New Horizons: Falklands War Mapping Project

Earlier this year, we launched the Falklands War Mapping Project - a pioneering initiative which saw Falklands veterans return to the site on which they fought alongside a team of world class archaeologists to begin the first ever intensive survey of the battlefield. This trip marked the beginning of a brand new venture for Waterloo Uncovered. Not only was it the first time that we have taken veterans back to the battlefield where they fought, but it also presented an opportunity to undertake some important archaeological research on a site that has, up until now, had not been surveyed.

On the anniversary of the end of the Falklands Conflict, watch a fascinating summary of the Falklands Project, and read Waterloo Uncovered's Welfare Officer Rod Eldridge and Archaeological Director Professor Tony Pollard reflect on this pioneering project and the impact it had on the veterans who took part.

To help fund our pioneering Falklands War Mapping Project, and the veterans it supports, please consider making a donation today.

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Rod Eldridge | Welfare Officer

After serving 27 years in the Army and deploying on 8 operational tours including Iraq and Afghanistan, Rod retired from the Army as a Lieutenant Colonel, and now dedicates his time to supporting veterans as a mental health professional, working with organisations including Walking With The Wounded and Waterloo Uncovered. Rod accompanied the team to the Falklands to support the our veteran participants and ensure their wellbeing throughout the trip.

Whilst this was new horizons for WU, it was a dream come true for me to visit the Falkland Islands but with the added quality of seeing the many key battlefields, monuments etc from the conflict in 1982 but particularly Mount Tumbledown with two amazing and brave 2 Bn Scots Guards veterans who previously served together and fought together. Sadly, but unsurprisingly they subsequently suffered both mentally and physically as a result of their involvement in the conflict.

Waterloo Uncovered to date have provided a range of archaeological programmes either real time or digital/virtual. This new and exciting venture called the FIMP encapsulated the main themes of wellbeing: meeting new people, helping others, learning new skills, being physically active and being mindful in spades, so was a huge success.

Due to local covid restriction we spent 5 days in isolation houses before starting our work which enabled us to bond as a team and establish trust for what was going to an emotive journey, certainly for our veterans. There was much humour and banter throughout the trip showing how well we got on and how even in challenging times we can find light. Even the locals commented on how well we all got on!

The veterans sometimes feel that the Falkland’s War is forgotten but from day one the local people embraced them, they thanked them and made them feel most welcome and special, this was so important for our guys, and you could see it in their eyes they were touched by such sentiments, this continued as a tangible theme throughout our time on the Islands.

The FIMP plan made it clear it was not aiming to provide therapy for long held or chronic mental health problems like PTSD, but to provide an opportunity to improve mental health and well-being in a more simplistic way. That said prolonged exposure to mount tumbledown the scene of their battle, repeatedly walking over the ground finding and identifying material and the culture from the battle, telling us of their experiences over the two weeks was in many ways was aiding the veterans understanding of the past and the here and now. This processing and updating of thoughts and memories was powerful in helping the guys gain more insight in their individual experiences.

We visited the Scots Guards monument and cross at the top of the mountain several times this commemorated the battle and the 9 Scots Guards who were killed during the battle. We held a poignant service at this site on our last day on the mountain this capped a special and moving experience for our veterans and the team.

The Veterans formed a strong bond and were hugely supportive of each other one had been back four times before and for the other this was his first time back after 40 years. The team were humbled by this bond and depth of comradeship which few will understand or experience.

We had the opportunity to visit Ajax Bay the site of the medical facility during the War and the site of temporary military grave. John and Jim laid a wreath with a beret Cap star badge at the Scots Guards monument where our veterans paid a fitting tribute to their fallen.

The emotional reactions from the veterans and others of the team were understandable given the context of our work on their battleground, this was cathartic and allowed them to make some peace with their experiences of 40 years ago.

Being Guardsmen, they polished everything within an inch of its life they Polished the cap stars and crosses at Ajax Bay and Mt Tumbledown until they were glistening in the sunlight. The brightly shinning cross on Tumbledown could be seen from miles away as you approach from Port Stanley.

Words are difficult to find that do justice to this wonderful but emotional and humbling trip to which WU should be applauded for making happen as it genuinely changes lives for the good. I feel proud to have been a member of this inaugural trip and I hope we are able continue with the project in the coming years.

The Falklands War Mapping Project took place across the battlefield, focussing on the Mount Tumbledown.

The project assessed the character, location and condition of individual artefacts and structural features related to the conflict through foot and drone survey and recording of finds and features through the capture of GPS data, photogrammetry, and drawing.

Professor Tony Pollard | Archaeological Director

Tony serves as both a Professor of Conflict History and Archaeology and the Director of the Centre for Battlefield Archaeology at the University of Glasgow. An internationally renowned battlefield archaeologist, Tony has planned and lead the archaeological aspects of Waterloo Uncovered's excavations as one of our Archaeological Directors since 2015. Tony led the exploration of the Falklands Islands, alongside Dr Timothy Clack and Dr Stuart Eve, as well as our veteran participants.

I first visited the Falkland Islands in 2012, which marked the 30th anniversary of the war. It was a solo trip and I travelled around East Falkland in a Land Rover seeing the sites. Thanks to the little red planes that operate almost like taxis, I even managed to visit some of the smaller islands. These included Pebble Island, famous for the SAS raid on the airfield early on in the war, and where I was lucky enough to see five species of penguin. Fun as all this was, my visit had a serious purpose. The Falklands War provides a rare opportunity for a conflict archaeologist such as myself to engage with the remains of battles fought within recent memory, indeed I am old enough to have fought in war. The trip was a chance to see the remains fro myself and also to try and persuade the Falkland Islands Government to support an archaeological survey, as they are important elements of the islands’ cultural heritage. So it was that I visited the battlefields of Goose Green, Mount Tumbledown and Mount Longdon, the two latter in the company of local battlefield guide Tony Smith.

At the end of the trip I had a meeting with representatives of the Falkland Islands Government at which I presented my findings, and later a report. The government was supportive of the idea, but funding, other commitments and then a thing called Waterloo Uncovered got in the way of pursuing the project. I remember meeting Mark Evans and Charlie Foinette (co-founders of Waterloo Uncovered) for the first time in 2014, when they invited me to lead an archaeological team at Waterloo, and telling them that the prospect of working with veterans very much interested me as I was keen to do the same in the Falkland Islands. The rest, as they say, is history, and since then Waterloo Uncovered has gone from strength to strength. I didn't forget about the Falklands though, and went back again in 2015, in the company of a friend who was a Royal Marine veteran visiting for the first time since 1982, and again in 2019 when I led a battlefield tour for the British Army.

The idea for a project remained just that, an idea, until I was contacted by Dr Tim Clack at the University of Oxford. He had recently returned from the islands after carrying out the excavation of a Second World War site on the outskirts of Stanley prior to construction work. The excavation also encountered remains resulting from the Argentine occupation of the islands in 1982, a prompt if ever there was that the cultural heritage of the conflict merited an archaeological response. Tim shared my deep interest in the history of the Falklands War and so it was entirely natural that we should agree to a collaborative project with the pair of us taking on the roles of co-directors. It was at this point that Waterloo Uncovered became a key partner in the project. It was obvious that the inclusion of veterans from 1982 in the project team would only be possible with appropriate well-being support, which is an area of expertise which the Waterloo Uncovered team has done much to develop since first setting out on fieldwork in 2015.

Waterloo Uncovered’s well-being lead, Rod Eldridge, played a key role long before the team left the UK for the islands, interviewing veterans to assess whether the project was for them. First on the recommendation of Lieutenant General Sir John Kiszley, who commanded Left Flank Company during the Battle of Tumbledown, then as a result of Rod’s assessment, Jim Peters and John Litterick who had fought as part of Left Flank Company, were selected. They joined myself, Tim, Rod, and Dr Stu Eve from LP Archaeology and Waterloo Uncovered, Katie Buckley from Waterloo Uncovered, Lt Colonel Charlie Foinette of the Coldstream Guards and Waterloo Uncovered, Beth Timmins from Oxford University, and Emma Goss, Heritage Officer with the Falkland Islands Museum and National Trust. The co-operation of the latter institution, directed by Andrea Barlow, was another essential cog in the wheel and the project owes much to its support. The project also benefitted from having the talents of artist Doug Farthing as part of the team; himself a veteran, Doug held workshops with school pupils in Stanley and captured incredibly evocative images of the landscape and the work of the team.

After the 8,000 mile flight, which included a stopover in Dakar thanks to bad weather in the islands, the team had to quarantine for five days in houses provided by the Falkland Islands Government. Only after providing negative Covid test results were we then released into the wild. We spent most of the next ten days on Mount Tumbledown recording the remains of Argentine defences and the artefacts left behind after the battle. The aim of the project is to map features and objects visible on the surface, with no excavation involved. However, some of the Argentine dugouts in the survey area had recently been looted, an illegal act which had left behind piles of disturbed soil and objects. With the co-operation of the museum we took the opportunity to recover the artefacts, which included cans of juice taken from the Royal Marine barracks at Moody Brook. The disturbance also gave us an insight into how substantial these features were, extending underground for some distance.

It was a surprise to all that Stu Eve managed to fly a small drone in the winds that always seem to be blowing across the islands. This was used to take photographs of the defences, which through a process known as photogrammetry were turned into detailed plans – in this case of a line of 62 dugouts. Stu also deployed a laser scanner which created three dimensional computer renditions of features such as the huge rock and overhang which served as the Regimental Aid Post for the Scots Guards, and where Jim Peters was tended after being injured by an Argentine mortar round while carrying a stretcher. Having Jim and John on the team was an incredible privilege, not least because this was the first time that veterans of a battle had taken part in the archaeological survey of the battlefield on which they fought. For Jim and John the experience was a very positive one and both are keen to stay involved with the project. It wasn’t easy though, and Rod played a vital role in providing support when it was needed.

Our time on Mount Tumbledown in April and May of this year was an opportunity to test the viability of the project, and there can be no doubt that the result was resoundingly positive, with the technology used, engagement with the islanders, and the involvement of veterans, all working well. In combination they served to create a project like no other, but also one which seems such a natural development for Waterloo Uncovered.

Thanks to the University of Oxford (Chingiz Gutseriev Bursary), Waterloo Uncovered, University of Glasgow and the Falkland Islands Government for making the pilot phase of the project possible through financial support.

The pilot trip of the Falklands War Mapping Project was a huge success. Much progress was made with the preliminary archaeological work, but even more importantly, the veterans, who for forty years have been struggling with the emotional and psychological traumas of war, were able to take meaningful steps on their journey to recovery.

Waterloo Uncovered have been supporting veterans since 2015, and have provided hundreds of struggling and injured veterans and serving personnel with welfare support, new opportunities, education, comradeship and help recovering from the traumas of war. To keep supporting veterans of all wars, and to return to the Falklands Islands to continue our Mapping Project, we need your help. We are incredibly grateful for any donation you can make.

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The Falklands War Mapping Project was run in collaboration with our partners at the University of Oxford, University of Glasgow and the Falkland Islands Museum & National Trust.

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