The Codebreaker Girls – Only 99c!
1 month ago
Showing posts with label Falklands. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Falklands. Show all posts
On June 14 as the defences of Port Stanley faltered and Mount Tumbledown was captured, a ceasefire was declared in the Falklands. On the same day the commander of the Argentine garrison in Stanley, Brigade General Mario Menéndez surrendered to Major General Jeremy Moore.
During the night, Major General Moore sent back the following signal:
Major General Menendez surrendered to to me all the Argentine armed forces in East and West Falkland together with their impedimenta ... The Falkland Islands are once more under the government desired by their inhabitants. God Save the Queen.The casualties were: 255 British deaths, 649 Argentinian (though there is some debate about that) and 3 Falkland Islanders. 11,000 Argentinians surrendered in, apparently, bad state of health and nutrition, giving the British commanders some extra headaches.
It so happens, that I was reading this two days ago as I was finishing Charles Moore's monumental first volume of Margaret Thatcher - the Authorized Biography. A long review will be posted very soon.
On the day in 1982 the Prime Minister announced to a packed House of Commons that a ceasefire has been agreed between the British and the Argentinian forces. Those were the days, when Prime Ministers and members of the Cabinet made important announcements in Parliament not on TV.
Mrs Thatcher told the Commons land forces commander Major-General Jeremy Moore had decided to press forward to the capital last night after a series of successful attacks on enemy troops.
"Large numbers of Argentine soldiers threw down their weapons - there are reported to be flying white flags over Port Stanley," she said.The report goes on:
The prime minister was welcomed outside Downing Street by a jubilant crowd cheering and singing when she returned from Westminster.
Mr Hanrahan - who is with the UK troops close to the frontline - said the Falklands felt strangely quiet after weeks listening to the noise of war.
"The sound of the heavy guns, the bombs, the machine-gunning is gone. The island is still and once again Stanley is under British control," he said.Today, the Metro newspaper and others report that while the Falkland Islands are celebrating the ending of the war and their own liberation, the Argentinian President, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is heading to New York to address the somewhat ridiculous and anachronistic UN Special Committee on Decolonisation (one wonders whether they ever discuss the case of Tibet) on the subject of the Falklands (known to the Argentinians as Las Malvinas) and British "colonization" in 1833. It will be interesting what the UN Special Committee, whose existence will now be better known than it has ever been, will decide.
Meanwhile Tom Chivers, not one of my favourite columnists but talking a reasonable amount of sense for once, asks what exactly is President Fernandez de Kirchner hoping to achieve.
Staying off the internet has its good and bad signs. Not sure where forgetting this anniversary fits. Thirty years ago yesterday Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands. The Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, announces the invasion in the House of Commons.
