Erstellt am: 16. 3. 2012 - 19:00 Uhr

Roberto Herrscher

Argentinian writer and journalist. At the age of 19 he found himself in the middle of the Falklands War. His reflections 30 years later on this Saturday's Reality Check Special.

Roberto Herrscher is Professor of Journalism at the University of Barcelona. Born and raised in Argentina he was coming to the end of his teenage years in 1982 and was about to finish his year of military service. Then war broke out between Britain and Argentina over the Falklands/Malvinas and he was called up to serve in the Argentine navy. Ahead of the upcoming 30th anniversary of the war, Reality Check's Steve Crilley spoke with Roberto about his recollections of that time.

Steve Crilley: What sticks in your mind about the first few moments of experiencing war?

Roberto Herrscher: I was conscripted into the navy. We were all 19 or 18 and we were not flown into a war but into a place in which a war could happen. For me it was a lot of thinking about war, about violence about danger about the possibility of being killed at 19 – about the possibility of having to kill somebody and live with it. So the first days and weeks were a time of a lot of tension and of thinking about things that you don't normally think of when you are 19. The war was very short, it lasted 74 days, and the first thing that I thought when I came back from the war was that I was ten years older than my friends, in part, because of what I had seen but also because of what I was confronted with inside of myself.

What did you see that really takes you back there sometimes in dark moments?

I was in danger. The boat in which I was, almost sank and it was maddening, the bombs exploding, the sea harriers passing throwing bombs. For me, one of the worst parts had to do with being under bombing and the other thing is, after the war ended, because I had not been in the fox holes and in combat in the mountains ( I was in the capital) and the Argentine soldiers coming down from the mountains. It was terrible. They were wounded, they were mad. I never saw people with eyes like those. I was in the boat that took the wounded to the hospital ship, that was terrible, so much pain, so much suffering, so much madness. It was hard to think of it in any order, it was chaos.

When you were told the war was over – was that it?

At this point I want to be clear that I don’t represent anybody but myself. Some people were shocked and sad and angry because we lost a war. I personally never believed that was a good war – I always thought it was an unnecessary war and I was angry that my country chose to go to war over what I believed then and still believe now, that for us is a piece of land. And so I came back very angry - angry with the dictatorial government, but also with the people that had so happily supported a war without considering the human costs that I had seen and partially suffered.

This war was 30 years ago - is it still affecting your life?

For the newspapers, for television, for the public at large wars end when one of the sides quits or when there’s a truce. But for the people who are there, war never ends. 30 years later both in Argentina and in Britain there’s more veterans who killed themselves – committed suicide after the war than the people who died in the war itself – on both sides. Compared to so many veterans who because of what they experienced and because of other personal and social circumstances were destroyed – mentally, psychologically or physically destroyed by the war. It’s in me but I didn’t suffer that much. I see it as – in a very strange way – as a gift, of having seen history and having seen evil and having passed through that, I have to tell others. Anytime I am with people belonging to a nation that is going to war, that is thinking about attacking another country, I say – "I’m a witness and I passed through that. I know what war is about, think it better" - which I think is one of the things I carry from that experience 30 years ago.

Roberto Herrscher is also author of the book The Voyages of the Penelope, published by Südpol, 2009.

Hear Roberto's interview with Steve Crilley as part of the Reality Check Special: The Falklands/Malvinas or Both.