Quiet
Peace and quiet isn’t offered here, it is just the way things are. The feeling is at being on the edge of the world. Not in a cliff rearing sense, but in the sense that things will continue without us having to look after them. At home, stop caring for the land, and it becomes less – perhaps more scruffy, certainly less tamed and productive.
Here, it just continues
There is a sign at Surf Bay to the East of Stanley that states that the land has been replanted and that care should be taken not to disturb the natural vegetation. The land was doing just fine for 28 years, though it did nurture a deadly sting.
Mines
Things made of plastic, a bit of metal spring and enough explosive to shred your leg or ‘mullah’ it as an orthopaedic colleague says. An area denial weapon, scattered here and there by the Argentinian invaders; bought from Italy and brought from Argentina to the Falklands. The Falklanders did not want to be invaded, and they certainly did not want the legacy of the mines. In truth, none of those countries around the world blighted by the scourge of mines and IED’s wanted them: think of Namibia, Afghanistan, Cambodia etc etc.
No one has been damaged recently by the mines and they are being sought out and removed. The problem is the peat.
Mines placed 1 foot beneath the surface are slowly but surely being sucked into Mother Earth. They may be 3 feet below the ground now and often are. Stepping over one may trigger it and it may not. Some are even designed not to blow up when a vehicle tyre passes overhead. They wait for the step of the frail human foot.
Well, won’t the explosive power just decay away? You may be aware that explosives used in the Great War aka WWI still have about a quarter of their original power. I don’t know about modern explosives, which of course have an improved power to weight ratio – that is, the speed of combustion is much faster – amongst other things.
Munitions left by the Russians still maim children in Afghanistan 30 years later. Remember, that is for munitions subject to the extremes of the Afghan climate – extremes of heat and cold.
Well here in the Falklands, we have peat. Remember what the stable anaerobic environment of peat does to dead animals and humans and to wood also. Think about Culloden bog oak – thousands of years old and still makes excellent handles for Skean Dubhs. It seems to do the same for those plastic mines. A bit of a wash and they look as new as the day they came off the shelves.
So the mine fences rust and decay, the triangular signs fade (though now augmented with pictographs clearly illustrating the consequences of meeting with one of these weapons), but the menace remains.
