He fought at the Malvinas, was wounded at La Tablada and created a company that he called Puerto Argentino

Aldo Franco says that in addition to an enemy attack, there is something that can annihilate a man at war: the wait. "The uncertainty destroys you: you do not know if the next pepa will hit you or if you get up the next day". And there is also something refundable: know that you are not the center of the world. "This teaches you how to pack lightweight luggage for life: what was once a Wrangler or Lee, now it's just an extra pair of pants, if you wanted a freckled blonde with a turned-up nose, look for a good woman. " Lessons from

Malvinas

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Franco is 60 years old and has five children. He fought there at the age of 22 as a second lieutenant in the infantry for over 60 days during which he bathed only twice and in which he incorporated concepts that apply today to the life of companies. Because it had to be reconverted: his company, the logistics group Detall, charges $ 800 million and has 1,600 employees, many of them ex-combatants.

At one of the trucking companies, he put Puerto Argentino. Because the memories are still clear. Like this hill Dos Hermanas, where he and his 44 soldiers in charge were located in the trenches. They were lucky, he said, that the 340 meters of altitude that the mountain has on the sea deprives them of the moisture that other companions had to endure. A trench is a well in which two or three people can lodge and in which a wooden lid is placed to defend against dew and, if possible, bombing. The fighter is there to shoot, behind stones, but it is advised that most of the day is outside to participate in the activities that, in the war, are the most basic: defend your own life.

What's a soldier done in a well for so long?
THE NATION Franco, who almost interrupts the sentence: "Normally, pray." He says that these are moments that shape the personality, because the man feels for the first time that it is not the axis of the world. "You are part of a gear," he says. To forget oneself? "In fact, you are in an ideal world: you have no other problem, but another priority: maintain the spirit of the troops," he replied, adding that It was not always easy to realize it. Because of fear, it does not leave you at any time, and even the most reckless or the most arrogant can weaken under these conditions. There are those who break, who decide to spend hours inside the well, without leaving, without shaving, repeating understandable sentences of logic: "Where do they come from? to shoot us down ".

Franco spent a lot of time answering anonymous letters addressed to him. School boys, adults who sent candy, cigarettes or messages of encouragement to those who fought. A mail truck picked them up regularly. When he returned from the Falklands, he was curious to know some of these faces. He contacted several, he met them, and one in particular caught his attention: that of a girl with whom, years later, he started to leave. This is his current wife, the mother of his five children. She says that she is shy, that she dies if she sees her name in the paper: she would prefer to keep it.

It is 37 years of the night that Franco describes with devastating intensity and precision. The one that goes from June 10 to dusk in the early hours of the 11th. On the islands, the night begins to fall and goes down in the fall, at 5.30 am, at which time the English began the attacks. They had spent 24 hours on Mount Longdon, the bloodiest battle the British have ever seen since the Second World War. Thatcher's troops had taken them by surprise: instead of going down to Puerto Argentino, on the sea side, they opted for the landing at Darwin and San Carlos, on the other side of the island, and crossed on foot and in light vehicles. During three hours. or four days all over the territory until the inside, while they opened air and naval fire on the capital.

Then Franco and his people, who were on the hill behind Dos Hermanas in the rear, became the first line. Typical incidental expenses of the war. He had to defend himself: himself, who was shooting with FAL, remembers the first Corporal Juan Barroso, Mendoza, counter-attacking the formation with a mortar for long minutes while a superior had advised him to withdraw . These were technical reasons worthy of attention: if you pull too hard, the mouth of a mortar becomes incandescent and may explode. But Barroso resisted and this gap allowed them to retreat to Tumbledown Mountain and regain strength.

There were wounded. Franco returned the following night to his former position. He wanted not only to collect ammunition, but also to know what had happened to Private Guanes, who had been left with one leg virtually destroyed, and to Private Ciocci, who was also injured in the well. He then crossed, with the soldier Beatriz, who accompanied him, all these installations of defeat. He could see at about 300 meters what is called in the war "wounded meeting point": a semicircle of English who already had the prisoners. He saw Guanes again at the end of the war, shortly before his death, helped by morphine to alleviate the pain. He is buried in Puerto Darwin.

Franco says that he no longer has any hate. This differentiates a soldier from a murderer. "You know that on the other side there is someone who has family and the same values ​​as you, you are there to defend yourself, to defend the country and you think you do not want it. hurt: the ideal would be for the opponent to surrender, "he explains. . Hence the condensed sensations found on the day of the Argentine capitulation. Franco remembers first of all the silence on the island. "It was a sepulchral silence, with a bittersweet taste: of defeat and, after so many dead and wounded, of relief." To everyone's anger, he says, reproaches have been added. "The hairstyle starts from Saturday afternoon: what would have happened if, during the war, you have on the left a string of human miseries and on the right a string of virtues?" We always talk about faults: I prefer to talk about virtues "

From soldier to entrepreneur

It is understandable that everything that has happened afterwards has acquired relative importance. Including his participation in the fight of La Tablada. It was in January 1989, Franco was returning from a few days of honeymoon in Brazil and decided to continue the rest in San Andrés de Giles, in the field of his in-laws.

He says he had risen at 5 am to paint the pool and that, by chance, he had heard on Nelson Castro radio a report about the attack. Without warning, he enlisted and went to the La Tablada regiment, where he was less fortunate than the Falklands: an injury left him paralyzed in one leg and used a prosthesis.

This injury was worth seven years later, due to a disposition of the army, the final withdrawal of the force. He then thought of retraining himself. He began handing letters, magazines, and wedding actions by hand, before moving on to cell phones, computers, and parcels. He created a logistics company and signed contracts with Disco and La Anónima.

Today, it has 75 trucks and sales outlets in Buenos Aires, Mercedes, Córdoba, Mendoza and Tucumán. "For me, a company must have three goals: to be profitable, to last over time and, most importantly, to fulfill a social goal of giving people jobs and exceeding the other two", he added that there is nothing as important in a business as the attitude. This is another lesson from Malvinas.