The Falklands War: The Repatriation of Argentine Prisoners of War

Abstract

The genesis of this article was my relating to a fellow Falklands veteran some 39 years later the experiences of repatriating Argentine POWs, and soon after, taking up his suggestion to ‘commit to paper to add to the “Corporate memory”’. And as I look back and reflect, I see that what we faced was a unique, untried and untested situation for which there was no recent operational precedent. I am not a ‘diary person’, but my memories of these events are still sharp and vivid. And although I now realise with hindsight the challenges and potential pitfalls, at that time it was a matter of just ‘get on and sort it as best we can with what we’ve got’, and yes, with pooling joint experiences and much common military sense, we effectively ‘winged it’, soon hitting on the solution that worked. I also remember well the many debriefs from the hordes of experts that descended on the Canberra during our return voyage home – on the many and varied subjects of battle procedure, weapon and equipment performance, minor tactics, command and control and so on, but strangely, and it never occurred to me at the time, I cannot recall any debrief on POW handling, so maybe these recollections can now be added to all those other official accounts…◼