No Man is an Island: Reflections on the Battlefield Landscapes of the Falklands-Malvinas War

Abstract

There were two sets of Falkland Islands fought over in 1982. To the British, including the islanders, they were of course the Falklands, but to the Argentines they were the Malvinas. Some in the British military thought the islands were off the coast of Scotland when they first heard of them, in most cases just before deployment. By way of contrast, Argentine troops had grown up believing they were part of their birth right stolen from them by British ‘pirates’. But how did troops on the ground view the islands when they were up close and personal with them, when the islands formed the battlefields over which they fought? During the Falklands-Malvinas War the surface of the land was bombed, it was shelled, it was picked apart and dug into to create fortifications, minefields and graves, and in places it still carries those scars. Drawing on the experience of four visits since 2012, eyewitness accounts and memoirs, military records and archaeological remains, this article explores the islands as both imaginary spaces and as an environment in which men strove to fight the elements and one another, and in doing so presents a fresh perspective on the relationship between people and places in time of war.