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Heart and Soul: The Pity of War

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Mount Longdon near Stanley

31/03/2017 GMT

The Pity of War

BBC World Service - Heart and Soul, The Pity of War

Former enemies in the Falklands conflict try to reconcile war and faith

Chaplain David Cooper and Horacio Benitez were enemies in the Falklands conflict. They try to reconcile war and faith.

David Cooper was a Chaplain  to one of the toughest units in the British army during a  territorial war over the South Atlantic islands known to the British as the Falklands and to the Argentines as the Malvinas. Thirty-five years on Cooper tries to explain the love of God amid the suffering each side inflicted on the other. But Cooper is about to encounter his greatest challenge in an Argentine soldier, Horacio Benitez. 

Benitez was  a young  conscript during the war. He remembers with horror how he had machine-gunned advancing British soldiers. “You ask yourself how many fathers you have killed. And you ask yourself why?” That question remained with Benitez, a man of profound Catholic faith for the rest of his life. He has now made it his mission to visit Britain to seek reconciliation. As Benitez  visits one of the Falklands war memorials in Britain he reads the names of the British dead. He recalls  his own pain at losing comrades. But his biggest struggle is with his conscience. "I tried to find justification for what I did, that I did it for my country. But deep inside I know it was evil."

Meeting for the first time these former enemies, Cooper and Benitez  together try to make sense of their war experience and the questions it poses for faith. Can there ever be a higher purpose in war – and what is needed now for peace?


(Photo: Mount Longdon was one of the places where Argentine and British soldiers fought during the 1982 conflict. Credit: Getty Images)

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