Revealed: Suffering of Goose Green's Population at the Hands of the Argentines

Dear Fellow Earthlings,

On the 17th of May 1982 the residents of Port Stanley learned that at least three of the people being held captive in the community center at Goose Green had been released. It seems that one of those captives (a gentleman named Eric Goss) was skilled working with water pumps and that his skills were sorely needed by the Argentines who were occupying Port Stanley. The two other people released were elderly women, for whom the experience of being cooped up like hapless factory chickens had brought on health concerns. Unlike the people of Port Stanley, who had many provisions laid away for the winter, the people of Goose Green had no stores to speak of -- beyond what they had in their homes. Traditionally whenever anyone in "Camp" (the non-Stanley portion of the Falklands) needed provisions, they would either go to Port Stanley for it or have it delivered. The meager stores that the residents of Goose Green did have were all in their houses. And the Argentine forces in Goose Green, having taken over all of the houses there, quickly consumed any stores that had been in them. "Such are the privileges of the conqueror", they must have thought... After the three people released from bondage were removed from the community center by the Argentines, they were then driven to Port Stanley. The gist of the accounts of what they had experienced while in captivity quickly spread among the residents of Port Stanley. The three former detainees urged that provisions should be sent from Port Stanley to Goose Green immediately, for the remaining 112 people confined to the community center at Goose Green were experiencing "weight loss". The people of the Falklands generally knew one another, since the entire population in 1982 was only about 1,800. So it hurt the residents of Port Stanley to know that their friends, even their relatives (or "relations", as the Islanders would have put it) in Goose Green were in such dire straits. Steve Walker Earthsaver and Jingles Creator

© 2013 Steve Walker, The Jingles-The Japan Foundation for English Pronunciation, Summit Enterprises.