On the first day of the occupation, Governor Hunt and officials from the
Foreign Office were removed from the islands by the Argentine forces and sent to
Montevideo,
Uruguay. Argentine troops took over control of the Falkland Islands Broadcasting Studio when Patrick Watts was live on air. Rodney Hutchings, a former school-teacher from Britain that had only recently settled in Teal Inlet with his wife and son, recalls the sudden influx of Stanley residents seeking refuge in the settlement: Argentina used
Spanish while on the islands, including the use of
Puerto Argentino, the Argentine name for
Port Stanley. Vehicles were told to
drive on the right, with painted arrows on the road indicating the direction of traffic. Street signs and
traffic signs were changed accordingly, including the use of the metric system. The Argentinian captain
Barry Melbourne Hussey, who was chosen for a position in the administration due to his knowledge and experience of English, asserted safety as a major concern, during discussions with the
Falkland Islanders: "Which would you prefer, that our eighteen-year-old conscripts, with their big lorries, should try to drive on the left, or that you, with your little vehicles, change to the right?". Outside of Stanley, most roads were single track anyway and some islanders refused to observe the new rule and continued to drive on the left. Other acts of
civil disobedience included Reg Silvey (
lighthouse keeper and
ham radio enthusiast) broadcasting clandestine radio messages throughout the occupation. The restrictions imposed by the military government became steadily worse – identification papers, curfews, compulsory blackouts, confiscation of radios and cameras, requisitioning of Land-Rover 4x4 vehicles and soldiers breaking into abandoned houses to steal furniture to use as firewood. Throughout the occupation, Phil Middleton and Steve Whitley would visit the abandoned houses to make sure they were not being vandalized but would also use these inspections as a cover to photograph Argentine positions. According to Port Stanley resident John Pole Evans, Argentine Air Force
Pucarás conducted napalm bombings on 21 April near Stanley as a show of force that coincided with General Cristino Nicolaides's visit as commander of the Argentine Army's 1st Corps that included the 10th Infantry dug around the Falklands capital: "We knew what sort of damage they could do, because during April whilst we were still in our homes, they'd bombed the Tussac Island in the harbour with napalm and it burned for a couple of days. This was like a warning of what they were capable of—that they could destroy the settlement if they wanted to. For them it was probably just some sort of target practice." Residents considered critical of the Argentines were expelled from the islands. This included
Bill Luxton whose family had been resident in the Falklands since the 1840s and the editor of the Falkland Islands Times David Colville. This proved embarrassing in the international press and so 14 residents of Stanley considered to be potential
troublemakers were imprisoned and were sent to
Fox Bay East and placed under
house arrest. On 1 May, a Royal Air Force Vulcan bomber from Ascension Island attacked the airbase at Port Stanley before dawn. Royal Navy Sea Harriers attacked Port Stanley and Goose Green airbases at dawn. The bombing led to the Argentines authorities and local civilians organising civil defence in the Falklands capital and several robust houses were designated
Defensa Aerea Pasiva (Air Raid Shelters). During the occupation, 114 inhabitants of
Goose Green were imprisoned in the social hall until released by the British following the
Battle of Goose Green. Lieutenant-Colonel
Ítalo Piaggi, the Commanding Officer of the Argentine 12th Infantry Regiment, claimed that the lockdown in Goose Green was to protect the locals from attack by enraged
Argentine Air Force personnel following the 1 May Sea Harrier strike. According to local farm manager Eric Goss: According to Brook Hardcastle, the general manager of the Falkland Island Company (FIC) based at Goose Green: On 4 May the British destroyer HMS Sheffield was hit by air-launched Exocet missile south-east of Falklands and a Sea Harrier was shot down over Goose Green. Eric Goss remembers the shocking news that day and having to intervene to save a local from potential harm: On 6 May, Major Alberto Frontera (second-in-command 12th Regiment) in the presence of the civil affairs officer Captain Arnaldo Sanchez and the Regimental Medical Officer, Senior Lieutenant Juan Carlos Adjigogovich, visited the social hall to ensure the confined senior citizens, Mr and Mrs Anderson and Mr and Mrs Fynleyson, were managing under the circumstances. The Regimental Medical Officer and an air force medical officer, First Lieutenant Fernando Miranda-Abós regularly visited the social hall with Adjigogovich reporting, "We set up the clinic in one of the local houses. We tried to have a good relationship with them but they looked at us with suspicion. There was a daily medical review and every time they needed a doctor they were attended. I don't know how they managed before we arrived, because they called us quite often, practically every day, for whatever reason." The medical officer in the book Partes de Guerra (Graciela Speranza, Fernando Cittadini, p. 42, Editorial Norma, 1997) also describes how the infrastructure of Goose Green broke under the strain of accommodating nearly 1,000 soldiers and local civilians and the British air attacks and naval bombardments that followed. On 21 May, the Argentine command in Port Stanley sent out a civil affairs team, under Colonel Horacio Chimeno and Captain Esteban Eduardo Rallo to discuss the safety of civilians and to build shelters. Eric Goss again: "I told them to begin this process they should let the civilians go to their homes. I explained that all the eggs were effectively in one basket and that if we were to spread around the settlement then, if the worst happened, some of us would have a chance of survival. In the following days a number of civilians - my family included - were able to move back home." During the meeting with Vicecomodoro Wilson Rosier Pedrozo in attendance, it was agreed that air force personnel, that were largely inactive after the Pucara ground-attack aircraft had been withdrawn elsewhere, should form a military police unit to protect the local houses from vandalism after complaints had reached Monsignor Daniel Spraggon in the Falklands capital that the soldiers had started to smash furniture in order to apparently keep warm at night. According to David Colville from Port Stanley, the Argentine military expelled 52 schoolchildren from the Falklands capital and turned the playground of the school into a compound for
drilling troops. The Argentine Air Force took over the Stanley Schoolhouse Building with one room serving as the
Centro de Información y Control (Command & Control Centre) under Comodoro (Wing-Commander) Alberto Américo Catalá and another becoming the joints headquarters of the air force, army and marine anti-aircraft batteries. The
Argentine peso replaced the
Falkland Islands pound and stamps were overfranked with an "Islas Malvinas" postmark and an
Argentine postcode, 9409. Bill Etheridge was the Postmaster and continued to operate with his staff under the supervision of Everto Hugo Caballero of the
La Empresa Nacional de Correos y Telégrafos (ENCOTEL, National Post Office & Telecommunications Company). The Postmaster recalls: Caballeros was no fan of the military junta, did not approve of the occupation and respected his new colleague Bill. "When all this is over," he told the Islander, "you must come and visit me and we'll have happier times." On 26 May, with Port Louis, on northeastern East Falkland, already under direct observation from British Special Forces established ashore, the 601st Combat Aviation Battalion was advised that a minor, 11-year-old Allan Steel, from the settlement was suffering from a life-threatening-medical-condition and needed urgent evacuation to King Edward Memorial Hospital (KEMH) to undergo emergency surgery. Under the instruction from General Mario Menéndez, a Huey helicopter was soon prepared and piloted by Lieutenant Héctor Molina, with co-pilot and mechanic Corporal Roberto López and army surgeon Ricardo Rojas aboard. They lifted off from Stanley Racecoursce and flew as low as possible along the coastline to avoid detection from British warships. They reached their destination and brought the sick child back to Stanley, saving his life, for which he thanked all involved in his rescue in a series of emails in 2012.
Treatment of islanders The Argentine military police arrived on the islands with detailed files on many islanders. One of their first actions was to arrest and deport noted critics of links to Argentina including David Colville, and
Bill Luxton and his family. Such deportations proved internationally embarrassing, as Bill Luxton gave numerous interviews on his deportation, and subsequently detainees were imprisoned at
Fox Bay. Berazay also claimed in
Compañía Policía Militar 181: Síntesis de su participación en Malvinas (La Gaceta Malvinense, 2003) that no more than 10 civilian houses were broken into in Port Stanley thanks to the efforts of his men. Les Harris, a Port Stanley resident, describes a typical incident involving two conscripts that had broken into his property: Susan Betts from Pebble Island Settlement recalls the plight of the conscripts and life under armed guard while confined with the rest of the local civilians in the farm manager's house following the Special Air Service raid in the nearby airfield on the night of 14/15 May: Comodoro Carlos Bloomer-Reeve, chief of the Secretariat of the new occupation forces, in conjunction with Navy Captain Barry Melbourne Hussey and Monsignor Daniel Spraggon were instrumental in avoiding conflict with the Argentine military. Bloomer-Reeve had previously lived on the islands between 1975 and 1976, when he ran the
LADE operation in
Stanley and had great affection for the islanders. In an interview with Michael Bilton and Peter Kosminsky for their documentary The Falklands War: The Untold Story (1987), retired Brigadier-General Mario Benjamin Menéndez would tell both British journalists, "There was intense patrolling by our military police and a very strict discipline to ensure that soldiers could not move individually around Puerto Argentino. There were courts martial that sentenced officers and soldiers who had violated these norms. Compensation was paid for anything lost or stolen. I remember that we even paid compensation for a cat which was run over by a military truck. The houses, jeeps and tractors that we used were not requisitioned, they were rented." Official posters also appeared in the main buildings of Port Stanley, ordering the soldiers to keep the Falklands clean with the slogan
MALIMA – short for
Mantenga Limpia Malvinas and a bin illustration with Ron Buckett the head of transport, soon drawing over a poster a diminutive local with customary woollen hat and wellington boots with a stump of a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, kicking an Argentine soldier towards a Royal Marine who in turn kicks the soldier into the bin. Buckett would make several photocopies of the altered poster and have them placed all over the Falklands capital. There was no widespread abuse of the population. After the war it was found that even the islanders' personal food supplies and stocks of alcohol were untouched, and Brigadier-General Menéndez, the Argentine governor of the Islands, had made it clear from the start that he would not engage in any combat in Stanley itself. However, in the last day of battle, Private Santiago Carrizo of the 3rd Regiment described how a platoon commander ordered them to take up positions in the houses and "if a
Kelper resists, shoot him", though the entire company did nothing of the kind. There was also no wholesale confiscation of private property during the occupation, but had the islanders refused to sell, the goods in question would have been taken anyway. However, Argentine officers did steal civilian property at
Goose Green following the detention of the civilian population, although they severely punished any conscripts that did the same. == Liberation ==