I carry scars of bloody battle
PARATROOPER James O’Connell was permanently disfigured after a bullet took out his right eye and the bridge of his nose just two days before the war ended.
He was wounded at the Battle of Mount Longdon – fought on June 11 and 12, 1982.
James, 62, lay in a crater with other in jured soldiers as shells exploded around them.
He says: “We stayed there all night. I thought, ‘We’re going to die here’. It seemed a matter of time before a shell killed the lot of us.
“They were landing everywhere. The noise was tremendous.”
The battle claimed the lives of 23 British soldiers and 31 Argentinians. The physical scars are a permanent reminder for James, from Liverpool. But the mental ones are lasting too. He goes on: “It’s like yesterday. It never goes away. I look in the mirror and see a large glass eye, the scars on my face. Although they put my cheekbone in, it’s not right. When I go to the supermarket I know people clock me. We carry this for the rest of our lives.“
He was unconscious for around a week and says he woke to find his head swollen “like a pumpkin”.
Back home, he endured 23 operations over five years. ■■James’s book, Three Days in June, is published by Hachette