Eduardo & Andy

21^st May, 1982

The soldier lay hidden among a jagged, tangle of sea-scrubbed, grey-green and sodden lumps of spiky tussac grass. Somewhere behind him the first subtle changes in the sky heralded the onset of daylight. He was on the northern edge of the sandy beach, desperately searching the jet-black sea in front of him for his comrades. The previous day’s storm had passed, although the foam-flecked waves still had the power to show their anger at his insolence, in being at that place at that time. 

He’d been there for a considerable time, having been put ashore the previous night. Although cold and wet, he was high with adrenaline-fueled anticipation. He’d trained long and hard, and knew he was at the top of his game ….. “special”, “elite”, one of the few who had made it.

Behind him, to the east a series of low, flat dunes rose from the beach to the headland, no more than a hundred metres above. Approaching through the dunes to the soldier’s left, a solitary figure in military fatigues was on his way to the shoreline. He wasn’t coming to meet him, he wasn’t aware that he was there, his mother tongue wasn’t English. He didn’t want to be there. Conscripted in to the Army, he didn’t like taking orders from officers he considered idiots, missed his mother and hated this god-forsaken, miserable pile of shit in the South Atlantic ….. he simply wanted to go home. Home was a long way to the West, where the rising sun would not cast its warmth for several hours yet.

Each soldier, as many of their comrades did, had a lucky charm, each one in a pocket of their tunics. At times both would either gently caress them or clutch them hard, dependent on circumstance. One, a small, shiny sea-shell from a beach on another continent where the soldier’s father had served in another war. The other a cap badge, the rising sun of a spring-time May, representing his nation’s birth. It had been pressed in to his hand by his Mother as in soul-stricken sadness he had been taken, her only son to go to war.

Only one of the soldiers would eventually walk away from that beach, the other would float, following the golden sun, on its long journey home to the West.

21^st June, 2019

Córdoba lies in the foothills of the Sierras Chicas Mountains in the fertile central region of Argentina. Andy was sitting in the warmth of a small coffee shop a few metres away from the banks of the Rio Primero. It was chilly outside, a bitingly cold south-westerly wind was blowing. It had come a long way, originating in the beautiful, but frozen-wasteland of Antarctica, picking up speed as it hurtled across the South Atlantic, slowing in silent respect, as it whirled around the graves on East Falkland, eventually to make landfall in the southern Argentine states. Andy knew it was the same wind that he’d sheltered from all those years ago, on the beach at San Carlos. He trembled slightly at the thought, of the events of that night and the overwhelming sadness of subsequent years.

A lot had changed in the intervening years, but the process had, without doubt started on that beach. It could have been yesterday that he’d taken the young Argentine’s dog tags and his personal effects concealed in a small plastic bag; stuffing them in his tunic for later examination. How with the excitement of the invasion and all that followed he didn’t get a chance to look at them for several days.  He remembered his shock when he eventually did.

A hand touched him on the shoulder, he looked up from his coffee and as he did so he realized that he was crying. Through the inverted prism of his tears he could see that she was a pretty, young woman in her early twenties. She spoke in Spanish. He assumed she was asking him if he was all right. He mumbled, “lo siento, no hablo español“.  She smiled and said “you’re American, are you ok? I’m sorry but you looked miserable, so upset” …. He explained that he was actually British that his name was Andy Morrison and that he was from Yorkshire in northern England. On an impulse he asked her if she had time to join him for a coffee. She smiled and sat down.

It was probably inevitable that he’d go on to tell her some of the details of why he was there. She was too young to have any memories of the war, but from school and her parents was very much aware of “Islas Malvinas” and the loss of life that had occurred back in 1982. As his story progressed she remained friendly, although clearly saddened at the death of her countryman. “So Andy, why have you come here to Córdoba, and after so many years?”

Pausing to get control of his emotions, he slowly withdrew from his pocket the neatly folded, transparent plastic bag whose contents caused him so much grief. “I’ve come to return this to its owner”. He gently placed it on the table, intently straightening and flattening it. She could see that it contained a DNI, the national ID document used in Argentina, along with photos and some old Argentine peso ley notes.

He told her how several years after the conflict he had tried to contact the family of the dead soldier in order to return the personal effects. How he’d learnt that Eduardo was the only surviving son of his Mother, that her husband had left her shortly after his birth and that he was pre-deceased by his younger sister. How his Mother could not bear his loss, and had died in early 1983. He always imagined that she must have died crying for her lost children, her life, and her unborn grandchildren. “I thought that was the end of the story” he said, “… until I had contact from the CECIM, the Argentine Malvinas Vets association. They told me that Eduardo’s body had been picked up from the sea by the Royal Navy and had, after the conflict eventually been repatriated back to Argentina. For a long time they had been unable to identify him, but eventually using DNA profiling they had got a match”.

“So I resolved to come to Córdoba and visit his grave. He lies beside his Mother and Sister in a small graveyard in Nueva Córdoba.” “Nueva Córdoba?” she repeated back to him “that’s interesting, Nueva Córdoba is one of the more pleasant neighborhoods in the city. Its architecture is actually European, very British, it’s where many of the old English families settled in the early 20^th century”. He looked at her, trying desperately to hold back the tears that slowly formed, gained volume and then slid effortlessly down his cheeks to splash on to the table. “I know”, he said as he took the lovingly, folded DNI out of the plastic folder and laid it out before her. It showed a handsome, young man, really no more than a boy with dark, curly hair and kind eyes. Under the photo it gave his date of birth and address in Córdoba. However it was his name that caught her attention; his name and the awful coincidence that had brought this Englishman from Yorkshire to her country. His name was Eduardo Morrison.