A LITTLE-KNOWN STORY
The regiment was established on 31 January 1907. In 1969, it became the 17th Airborne Infantry Regiment, under the IV Airborne Infantry Brigade. In 1985, it was redesignated the 17th Motorised Infantry Regiment and transferred to the V Motorised Brigade. The 17th Regiment was finally disbanded in 1997.
It is little known that, in 1982, two NCOs and ten soldiers from the 17th Regiment took part in the Malvinas War.
This detachment from the regiment was deployed to the South Atlantic Theatre of Operations and positioned on Two Sisters Mountain.
They went into action when Second Lieutenant Aldo Eugenio Franco and his rifle section, to which these newly arrived paratroopers had been attached, covered the Argentine withdrawal. By then, the planned counter-attack by the Panhard armoured vehicle squadron in support of Major Jaimet had been cancelled, as Captain López Patterson’s men no longer held the summits. The section’s action forced Yankee Company to halt its advance and take cover among the rocks.
Conscript paratrooper Ramón Bustos, of the 17th Airborne Infantry Regiment, recalls:
“I was called up in Catamarca and assigned to the 17th Parachute Regiment. One day we were taken to Comodoro Rivadavia, and only ten soldiers and two NCOs crossed over to the islands. We were in Puerto Argentino, and afterwards they sent us to Two Sisters Mountain to reinforce a section of the 6th Infantry Regiment positioned on the downward slope of the mountain.
My combat role was as a MAG machine-gunner...
On the night of 11 June, from our position we could hear the fighting taking place on Two Sisters. We could also hear fighting in the direction of Longdon and Harriet, but that was some distance away. What concerned us was the battle taking place directly in front of us.
In the early hours of 12 June, it was our turn to go into action. The enemy were coming down towards our positions and were about 200 metres away. We opened fire and they withdrew. Every time they tried to come down again, we fired at them. It was not a sustained attack; it seemed as though they were probing to find out what was behind the mountain.
We fought like that until it was almost dawn. Together with the men of the 6th Infantry Regiment, we held the slope of the mountain. We held out until seven in the morning, after fighting throughout the night. Eventually, we ran out of ammunition and had to withdraw towards the town.”