After 40 years of Malvinas, the veteran Mingo Novaro received the highest decoration of Cavalry: Grenadier of Los Andes | The opinion

In 1981 the soldier Domingo Ángel Novaro fought in the Malvinas War. He was a grenadier, aimer and supplier of MAG (general purpose machine gun) for the Junín Squad. He was 20 years old. 40 years after the war, as a veteran, he received the highest decoration conferred by the cavalry weapon: the Knight Grenadier Military Equestrian Order of the Andes, instituted by the General San Martín Horse Grenadier Regiment to “extol the glorious history” that inaugurated the Father of the Nation.

It was on the occasion of the anniversary of the other father of the country, Manuel Belgrano, the creator of the national flag, in the framework of an act in which the Head of the Horse Grenadier Regiment, Colonel Rodrigo Becerra, honored a group of veterans that, like Mingo, “they knew how to respond to the call of the country with courage and heroism, being assigned to the grenadier regiment” and that “they crossed to the Malvinas Islands with the mission of reinforcing the units of Puerto Argentino”.

Although the original plan was to distinguish the group of veterans of the Regiment for April 2, 40 years of Malvinas, the institutional activities postponed the emotional act until Flag Day. On that day, all the new soldiers swore allegiance to the National Pavilion. Mingo and his companions, too. “We swore again, because the flag can be sworn again. We, in the year 82, swore it at a time when we were discharged, ”he recalled. It is that they had gone to the Malvinas War without having done so.

For Mingo, the day was very emotionally charged. There were his relatives and his friend Javier Saucedo, also a war veteran and with whom he has shared for a long time the task of keeping alive the memory of those who went to the war from the local association of ex-combatants who created, support and grow daily .

The decoration obtained by Mingo Novaro is not shared by just anyone. Very few people have received it. “She has a grenadier who turned 100 years old, she has a Nobel Peace Prize winner,” the sampedrino reviewed.

The head of the regiment placed the distinction on him. He and three companions of the eight soldiers who went to Malvinas from the Squadron were there. “They choose the eight soldiers and a non-commissioned officer,” he said, noting that there was another non-commissioned officer among them who was not decorated: “He did something in the war, which was something that I don’t think a career soldier would have done: he was demoted only”.

Novaro explained that when in the middle of the military conflict they were taken prisoner by the English, that non-commissioned officer took off the strips of his uniform to pass as a common soldier. “That is a disgrace. In the San Martín code of honor, those things were punished, so that non-commissioned officer was not decorated,” he pointed out.

“I fulfilled my role as a soldier, I followed orders,” he recalled about his performance. “The other grenadiers honored his uniform. Of a thousand soldiers they chose 150; Of those, only eight crossed to the island,” he recalled.

Mingo went to many acts in this 40 years since Malvinas went through the process of denial and oblivion until its vindication in recent years. “They mentioned us very little, it was something very short, but now the head of the regiment expressed himself, he gave a speech telling the value of the soldiers, of the brotherhood, of sacrifice, of all the soldiers, and it was the first time in 40 years that they talked about the Grenadiers”, he celebrated.