An English helmet stained with blood and the nobility of a Malvinese soldier who did not rest before returning to his old enemy's family to return it to him

The blood of the British soldier is a dark and perennial spot on the war helmet. A name in large print is written in blue ink. A.Shawsaid. The colonel Diego Carlos Arreseigor He has it in his hands. Although he tries, he can not contain the tears that invade his eyes.

Then he raises this war object as if it 's been a fragile treasure and shows it to the woman who, in front of a computer, on the other side of the ocean in the UK, looks at him with astonishment and starts crying.

She is Susan Fleming, the sister of the mechanical engineer Alexander Shaw of the Parachute III Regiment, killed a few hours before the end of the war, June 13, 1982 in Monte Longdon. His blood is the one that dyes this helmet.

"This is your brother's helmet, I am going to England to give it to you. I feel a moral duty to return it to your family. And for me it will be an honor, "rejoiced who was a young lieutenant of the 10th Engineer Company in front of his old enemy's sister.

This is the first time that they are face to face. But something unites them despite the distance and the language: both heal the wounds left by the war.

"Recovering this helmet is very important to me, I was 15 years old when Alex died, he was my only brother, my dear big brother, this is the last thing he used before being killed . I have the impression of having a part of him with me", the woman was transferred from her home in Corby, 116 kilometers north of London.

But this story began many years ago. Almost 37 years before.

At the end of the war, on June 14, 1982, the British commanders held a meeting with the Argentine engineers to ask them to provide the reports of the minefields.

Diego Arreseigor, along with 30 other officers, was jailed for a month on the islands. "They made us work lift the mines from the fields until there were three accidents: two Englishmen and one Argentinian lost their legs. From there, we were asked to wire the sectors and mark the danger zones, "explains the army.

Just remember the day you found the helmet. One morning, while picking up the mines on Isla Soledad, he found an English position badisting the wounded, where various equipment was scattered. There, abandoned between the rocks and the peat, he found the helmet stained with blood.

"With my 23 years old, I took it and hid it in my jacket, I was so skinny that no one noticed it", remember.

"Ofrin 37 years, I kept it as spoils of war. From time to time, he would take it out and show it, so that the others would realize that, despite the pain of defeat, it had not been so easy for the English: "Here is the first one. sample, we did something, they defeated us but it cost them. "said the soldier who spent the war at Monte Longdon and Wireless Ridge.

But one day, Diego Arreseigor opened the drawer in which he kept the helmet, read as many times the name of the English soldier inscribed on the inner straps and For the first time in years, he felt the need to know who Shaw was.

He searched the internet. The photo of a smiling young man on the railing of a boat, hair moved by the wind, shocked him. This blood now had a face.

Soon he discovered that Alexander Shaw He had died on the last day of the war, victim of Argentine mortar artillery. He also found the story of a fellow English soldier who was telling how his last moment had pbaded. "He also stated that Shaw was 25 years old and had a son named Craig, only three years old when he fell to the war."he said moved.

The helmet has therefore ceased to be a war trophy. This helmet was the symbol of the story of a person who died during the war. "I felt that the recipient was the son and I started looking for him, I did it in a particular way, I wanted to go to the person, but I could not find the family", remember.

He asked several friends who went to London to help him. He was not lucky. He sought the family in telephone directories. The Shaw surname was very popular and could not find it."I do not want to die with this headset", he says to him.

One afternoon, in front of the colonel Jorge Zanela, also a veteran of the Malvinas, told the story. "Thank you to your management I could find Shaw's sister and immediately I contacted her. Then I decided: I will go to England in the early days of April to make Alexander's helmet. I also want to visit the cemetery where rest the remains of the English soldier and leave a flower in his grave", has emotion.

"I was very touched to know how Shaw was dead, while there were only a few hours left until the end of the ceasefire, at the end of the war. He went to repair a mortar and went to Longdon 's hell. I was also moved to see Susan's enthusiasm when she learned that her brother belonged to the war (…). I felt the moral duty, as a soldier and a person, to travel to get his helmet, "he says. Infobae.

"It's very important that you do it for me"Susan said, crossing the 12,000 kilometers in just a few seconds of this image that throws skype.

"It's also important to me, it helps me to end a very painful phase of my life."Diego answers.

And that counts almost as in a confession: "In recent years, I have had trouble sleeping. The defeated back of a war is very difficult. I had to save all this suffering in a drawer under several locks. "

– Could you open those locks?, request Infobae.

-I close a great wound, healing this sadness of defeat, erasing those feelings of pain that generate all that I saw during the war. Today, it does not hurt to talk about what I have been through. I feel it as a relief, a shock. I can see the war from another point. Time heals.

But this reveals that this process has not been easy, that it took him many years to overcome this feeling of defeat. "To see the discredit with regard to all that was Falklands, to see that he was taking advantage of a national cause to put ideologies and differences, was painful, we divided the soldiers of the And we all had the same war, they threw us the same bombs, we have the same hunger and the same cold … It's a huge ingratitude: the highest percentage of deaths in the Army is attributable to officers ".

Diego Arreseigor not only had to raise mines at the end of the war. He was also to recover the bodies of some Argentinian soldiers scattered on the battlefield. "One day we did not have to go to mine clearance, and we asked our companions to bury them, they took us in a helicopter and at the end of the day we buried them in the same wells in Puerto Argentino, only one of them has been identified.American soldiers are known only to God ", remember with pain.

He knows that the outbreaks of war have also hurt his family: "For my parents and my three sisters, the fact that I was in front of the battle was something very difficult, difficult to accept."

At the end of the war, when news arrived on the continent was confused, someone came to his parents to tell him that Diego did not appear, he was really dead.

"I have my father in mind and I think what it must have been for him to think that I was dead … And the guy was silent, he did not say anything to my mother for days, up to a clbadmate to whom I had given him my number He came to Buenos Aires and called them: "Diego is fine, he was taken prisoner by the British to rear the mine, "he told them, and my father felt happy: it did not matter to have to cross minefields, his son was alive."

-If I say Malvinas, what do you feel? question Infobae.

-Malvinas is the most transcendent thing that has happened in the life of a soldier and a person. That's all I could live. But coming back defeated was very difficult.

How many times have the Malvinas made you cry?

-The first year in particular … When they realized the birthdays of each thing lived: here they strafed us, here a comrade died, here another one was wounded, here they bombarded us …You raise everything and it is very difficult. Afterwards, I cried again. But with time, I became hardened. And I kept everything under these locks.

However, the colonel now lets out a tear. "All of this shakes me, I check a lot of things that I lived there, that I suffered and that you stay inside. The only consolation I brought from the Falklands is that, although I was part of the unit that made more casualties, my section returned everything: 40 soldiers and 5 officers"

On the other side of the screen, Susan pulls out a small white handkerchief and dries her tears. On this side, Colonel caresses the helmet that he has kept for more than three decades.

"Thank you very much, I am very excited, I can not thank Diego enough to have made the helmet of my brother. It will be a treasure for life for me, for my children and for my grandchildren"Says the sister of the fallen Englishman.

Diego Arreseigor leaves a promise: "God willing I will travel very soon, it is an honor for me to take with you the business of your brother".

When the camera goes out, when Susan can not hear it, her broken voice says, "I could not find how to unload, how to tell the suffering of the war. It helps me heal. They give me memories, lived moments, friends who are no longer there. This gesture to give him the helmet of his brother it may be for all the way to close a path of pain, an open wound for many years"