UK officer gives names back to Argentina’s fallen in the Falklands

AS GEOFFREY CARDOZO took off from the Falkland Islands in 1983, the young British Army officer departed with a niggling sadness that his task was incomplete.

He had arrived in the aftermath of the fighting and spent months trying to collect and identify the bodies of the Argentine war dead found on the Islands’ windswept battlefields.

In an era before DNA tests, and without dental records or often identity tags, it was frequently an impossible job. Despite months of careful work, many of the bodies that were eventually buried in the Islands’ Argentine military cemetery bore plaques simply stating “Argentine soldier known unto God”.

Yet 35 years later, the retired colonel will tomorrow return to the Falklands alongside hundreds of relatives of the Argentine dead, after Red Cross forensic experts were able to build on his painstaking efforts to formally identify 90 bodies.

His compassion for the dead of his former enemy and his efforts to ensure that parents should know where their sons are buried have led to the 68-year- old being feted in Argentina. He and the relatives will take rare direct flights from Argentina to the Islands to the cemetery near Darwin to see the anonymous plaques replaced with names.

“I would have never imagined 35 years later that we would achieve this kind of success,” he said. “It’s formidable, miraculous.”

The Royal Dragoon Guards officer had arrived in the aftermath of the fighting to find himself tasked with looking after discipline, but also dealing with Argentine bodies.

In all, 649 Argentine and 255 British soldiers, sailors and airmen died in the 10-week war. Supervised Argentine prisoners were at first responsible for collecting and burying their dead. But after they went home, bodies kept being found almost daily, mainly by engineers trying to make the island safe.

The bodies were at first “summarily buried” in temporary graves where they could be found and retrieved later. When the Argentine government refused to repatriate any of the bodies, arguing they were already on Argentine soil, Margaret Thatcher decided to place them in a purpose-built cemetery.

Col Cordozo, who left the Army in 2004, was given the job of organising it, and collecting all the bodies. His careful records of which remains were found where, as well as his far-sighted decision to bury each body in three body bags, meant that when the forensic experts exhumed the bodies last year, they were able to identify them from DNA evidence.

He said: “At the time, I realised, God, we are not going to be able to identify half these guys. I have got to wrap them up not in just one body bag, I have got to put them in three body bags so that they will perhaps be preserved for the