war and, in the white snow, we saw a soldier staked to the ground, he was dying,” he said.

I asked him who was responsible for staking out the young man.

He told me it was his own corporal.

During his time on the island he saw many of the conscripts treated in the same way.

They lived in tents in sub-zero temperatures, their officers refused to issue proper rations and, fearing starvation, they stole food.

If caught they were brutally punished.

Argentine Falklands veteran Michael Savage
It’s justice. It’s very edifying for society to look the past in the eyes, for it never to happen again
Michael Savage

“The punishment was ‘estaqueo’ - they would peg you to the ground and leave you crucified for hours, with minus 20, rain and even shelling,” he said.

One evening Michael was caught by a corporal stealing a tin of meat.

“He made me kneel down, pointed his gun on my head and I was crying and begging for him not to shoot,” he recalled.

He cannot forgive his superiors for what they did.

“They were our worst enemies, torturing us physically and psychologically,” he said.

Devastating effects

After the brief war with Britain, Argentine forces were defeated, and soon after the dictatorship fell.

The conscripts were sent home and, according to Michael, no-one wanted to hear their stories.

“Society looked at us as part of the dictatorship, and the dictatorship looked at us as witnesses of a crime that had to be silenced,” he explained.

The brutality inflicted on civilians by the dictatorship was slowly revealed. Some 30,000 people had disappeared.

But no-one wanted to hear the stories from the conscripts.

Mario Volpe is a veteran, and explains that the military used the law to silence them.

“I was wounded and in a hospital and they came to see me and made me sign a document in which they told me I couldn’t talk about anything that happened,” he said.

He said ordinary people treated them like heroes, the government did not.

According to Cecim, a support group for veterans, the lack of recognition had a devastating effect.

Some 60% of veterans have no stable work, and many have problems with violence and alcohol.

More than 350 have killed themselves since 1982.

‘Time for justice’

Ernesto Alonso, the president of Cecim, says things have improved on the financial front, but much of it has come too late.

All the evidence which has been offered, not only will it not lead to legal satisfaction or the punishing of whoever committed the illegal act, it will also generate an enormous amount of frustration
Cesar Trejo
Committee for the Families of the Fallen

“It’s like a medical emergency. If the doctor gets there in the first 10 minutes he saves your life, after that the complications begin… if they had tried to support us in the first 10 years things would have been different,” he said.

The silence about the abuse was only broken in 2005, with the release of a feature film, Blessed by Fire.

It showed the Argentine public in graphic detail how the conscripts were treated - and led directly to a criminal investigation.

Now 70 former officers face charges of crimes against humanity.

Edgardo Esteban wrote the book on which the film was based.

“Now is the time for justice. Without justice, it’s impossible to reclaim the story of the Malvinas and the heroes who were there and fought with dignity,” he said.

But not all veterans agree.

Cesar Trejo represents the Committee for the Families of the Fallen.

“All the evidence which has been offered, not only will it not lead to legal satisfaction or the punishing of whoever committed the illegal act, it will also generate an enormous amount of frustration,” he said.

He thinks some campaigners have a political axe to grind.

Two women waiting in his office also express doubts about the wisdom of the prosecutions.

“We gain nothing. You have to look to the future and toward the present with love, if not we can’t build anything,” one said.

The other agreed. “I think that God must be the one to judge.”

Michael Savage sees it very differently.

“It’s justice. It’s very edifying for society to look the past in the eyes, for it never to happen again.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8373942.stm

#5

That’s really just a soldier thing.

You have young men full of piss and vinegar and trained, and or willing, to fight and kill.

It can result in fights within the mess, or within a unit, or between units, or between allies.

My father, as an Australian soldier but in civilian clothes, got into a fight with US Marines who were probably going to or coming back from Guadalcanal in WWII, over one of the many stupid incidents which caused thousands of such fights during the war between allies.

I, as an Australian soldier in the early 1970s with a lot of other Australian soldiers, got into a large scale (at least one company against another, with a lot of hangers-on on both sides) confrontation in barracks with a group of other Australian soldiers from our training battalion because we thought, correctly, that they were a bunch of dagoes who would do anything to avoid actually fighting for the country they and their wog families and mates profited from with their Mafia rackets in the licit fish, meat, and vegetable markets and the various illicit markets they controlled, notably drugs. Although the same cunts would kill us for control of their drug and other markets, but not when we were facing them and armed as well as they were, which is why they didn’t push their dago machismo into a fight where they were going to get hurt at least as badly as we were.

#6

Yeah, you are - the British army is completely equal-opportunity about it - any British people in there would have been flattened too. You do get some epic fights if the guys are bored and pissed - the best one I’ve heard of was in the NAAFI at Mount Pleasant, where a rather large fight started one evening. The RAFP/RMP turned up to try and stop it, but after one look decided it was too dangerous so sent the dogs (Alsatians) in first. After the first one came flying out of the window, dead, within 30 seconds of going in they just pulled back and waited for everyone to stop of their own accord.

#7

Now I’m upset.

Hurting, let alone killing, dogs is beyond the pale.

#8

<shrugs> Given that they were apparently taking it on with their bare hands plus anything lying around in the bar (chairs and bottles at a guess - NAAFIs tend to be pretty grim), I figure it was a fair fight.

#9

Yeah, you are - the British army is completely equal-opportunity about it - any British people in there would have been flattened too. You do get some epic fights if the guys are bored and pissed - the best one I’ve heard of was in the NAAFI at Mount Pleasant, where a rather large fight started one evening. The RAFP/RMP turned up to try and stop it, but after one look decided it was too dangerous so sent the dogs (Alsatians) in first. After the first one came flying out of the window, dead, within 30 seconds of going in they just pulled back and waited for everyone to stop of their own accord

Your story seems to be interesting Pdf but I dont know what the heck is NAAFI and RAFP/RMP.

By the way Rising I think your post is quite related with with the thing I am talking about, even a case of extreme disciplinary measures it seems confirms my point. Of course the heavy discipline ( and or abuse if you like) towards the foot soldiers has been quite lessened, at list in our military since 1986/7 or so. By my part I dont feel a lot of sympathy towards the eternal Malvinas complainers so havent anything to add towards the alleged abuse by part of the officers.

Did the argentine soldiers ( wich by the way was an army of occupation, phrase that sound unerving for many even argentines but is still quite accurate ) beated up some Falklander and stole bottles of wine ?

Of course no, well…discipline doest seem too bad to me. And let me add this, the ports of our the entire coast are visited by many navies, peruvian, chilean, brazilian, ecuatorian,etc and even the chileans, wich are not the most cultured, well educated people nor coming from good incomes family, didnt made ever any disrespecful show in argentine like the sorry incident related in my first post.

They now 2 things, if they do they do stuff like that they going to be beat the crap out of them here and again when returning to his fatherland for the poor representation of his flag.

Again discipline, real discipline not excesses doesnt seem to bad.

I am convinced that many of the sorry arrses involved in the topic story who enjoy themselves beating up people who was peacefully eating believe in a corner of their mind they are fighting some kind of nazi or they are still in times of ww2 in wich any misbehavour was seen a just like a 5 yeard old kid game.

#10

NAAFI = Navy Army Air Forces Institute - provide shops, pubs, etc. to British Forces around the world.
RAFP = Snowdrops = Royal Air Force Police.
RMP = Monkeys = Royal Military Police (Army equivalent).

Behaviour of the Argentine forces towards the islanders runs the whole gamut from exemplary through to mock executions. I would point out, however, that most of the conscripts were posted a long way away from habitation (indeed, Goose Green was the only fighting to take place near anything more than about a single house), so the potential for abuse wasn’t great. This also helps to explain much of the abuse reported - the Argentine logistics system wasn’t up to fully supplying the most remote units, at which point the officers/NCOs appear to have grabbed the best of what was available and often left their troops what little was left.

#11

You might have a different view if you’d been a victim of the abuse of which they complain, or accepted their clear evidence and agreed that what was done to them was militarily wrong and stupid, regardless of any greater humanitarian or moral issues.

I don’t propose to revive the disputes about the treatment of the Islanders by the occupiers. That has been done to death in various threads and quarelling about whether or not a bottle of wine was stolen by an Argentinian soldier from an Islander is rather silly when Argentina used all its military forces to try to steal the whole Falklands from Britain.

The Chileans were probably exhausted from the excessive violence of the Shining Path era, which was rather more indiscriminate and vastly more violent than anything the British soldiers did in the Mad Cow bistro.

As indeed was what was done in Argentina by its military forces to its own people before they came up against the British over the Falklands.

The problem with trying to make one nationality worse than another is that all nations are composed of people run by politicians and all politicians are amoral turds who often manage to draw out the worst in their people, so comparisons just end up being who’s less bad rather than who is eternally good, because nobody is eternally good.

I think you can be reasonably confident that representing the flag was not uppermost in the minds of the British soldiers who took apart the Mad Cow.

I think you can be reasonably confident that their minds were not even working all that well.

I am quite confident that they were no more than a bunch of drunken soldiers who were in a fighting mood, which has been the habit of many drunken soldiers since time immemorial.

They are no more representative of Britons or the British Army than the British soccer hooligans who lay waste to parts of Europe are representative of the average Briton or British soccer fan.

#12

Parallels with Italian officers in some units in WWII come to mind, with similar failures to produce a useful and effective military force because the leadership’s arrogance and misconduct discouraged the grunts from fighting for such a shower.

#13

Well, I’m with PK here in seeing a clearly pro-British position.

Your speciesist British anti-dog bias stands out like, well, dogs’ balls.

When was the last time you saw a dog that could hold a chair or bottle, let alone in a fight with, say, a feral drunken squaddie intent on delivering a Liverpool kiss? :wink: :smiley:

#14

All armies have those examples at various times, even in barracks, but even between the wars in the Australian army, and perhaps in many other armies, the ideal when relating to food and water and all other things necessary for military functioning was expressed as:

Horses first.
Men next.
Officers last.

And there were certainly selfless and truly heroic examples of that ideal on the Burma Railway. And also some rather less inspiring, and not publicised, instances there and elsewhere.

#15

I tend to agree on the issue of some italian character of teh officers many of them were half italians.

The Chileans were probably exhausted from the excessive violence of the Shining Path era, which was rather more indiscriminate and vastly more violent than anything the British soldiers did in the Mad Cow bistro.

As indeed was what was done in Argentina by its military forces to its own people before they came up against the British over the Falklands.

The problem with trying to make one nationality worse than another is that all nations are composed of people run by politicians and all politicians are amoral turds who often manage to draw out the worst in their people, so comparisons just end up being who’s less bad rather than who is eternally good, because nobody is eternally good.

Sendero luminoso was a peruvian guerrilla, not chilean, Chile has been a quite trouble free country since the early 1980s.

Agreed with the sencond part of this paragraph.

I think you can be reasonably confident that representing the flag was not uppermost in the minds of the British soldiers who took apart the Mad Cow.

I think you can be reasonably confident that their minds were not even working all that well.

Nor representing the flag, nor fear to any punishment/reprisal , the secpnd is the one that worry me.

You might have a different view if you’d been a victim of the abuse of which they complain, or accepted their clear evidence and agreed that what was done to them was militarily wrong and stupid, regardless of any greater humanitarian or moral issues.

I might.

#16

You’ve never spent time with any drunken soldiers from any country, have you?

#17

Drunken people sometimes, drunken soldiers definately no.

#18

Yeah, it shows. This lot are pretty typical of the breed.

#19

PK, you’re such a wind-up-merchant. :lol:

Once again making what some might consider controvercial and denigrating comments about your pet subject i.e. the British and the British Army. :mrgreen:

Your guys lost in 1982 - get over it ! :lol: :lol: :lol:

#20

The British breed, or just soldiers in general from many nations?