Revisiting the Past, Narrating War Memories: Retelling the Falklands War in A Soldier’s Song

Andrea Bellot

doi:10.31178/ubr.11.1.1

Abstract

Private Ken Lukowiak was a member of the Second Battalion Parachute Regiment (2 PARA) of the British Army deployed to the Falkland Islands for the 1982 British-Argentine conflict. The veteran’s creative drive motivated him into writing down his memories, and writing helped him overcome his war traumas. This paper seeks to explore Lukowiak’s memoir as a work offering an alternative retelling of the Falklands War, based on a deep emotional framework, in contrast to the narrative of heroism favoured by mass media. His personal account emphasizes the psychological distress and detachment of a soldier in opposition to the supposedly exemplary and outstanding behaviour of troops as often portrayed in mainstream journalism during and after the armed conflict.

Highlights

Private Ken Lukowiak was a member of the Second Battalion Parachute Regiment (2 PARA) of the British Army deployed to the Falkland Islands for the 1982 British-Argentine conflict
Private Ken Lukowiak’s case provides a good example of the use of writing as a form of therapy. He underwent a long period of depression and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), yet the veteran's creative drive motivated him to write down his memories, to help him overcome his war traumas
The readers discover that war has been for Lukowiak, for a long time, a ‘job to be done’, for which he was ‘conditioned to behave’ through training that creates automatic killing routines, erases questioning, and focuses on the “hows” and prohibits the “whys.” But eventually, the human side always reappears, either in the form of compassion, or madness or by veterans ending up in a berserk state

Summary

Introduction

Private Ken Lukowiak was a member of the Second Battalion Parachute Regiment (2 PARA) of the British Army deployed to the Falkland Islands for the 1982 British-Argentine conflict. Memory and the fact of writing war recollections are central elements to overcome war-related traumas since the representational anxieties will function to vocalise the veterans’ struggle with the past as a way to challenge the unbridgeable gap between language and the reality of war.

Results

Conclusion