An act of reparation towards the family of a young 19-year-old soldier, who died on the last day of the Malvinas war, in 1982, and could not finish high school will be finalized next monthwhen the business school in La Plata, which I was attending, modify the file in which it is stated that “he abandoned his studies”.
Rolando Maximo Pacholczuk He fought during the Malvinas War with a rifle that did not fire, according to the Cecim de La Plata, and died at the end of the war, on June 14, 1982, despite the fact that they managed to evacuate him wounded from Puerto Argentino aboard the ship Admiral Irizar.
“In no way should it appear in his file, closed by administrative act, that Rolando dropped out of school. He did not leave his studies, he could not finish them because the war cut it short, because of this warlike madness into which the Armed Forces of that time put us,” the vice president of Cecim La Plata, Hugo Robert, explained to Télam.
The ex-combatant recalled that Rolando “I wanted to be an accountant, as was his father, and he was studying a commercial expert at the Escuela Comercial de La Plata, where he was in the 4th year.
On June 14, which coincides with the date on which he was injured, his file will be repaired in an act in which his 91-year-old mother and one of his brothers will be present.
Its about first reparatory act that the Government of the province of Buenos Aires makes of a file of a combatant, Robert indicated and stressed that the idea was born from the current director of the Escuela Comercial de La Plata, Giselle Martín Ocampos, upon learning that Rolando had been a student of that establishment.
“Rolando is the last dead of the war. He is wounded on June 14. We take him to the aid station and he is evacuated from Puerto Argentino, he dies aboard the Almirante Irízar and is one of the few, if not the only, soldier wounded in combat who is buried on the mainland. He dies in the Irízar and is buried in the city of Mar del Plata, where his family was from, “Robert explained to this agency.
He even mentioned that both were companions “in the trench, that kind of tomb for two”, “800 meters from Mount Longdon”.
“He had a very difficult family life, prior to Malvinas, but you could tell he had a great education. He had a lot of knowledge of music and literature. Until the last day we made a good duo, I had a lot of fun with the ‘Russian’; he was a very risky guy to get food, he suffered a lot from hunger, he must have lost 20-25 kilos in the war,” he said.
He mentioned that Rolando “spent the entire war with a rifle that he never fired” because “since the first firing test it was useless.”
“When we did the firing test, his FAL did not fire; Rolando was waiting for the entire war to have his weapon replaced or corrected and it never happened,” he lamented.
Outraged, he wondered: “why did they keep a soldier on the front line without a gun?” He added that the military authorities “never told the family the truth” and that is why he spoke much later with the mother and the two brothers.
“This reparatory act will be very important for Rolando’s family. It would be good if at some point the authorities of the General Directorate of Education of the province of Buenos Aires could grant Rolando the post-mortem title,” the former soldier hoped.
That of Rolando Pacholczuk is one of the 14 faces of ex-combatants from La Plata who fell in Malvinas, whose images were placed in the windows of the intercity transport lines that circulate through the Buenos Aires capital as a tribute and memory.
