1982: Falklands War - Inside Stanley After Argentine Defeat — Transcript

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1. 0:04it was difficult to accept in those
2. 0:06first daylight hours looking at the
3. 0:08state of port stanley that the
4. 0:10argentines had been here for less than
5. 0:12three months
6. 0:13and that the british landing was less
7. 0:15than a month ago
8. 0:17stanley looked and felt as if it had
9. 0:20been at war so much longer
10. 0:23and it was obvious from what they'd
11. 0:25brought with them that the argentines
12. 0:27thought they'd come to stay
13. 0:29even to the point of renaming streets
14. 0:31and buildings in spanish for the
15. 0:33convenience of their troops
16. 0:35thankfully the royal marines quickly
17. 0:37began to put things right
18. 0:39men who had been here when the
19. 0:40argentines invaded on april the second
20. 0:42and had defended government house
21. 0:44returned there that first morning of
22. 0:46peace and raised the flag over the
23. 0:49building they tried so hard to defend
24. 1:00it is easy to criticize an enemy in
25. 1:03defeat easy to believe the half truths
26. 1:05that were rapidly beginning to circulate
27. 1:07around stanley
28. 1:09but it is true to say that the
29. 1:11argentines have not left the capital as
30. 1:14they found it
31. 1:15their filth and vandalism is everywhere
32. 1:18it looked as if they'd been under siege
33. 1:20for 12 months instead of two
34. 1:23proper hygiene must have been difficult
35. 1:24in a garrison of seven or more thousand
36. 1:26men
37. 1:27but it wasn't helped by turning the
38. 1:29floor of the post office into a public
39. 1:31lavatory with three months excreta to be
40. 1:34hosed away by stanley's fire brigade
41. 1:43and the narrow streets were used as much
42. 1:45as rubbish dumps as thoroughfares with
43. 1:47rotting food and unwanted discarded
44. 1:49equipment littering the gutters
45. 1:52the argentines had an odd way of
46. 1:54impressing the falklanders to the
47. 1:55argentine way of life
48. 1:59but the argentine cause is not helped by
49. 2:02our confirmation that they placed one of
50. 2:03their most lethal weapons the 155
51. 2:06millimeter long-range guns deliberately
52. 2:09in between people's houses knowing how
53. 2:11loath the british would be to fire back
54. 2:14on them
55. 2:15the argentine cause can't have been
56. 2:17helped by placing their anti-aircraft
57. 2:19guns in the school playground
58. 2:21it cannot be helped by painting the red
59. 2:23cross on a white background on any house
60. 2:26that suited them
61. 2:27they knew of course that it is the
62. 2:30internationally respected symbol of
63. 2:31immunity the protection from attack and
64. 2:34yet they painted it on houses in which
65. 2:35they garrisoned their senior officers
66. 2:38and on houses in which they stored
67. 2:40ammunition
68. 2:41the school itself had been turned into
69. 2:44an arms dump
70. 2:45there has to be something in the geneva
71. 2:47convention or some such code of war
72. 2:50that forbids it
73. 2:58the weapons of war are stacking high and
74. 3:00as one pile is gathered up and stored
75. 3:02away so another takes its place a lot
76. 3:04will be destroyed but what is in good
77. 3:06condition will become ours to use
78. 3:16as one british army officer put it to me
79. 3:18the argentine junta must be made to lose
80. 3:21money as well as face
81. 3:25certainly their falklands expedition is
82. 3:27going to cost them
83. 3:28their garrison was well stocked and when
84. 3:30we realized what had been available to
85. 3:32them we were grateful that the only
86. 3:34thing they lacked was the will to fight
87. 3:46you