Mario Benjamin Menéndez (3 April 1930 – 18 September 2015) was the Argentine governor of the Falklands during the 1982 Argentine occupation of the islands. He also served in the Argentine Army. Menéndez surrendered Argentine forces to British armed forces during the Falklands War.Daring Argentine general vows to fight to the last bullet. By Ben Tierney. Southam News.
Early life Menéndez attended the national military college. As a full colonel serving in the 5th Infantry Brigade, he participated between July 1975 and January 1976Malvinas: Testimonio de su Gobernador, Mario Benjamín Menéndez, Carlos M. Túrolo, p. 53, Editorial Sudamericana, 1983 in Operativo Independencia, a counter-insurgency campaign against the People's Revolutionary Army operating in Tucumán Province. He later commanded the 6th Mountain Brigade in Neuquén Province. In March 1982, Menéndez (according to historian Max Hastings and columnist Simon Jenkins) was a general in the Argentine Army, and the commander of the Buenos Aires first corps. According to his memoirs, Menéndez was also a member of the Military Committee in Buenos Aires that addressed the Argentine president on a weekly basis on a range of issues, including foreign diplomacy, military training and the military budget.Malvinas: Testimonio de su Gobernador, Mario Benjamín Menéndez, Carlos M. Túrolo, p. 17, Editorial Sudamericana, 1983
Falklands War
On 2 April 1982, Argentine forces invaded the British territory of the Falkland Islands, and gained control. On 3 April, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher announced that British forces had been dispatched to recapture the islands. Menéndez arrived in Stanley (the capital of the Falkland Islands) on 7 April, to take over the governorship of the Falklands. One book described him as a "competent soldier". Menéndez competed with the senior representatives of the Argentine navy and air force for dominance; a competition which was formally concluded on 26 April when Menéndez appointed himself head of the Malvinas Joint Command, an action approved by the Argentine government. Two Argentine brigadier generals commanded forces in the Falklands. They were both senior to Menéndez, and treated his orders as suggestions. Menéndez opted for a strategy of attritional warfare, fighting tactically from fixed positions against any British forces that made a landing upon the Falklands, rather than a more technically complex war of manoeuvre. The plan was later criticised, but historian Duncan Anderson contended after the war that the plan "suited admirably the capabilities of the soldiers he had at his disposal".
British troops landed on the islands in May and inflicted a number of defeats upon the Argentine defenders during the course of the month. When British forces won at the Battle of Goose Green on May 29, "the gloom and despondency that gripped Menéndez and his headquarters soon infected many Argentine officers". However, in a bold move, Menéndez in late May assembled all his army, national gendarmerie and airforce special forces with a "plan to plant a north-south screen to strike at the British logistics line of communication and capture British soldiers."The Official History of the Falklands Campaign: War and diplomacy. By Lawrence Freedman. Page 583. They were ambushed by the Special Air Service and Mountain and Arctic Warfare Cadre patrolling Mounts Kent and Simon and had a Puma helicopter shot down. Ten Argentine commandos were killed and 23 were injured or taken prisoner in the heli-borne offensive. Brigadier Julian Thompson commented:
In the first week of June, as British forces prepared to assault a number of hills near Stanley, Menéndez was pressured to try to attack the Falklands settlement of Fitzroy, which had recently come under British control, but he decided to stay on the defensive. In the documentary Falklands: "How Close to Defeat? on the Discovery Channel, Brigadier Julian Thompson, the commander of 3 Commando Brigade in the Falklands acknowledged that an Argentine counterattack at this point would have The 5th Marine Battalion commander, Frigate Captain Carlos Hugo Robacio says in the documentary:
After the hills were captured by the British, Menéndez considered withdrawing his forces from Stanley, and holding the main airfield, Port Stanley Airport, located on a peninsula east of the town.
A Buenos Aires based diplomat said after the British landings:
In the final days of the fighting, Menendez visited the local hospital and in an interview aired on Argentinian television station C5N said that the sight of the wounded and the military surgeons busy at work on them, left an indelible mark on him.
On 14 June, Menéndez spoke with Lieutenant-General Leopoldo Galtieri-the President of Argentina-by radio regarding the situation. Galtieri said that Menéndez should counter-attack against the British forces with all of his soldiers, and told him that the Argentine military code stipulated that a commander should fight until he has lost 50% of his men and used 75% of his ammunition. He also added "the responsibility today is with you", which Duncan Anderson argues was the point at which Menéndez's morale finally broke. Menéndez replied, "I cannot ask more of my troops, after what they have been through...We have not been able to hold on to the heights...We have no room, we have no means, we have no support...". Anderson said that Menéndez was then psychologically isolated, and believed he had been deserted by his government, and started communicating almost gratefully with a Spanish-speaking British officer who had got in touch with him by radio. Menéndez agreed to meet with representatives of the commander of British land forces on the islands that afternoon, and Menéndez surrendered his forces in the evening. Private Milton Rhys, an Argentinian conscript of British descent who was present in the radio room, reported that soon after the conversation a mortar round landed in the back patio, knocking General Menéndez into a door and spraying the room with shrapnel.
Fear of massacre of civilians prompted surrender
According to more recent work by historian Hugh Bicheno, the end of the protracted fighting in the Tumbledown sector came about over real fear of Falklands civilians being massacred by angry Argentine troops as they hastily prepared for house-to-house combat. The Argentine ground forces commander, Brigadier-General Oscar Luis Jofre is quoted in Razor's Edge: The Unofficial History of the Falklands War as saying that as street fighting became inevitable, his Brigade Operations Officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Eugenio Dalton warned him:
General Jofre is quoted as saying:
Private Milton Rhys, an Argentine who worked as a radio operator in Government House, reported:
Military appraisal In retrospect, historians Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins criticised the fact that the Argentine Army had failed to defend key features on the Falklands, interdict the British advance, or harass or counter-attack against positions that had been captured by the Royal Marines or British paratroopers, and contended that Menéndez may have lacked confidence in the ability of Argentine conscript soldiers to do these things, as well as suggesting that Menéndez was shocked by the fact that the British were determined to recapture the islands and he never recovered from this. They do argue that Menéndez's general deployment of his forces was sound, however. Other historians, notably Mark Adkin, Nick van der Bijl, David Aldea, Roberto Boila, Alejandro Corbacho and Hugh Bicheno have in more recent works reappraised the performance of the Argentine ground forces and claim their officers and NCOs generally fought well at Goose Green and that the Argentines in the form of their army and national gendarmerie special forces counterattacked the SAS on Mount Kent and harassed the British patrolling carried out in the period 1–10 June. The books 9 Battles to Stanley, 5th Infantry Brigade in the Falklands and Razor's Edge describe in great detail the Argentine counterattacks carried out at company and platoon level on the heights surrounding the Falklands capital that at times threatened to derail the British advance.
General Galtieri considered him "the best general of the Argentine army".
Allegations of torture of conscripts
Argentine army officers and NCOs were later charged with abusing and killing their own troops at Goose Green. "Our own officers were our greatest enemies", says Ernesto Alonso, the president of CECIM, an anti-Argentine military veterans group founded by Rodolfo Carrizo and other conscripts of the 7th Regiment. "They supplied themselves with whiskey from the pubs, but they weren't prepared for war. "They disappeared when things got serious."Argentina's Falklands War Veterans. 'Cannon Fodder in a War We Couldn't Win'. By Jens Glüsing, Spiegel.de, 4 March 2007 There are others who maintain that the conscripts were helped to make themselves as comfortable as possible under the circumstances and that their officers and NCOs fought well and tried hard to bolster morale.3 Para – Mount Longdon – The Bloodiest Battle. Elite Forces Operations Series. Page 55. By Jon Cooksey.
Under Brigadier-General Mario Menéndez's express orders, the army engineers (under Colonel Manuel Dorrego) in Port Stanley constructed field showers for the troops that allowed the frontline units before the British landings to send companies into town on a rotating basis in order to get a hot shower, mend their clothes and have a proper meal in the process.Malvinas: A Sangre y Fuego, Nicolás Kasanzew, p. 35, Editorial Abril, 1982 Menéndez in his memoirs says that when the troops started to go hungry through lack of bread he commandeered the local bakery that largely offset the lack of bread and that there was initially an abundance of water biscuits to supplement the diet of the troops.Malvinas: Testimonio de su Gobernador, Mario Benjamín Menéndez, Carlos M. Túrolo, p. 175, Editorial Sudamericana, 1983 In an interview aired on 8 June 1992 in the Graciela y Andrés television talk show, Menendez explained to hosts Graciela Alfano and Andrés Percivale and former Falklands War conscripts Jorge Altieri and Edgardo Esteban, that when a Red Cross delegation arrived in early June 1982 to find out about the well-being of the Falkland Islanders, he took advantage of their decision to stay overnight in one of the hotels, and under the cover of darkness, emptied the hospital ship of its tinned provisions and says this was the food the conscripts found in abundance in the various shipping containers in Port Stanley after the Argentinian surrender. Menendez explains in the interview that it was not poor logistics on his part but a huge cache of provisions he had built that was meant to only be distributed to the frontline troops starting on 20 June or 9 July, depending on the severity of the situation and when and if the logistics airbridge to Comodoro Rivadavia was completely severed."Graciela y Andrés" Menéndez y Esteban - 1992 (2 de 3)