Falklander Islander Graham Bound on the dangerous and comic ways in which islanders resisted the Argentinean occupation
Monday February 25, 2002
For the people of the Falklands, occupation was at best demeaning, at worst terrifying. Islanders were under the heel of a foreign dictatorship, which had so far generally behaved with moderation, but in whose armoury summary arrest, terror and even murder were known weapons. Nicolas Kasanzew, an Argentinian journalist on the islands who allied himself with puppy-like loyalty to the hardline faction, probably represented their attitude accurately when he wrote: “The Kelpers [the Argentinians’ favoured name for islanders] were our arch-enemies. From the first moment, I felt they were going to be fifth columnists. I was not mistaken. They are basically shepherds; primitive in their way of life. In their character and their appearance, they are hybrids. Their attitude towards Argentina was absolutely negative. Kelpers, like the English, respect nothing except force.”
Kasanzew was right in one respect: the islanders refused to accept Argentinian rule, and many of them went to great lengths to make the occupiers’ lives as miserable as possible and to assist the British task force. Resistance ranged from the comic - Eric Goss, the farm manager at Goose Green, managing to persuade the Argentinians that the odd lights probably emanating from British special forces in Falkland Sound were due to moonlight reflecting off seaweed covered rocks - to the downright dangerous: Reginald Silvey, the former lighthouse keeper, spent the war broadcasting details of Argentinian troop movements on an illegal-held radio. At the perilous extreme, several fully-armed local men went into battle with the men of the parachute regiment at Mount Longdon.
Some key workers who stayed at their posts in Stanley struggled with the ambiguity of their situation. But knowing that the town (still home to hundreds of islanders) could only function if local people continued to run the town’s water and electricity services, they resigned themselves to working for a new boss in the public works department (PWD), the army engineer Colonel Manuel Dorrego. Although the occupiers benefited from their services, the engineers, mechanics and technicians made it clear that they were working for their own people and they drew the line at work that was purely for the benefit of the military.
Ron Buckett, the head of the plant and transport authority a grand title for the PWD’s motley collection of Land Rovers, tractors, trucks and excavators, conveyed this message to Colonel Dorrego in no uncertain terms. Initially Bucket and his staff of mechanics distributed Land Rovers to locals wanting to leave Stanley for the farms. Other vehicles they secretly disabled, while a few were kept in good running order for the hospital and power and water staff.
Some of those involved in the informal civil defence organisation kept themselves busy in quieter periods by designing and photocopying flyers that ridiculed the Argentinians. When official posters appeared around town urging troops to keep the town clean by using wastebins marked “Malima” (Mantenga Limpia Malvinas - keep the Malvinas clean), Buckett came up with his own variation. His cartoon depicted a diminutive local in woolly hat and wellington boots, with the stump of a fag hanging out of his mouth, kicking an Argentinian soldier towards a British Marine, who in turn booted the man into a Malima bin. Photocopied under the nose of Colonel Manuel Dorrego in the PWD, the flyers were pinned to walls and lampposts around the town. As quickly as they were removed, more would appear. Another common poster depicted the cartoon dog Snoopy dancing ecstatically, above the words “Happiness is being British”.
Phil Middleton was one of the British government officers who had fallen in love with the islands and decided to stay on while the rest of the British contingent left. In the days following the invasion, he would work with Steve Whitley, the vet, to secure the property abandoned by those British officials who had left in a hurry. Furniture and clothes were piled into garages and sheds, while the contents of deep-freezes and liquor cabinets were distributed among remaining families. Even some invasion clouds had silver linings. The house clearers were normally just a step or two ahead of the Argentinian army, who considered the abandoned government homes to be fair game. The Argentinians generally saw Middleton, Whitley and their colleagues as harmless. But in fact they were indulging in some dangerous mischief.
“Steve had his ‘magic scissors’, a gelding tool that he used to cut the army telephone wires,” recalls Middleton. “Every time we went into a house that we knew the Argentinians were about to take over we would walk around and make sure it was all right. Snip, snip!” The house-clearing missions were also a cover for photographing Argentinian defences. “I remember sitting in the front seat of the Land Rover,” says Middleton, “and suddenly this lens would appear over my shoulder or under my armpit. Steve would be in the back taking pictures.”
Whitley was by no means the only per son with a concealed camera, but he was one of the boldest. Terry Peck, the islands’ former police chief who would later act as a guide for the British land forces, walked the town with a Russian telephoto camera concealed in a length of drainpipe. Locals who saw him thought this was odd, but then these were very odd times. His pictures of anti-aircraft missile sites were smuggled out and later reappeared in the hands of army and air force intelligence officers.
Radio communications were a vital adjunct to island life. In 1982 the manually-operated telephone system radiated only a short distance from Stanley, and hundreds of islanders on West Falkland and the tiny island farms relied on the government-administered radio-telephone system. Two days after the invasion, an amateur “ham” operator began a series of clandestine transmissions which he would continue, often at great risk, for the duration of the occupation.
When ham radio operator Bob North, a debt controller in North Yorkshire, heard a south Atlantic call sign crackling faintly through his headphones he reacted with great excitement. “It was about 20.00 GMT,” he recalled, “two days after the invasion. I heard a station trying to contact me with a VP8 call sign. I suddenly realised that this could be in the Falkland Islands. I told the VP8 to repeat his call, which he did, telling me that his call sign was VP8QE, his name was Reg, and that he was in Port Stanley. Could I get some urgent messages through to his relations?” Eight thousand miles away in a small stone cottage, lighthousekeeper Reginald Silvey, redundant since the invading forces extinguished his paraffin light on Cape Pembroke, was taking the first step of a defiant campaign that would increasingly frustrate the Argentinian forces. Alone in his house, Silvey was reasonably sure he would not be disturbed, but took a risky measure to give him a little more security. He got hold of a notice, signed by the Argentinian governor, General Menendez, indicating that the house had been cleared by the military police and should not be entered by Argentinian forces. The notices had been produced on Stanley’s ancient printing press for official use, but, thanks to a casual run-on, extra copies were circulating. Nevertheless, Argentinian signals troops searched with increasing frustration for the source of the radio transmissions.
Following his initial contact, North listened out dutifully on the 19-metre band and was delighted when the faint signal from the Falklands again crackled into his headphones. This time the transmission was brief, anonymous and very serious. North was to inform the Ministry of Defence that Stanley airport (clearly visible a few miles away from Silvey’s upstairs window) was occupied by Argentinian troops and it was being used to receive supplies and ammunition. There were no islanders in the area and it could be safely attacked.
Silvey had crossed into serious spying and all the dangers that went with it. The information he was sending to Britain was of real value and the Argentinians were aware that someone was transmitting. To minimise the chances of the direction-finding vans locating him, Silvey transmitted in short bursts.
The next night the voice from the Falklands began listing numbers and abbreviations that North did not understand. Silvey curtly told him to note them anyway and pass the information on to the ministry, where they would be understood. The letters were obvious abbreviations for weaponry (“AA” signified anti-aircraft emplacements), and numbers were map coordinates taken from a large-scale map of Stanley that the authorities, gathering all available information about Stanley, would certainly have. He recalled the transmissions with satisfaction. “I told them the Argentinians had an anti-aircraft missile launcher by the gate leading west from Stanley out towards the Stone Corral. Harriers attacked that, and I would like to think that that was because I gave them the coordinates.”
Silvey was never arrested. He was not even subject to the arbitrary arrest and house searches that plagued so many citizens of Stanley. He continued to be a thorn in the side of the Argentinians, tying up their valuable assets, until the very end of the war.
