Malvinas: The Commando That Was "Dead" and Killed His Enemies

A bullet, a rosary and a miracle: the story of a man from Tucuman in the Malvinas War

Historias de la guerra

Lieutenant Jorge Vizoso Posse was the victim of an British ambush along with his partner, Sergeant Mario Antonio Cisnero, who ended up dead after a rocket hit his chest. “I did not surrender to the English,” says the major who was awarded the Cross for Heroic Valor in Combat.

Vizoso Posse (above left) and his CC601 comrades. Photo Infobae.-

Not everyone knows the war stories that Argentine soldiers went through between April 2 and June 14, 1982, the time that the Malvinas conflict between Argentina and England lasted.

One of the great protagonists of these stories was the lieutenant of the Argentine Army, Jorge Vizoso Posse - an elite soldier, parachutist, mountaineer and diver - a man from Tucumán who on May 24, in the middle of the war, set foot on the islands to join the 602 Commando Company (CC602), led by Major Aldo Rico and created especially to repel, through carefully planned special operations, different nuclei in the British outpost.

Argentine Army Lieutenant Jorge Vizoso Posse.-

According to journalist Loreley Gaffoglio for Infobae, the company, hit by numerous casualties, was planning to set up an ambush near the Murrell River, between the Kent and Dos Hermanas mountains.

During this time, Vizoso Posse established a friendship with Catamarca sergeant Mario Antonio Cisnero. Nicknamed El Perro, for his loyalty to his principles and his comrades, he was loved and respected as one of the most outstanding cadres within the force. But he was also praised for his moral and supportive conduct.

On June 10, under the command of Rico, the patrol of 18 commandos was divided into four strategic groups: support, assault, security and reception.

In the first of them were Vizoso Posse and Cisnero. Around 1 in the morning, the sergeant saw that a patrol of about 8 English marines had managed to penetrate the area guarded by the support group, so they opened fire without hesitation. The response was a 66mm Law rocket that hit Cisnero squarely in the chest. The shock wave flung Vizoso Posse through the air and he fell on the rocks meters away from him.

Wounded and stunned, the man from Tucumán managed to make sure that his companion had died. Without thinking he settled next to the corpse, pretending to be dead before the imminent arrival of his foreign aggressors.

Upon arriving at the site of the explosion, the men who served the Queen decided to verify that their enemies had died by finishing off the bodies. The automatic shots from the English weapons riddled the lieutenant.

Contrary to military strategy, instead of continuing at the vanguard, the enemies descended through the same place where they had come, something that was taken advantage of by the Tucumán soldier who miraculously was still breathing. Dazed, with some difficulty breathing and in disbelief that he was alive, Vizoso Posse looked for his rifle and fired a first magazine at his retreating executioners. He pulled another one out of his fallen companion's vest and emptied it furiously as well. Only at that moment did a trickle of blood warn him that he was injured.

The counteroffensive remained silent from that sector. Although he could not corroborate with his eyes the effectiveness of their shots, due to the absence of fire he thought that he had finished off, or at least bruised, some of them.

Without cover, clinging to his Fal, El Yanqui, as his companions called him, trotted to where his boss was. He told him that his favorite sergeant was dead, that he was wounded and that he had to change position.

After verifying that his wounds were large but not lethal, Vizoso Posee returned to combat, which lasted about 30 minutes until enemy resistance ceased. From the Argentine platoon, in addition to El Perro, Sergeant Ramón Gumersindo Acosta succumbed and a splinter injured gendarme Pablo Daniel Parada, from the Alacrán group.

The wound and the miracle

After walking for six hours, already in the field hospital in Puerto Argentino, the doctor, upon undressing him, found, tangled in his clothes, the rosary he was carrying, detached from his neck. No one noticed at that moment that an account was missing.

When examining him, the doctor, with no other instruments than his hand, removed a 2cm long projectile near his collarbone. As the ammunition was tracer when entering through the right shoulder blade, it cauterized the flesh in an ascending and oblique path until it was lodged at the height of the neck, on the left side. It was there, when upon observing the projectile, the doctor literally spoke of a miracle.

The ammunition had first hit one of the plastic rosary beads and was still molten and attached to the steel. That obstacle, at close range, not only cushioned the impact; It also slowed down and diverted the route. The rosary—the doctors assured—saved his life or, at least, from becoming a quadriplegic.

Vizoso Posse was evacuated from Malvinas to the mainland on the last Hercules on June 13, one day before the fall of Puerto Argentino. That is why he assures that he never surrendered to the English.