LONDON -- Frayed nerves and fragile discipline caused many Argentine deaths in non-combat incidents, residents of the the Falklands capital of Stanley say.
'After the curfew they shot at anything that moved. Young conscripts were put on night duty and didn't know one end of a rifle from the other,' the town's Roman Catholic priest, Mgr. Daniel Spraggon, told Press Association reporter Richard Savill in a pooled dispatch.
'This is a great moment for the Falkland Islands -- thank god for mother Thatcher,' said Spraggon, referring to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Hulda Stewart, wife of the local manager of the Cable and Wireless Communications Co., told Savill the Argentine garrison showed little regard for conscripts in its ranks but put much store by the officers' hierarchy.
'They just didn't seem to care about the conscripts. It was the officers and non-commissioned officers who were the fat cats,' she said.
Ian, her husband, said he saw two Argentine conscripts die in non-combat incidents. Another couple 'saw a young conscript machine-gunnedin the street for no apparent reason.'
An Argentine was blown up by his own land mine, said Stewart.
'I ran outside to see him a mass of blood. He got up, staggered and collapsed.'
'His colleagues picked him up by his arms and legs and threw him like a dog into the back of an army truck. I presume he was dead.'
Spraggon showed reporters 27 bullet holes in his home and one in a book entitled Moral and Pastoral Theology.
'They got through this quicker than I did,' he said.
The soldiers looted many houses, apparently looking for food, Savill reported. The luckier ones got Mrs. Stewart's sausage rolls, meant for British troops, so she hid her cakes -- all 18 of them -- under the floorboards.
Eugene Williams, 51-year-old head gardener at the government house, reflected on his temporary tenants and said:
'We don't want to see, smell or hear of any more Argentinians in this colony -- not even as tourists.'
