Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

ARGENTINA: Survivors of Warship Wreck Welcome Nat’l Geo Expedition

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 18 2003 (IPS) - A majority of the survivors of the 1982 sinking of the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano by the British navy support the National Geographic Society’s search for the wreck in the south Atlantic.

Marcelo Pozzo, one of the survivors of the May 2, 1982 attack, which occurred during the war over the Malvinas/Falkland Islands, told IPS that opinions were divided when the captain of the warship, Héctor Bonzo, consulted survivors and the families of survivors and victims about the project six months ago.

”Nearly half of those who had been there would have preferred for the remains not to be disturbed, but a majority of us wanted to know what state the ship was left in. The truth is that it is an excellent and serious project,” he said.

Pozzo was completing his compulsory military service when the 1976-1983 Argentine military dictatorship attempted to take the Malvinas/Falkland Islands, which were occupied by Britain in the early 19th century.

He is now an information technology manager in a company of British origin. ”Several British people in the company have apologised to me when they found out I was a survivor of the Belgrano,” he said.

Every year on May 2nd, Pozzo gets together with other survivors, their families, and the relatives of those who died.

But in his interview with IPS, there was no sense of bitterness or resentment as he recalled the moment when the ship was hit by the first torpedo. Although he suffered burns on several parts of his body, he was able to make it to a life-raft.

The Belgrano was sunk by two torpedos fired by the British nuclear submarine Conqueror one month after the start of the war over the islands located off the coast of Argentina.

In the attack, 323 of the crew of 1,093 went down with the ship – nearly half of the total Argentine casualties in the 10-week war.

The Belgrano, formerly the USS Phoenix, survived the Dec. 7, 1941 Japanese air strike on Pearl Harbour and several other World War II battles before it was sold by the United States to the Argentine navy in 1951.

National Geographic’s aim is to locate the ship and film a TV documentary, a spokeswoman for the Society, Margarita Harris, told IPS.

But she clarified that if it is successful in finding the wreck, the expedition will honour the site as a war grave, and its unmanned submarine will lay a plaque to the dead.

The Belgrano was tracked by the Conqueror and sunk as it headed towards the Malvinas/Falkland Islands, some 170 kms from Isla de los Estados (Staten Island), which belongs to Tierra del Fuego, Argentina’s southernmost province.

The Argentine navy and the National Geographic Society believe the wreck lies 4,200 metres down in international waters.

In 1985, a National Geographic expedition found the remains of the Titanic, the famous British luxury liner that sank in the north Atlantic in 1912 after hitting an iceberg, taking down 1,500 of the 2,200 people on board.

It was also National Geographic explorers who in 1989 found the Bismarck, a German battleship sunk by the British navy in 1941, during World War II, off the coast of Ireland. Only 115 of the ship’s crew of 2,200 survived.

The difference between the two earlier cases and today’s search for the Belgrano is that the Argentine survivors are still young, and the loss is still fresh for the families of those who went down with the ship.

Nevertheless, Victoria Gómez, who lost her 22-year-old son, José Luis, a second corporal, wants the expedition to go ahead.

”I found out that he was calm and that he made it into a life-raft,” she told IPS. ”But the anchor apparently knocked into the raft and dragged them down with the ship.

”Every day I feel as if it happened just yesterday. It is a pain that never goes away, but I am curious to learn more about what happened,” she said. ”There are mothers who don’t even want to talk about it, but I prefer to know more, and I want there to be many of us who remember what happened, because it would be even sadder if it were forgotten.”

José Luis Gómez’s mother frequently sees Luis Gauna, another survivor, who works as an ambulance driver today.

Gauna, 40, is excited by the idea that explorers might locate the wreck. ”My dream was that just as they found the Titanic and the Bismarck, they would also go after our boat,” he commented to IPS.

”When I found out about the planned expedition, I got goosebumps, because although it is hard to believe, it was a very positive experience for me. Since then, I try to live my life to the fullest,” he said.

However, Gauna admitted that the first few months were not easy, because the parents of three of his buddies who did not make it kept trying to reach him by phone to ask what he knew about them.

”I couldn’t even talk to the parents, because I saw two of my friends getting into life-rafts, but they never appeared again, and I heard that another one died because there were too few people in his raft and a wave must have knocked it over,” he added.

Not until a year ago did he finally make contact with the parents of one of his friends, Fabián Sosa, through Gómez’s mother.

”It was a relief. They showed me photos of their son when he was little, and they also had clippings from the newspapers from the time when the journalists were interviewing me. I also told them about the pain I felt over losing my friend Fabián,” he told IPS with a broken voice.

After the ship was hit, Gauna helped several of the injured, and survived hours of being knocked about in the raft by huge waves in an ice-cold sea. When they were finally rescued, some of the men’s legs were frozen.

Former conscript Alfredo Nuñez, now a 41-year-old lawyer, remarked to IPS that he was grateful for the experience. ”God gave me another chance at life, and since then I have tried to take full advantage of it.”

Nuñez was just 18 when he set sail on the Belgrano. At the moment of the attack, ”I was resting, and I was flung from my bunk by the impact of the first torpedo.

”In the drills, they told us which life-raft each of us was assigned to, and instructed us to carry the bare minimum. But I didn’t want to leave behind gifts I had received, or my books, and I stuffed my bag full,” he said, smiling over his youthful mischief.

”When I went up on deck, it was total chaos, and my superior shouted at me to throw the bag in the water. I had to do it, with great regret,” he added.

”We saw our companions coming up in flames from the engine room, which was hit by the torpedo. Many of them just jumped directly into the water. It was really sad,” he remembered.

The first raft that Nuñez climbed into was broken. Frightened of being sucked under by the sinking ship, he and his buddies swam a few metres to another raft. Nearly frozen by the time they got there, they found it had been punctured, and was deflating. Finally they made it to a third raft.

”Then something very, very sad happened….Since there were too many people on board, a non-commissioned officer gave the order not to let anybody else on even though there were still three seamen in the water,” he recalled.

”It was tough, but logical too, because there were already 20 of us in the raft. We had to leave them there even though they were begging us, and were shouting to us ‘for the love of my mother, don’t leave us here’.”

Another unforgettable moment for Núñez and his companions came when they heard, in the distance, the siren of the Aviso Gurruchaga, the Argentine boat that saw the smoke signals and came to rescue the men in the rafts.

Ten days later Nuñez was back home. ”It was like a ghost had returned, since my family didn’t even know whether or not I was alive because there was so little information, and several crew members with the same last name.”

Now Nuñez and other survivors are getting ready to see what became of the ship in which they experienced the most traumatic event of their lives.