7 May 2017
The minefields laid in the
Falkland Islands were intended to kill or maim British soldiers, but over the
last 35 years they have become de facto nature reserves for penguins. For
better or worse, however, the time has now come for their home to be demined,
reports Matthew Teller.
I'm following a crunching gravel
path leading up over a headland.
To one side stretches a sweeping
curve of white sand, backed by tussocky dunes, the coarse grass mixed with a
low-growing plant bearing tartly sweet red berries that the locals call
diddle-dee.
But it's the sound that startles.
Overlaying the booming ocean is a comical honking noise coming from thousands
of Magellanic penguins. One, guarding its burrow beside the path, stretches its
neck up at me, then lets out an ear-splitting, wing-waggling bray of
displeasure.
The beach, also dotted with
waddling clusters of Gentoo penguins, looks tempting, but between me and the
birds stretches a barbed-wire fence marked with signs warning of danger.
This is Yorke Bay, just outside
Stanley, capital of the Falkland Islands. Once a popular leisure beach, it was
here, at 04:30 on the morning of 2 April 1982, that Argentine naval commandos
landed, marking the start of a full-scale invasion.
By the time British forces retook
Stanley 74 days later, 907 people had lost their lives, most of them Argentine
conscripts.
During the occupation, one of the
Argentine military's first actions was to lay tens of thousands of land mines
across the uncultivated countryside to slow a British counter-attack -
especially a seaborne attack via the beaches around Stanley, including Yorke
Bay.
