Debris of war still litters landscape of Falklands

Press, 4 February 1987, Page 20

Debris of war still litters landscape of Falklands

By

CHRIS PETERSON,

of Reuters, in Port Stanley

Nearly five years after British troops drove occupying Argentine forces off the disputed Falkland Islands, the legacy of war remains. The capital is dotted with wrecked trucks and LandRovers, while the civilian airfield bears witness to repeated attacks by British Harrier jump jets. An Argentine-built Pucara ground attack plane still sits forlornly near the end of the runway, riddled with cannon shell holes and minus its tail assembly. Thousands of containers used by. both armies to bring in supplies lie rusting around the perimeter. A flight over the rolling countryside past the battlefields of Mount Kent and Tumbledown Mountain shows the wrecks of Argentine Air Force Chinook and Puma helicopters, caught on the ground by roving British Harriers in 1982. In Bluff Cove, a British Navy

landing craft slowly rusts as it lies stranded on a beach. British army engineers are slowly clearing the debris in an operation codenamed “Flogger,” shipping out re-usable parts, auctioning some to the islanders, and burying the rest in a disused, quarry on the edge of Port Stanley airfield. The debris contrasts with junk of an earlier generation — Port Stanley harbour is littered with hulks of ships from the last century, barques and grain ships now used for storage after running into trouble rounding Cape Horn. But it is on the newly-built highway leading from Port Stanley to the new military barracks' and airfield at Mount Pleasant that the real danger still lurks. Dotted along the $NZ14.25 million highway are what appear to be standard roadsigns, until the traveller looks closer. In the centre of the triangle is a skull

and crossbones, carrying underneath the legend “SLOW MINEFIELD.” Off to the side of the road lie fenced off Argentine minefields, each containing either anti-per-sonnel mines designed to maim rather than kill or mines designed to blast a 70-tonne tank into the air. All are made of plastic, difficult to detect with conventional equipment. In the months after the war, two British Army mine disposal experts were seriously wounded attempting to clear such mines and a Gurkha soldier was killed by a booby-trapped ammunition box. Now official policy is to leave the minefields fenced off and only dispose of ordnance that can be seen.

"Until we can find a 100 per cent way of clearing minefields, people will have to stay out,” the British Defence Secretary, Mr George Younger, said on a recent visit to. the islands.