Falklands War veteran Jimmy looks back at beating death on Mount Longdon

Scouser was shot in head and face, but lived to tell the tale in new book."I was at death’s door. I had dressings covering my face to stop the blood and remember being loaded onto a stretcher. I heard one of the guys carrying me say ‘This one’s alive’ and the other said ‘Is he? Let’s take him back, then’. “There was a makeshift mortuary – and I think I was being taken there to be placed with the dead.” This is the incredible story of Scouser Jimmy O’Connell. The incredible story of a bitter and bloody battle and a brave battalion. And it’s being told by the man, himself. Former Liverpool black cab driver Jimmy, 53, isn’t just a Falklands’ hero and newly- published author – he’s also a master of understatement. Recalling the battle that helped win the Falklands War, almost robbed him of his life – and certainly changed it forever – the former private in the 3rd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, describes it as “a bit of a dust-up”. Sitting in his home in Orrell Park, the former paratrooper, who has just written Three Days In June, an account of the Battle of Mount Longdon, recalls: “We got caught in artillery and machine gun fire. “I was hit in the head and face – a bullet went through my nose and took out my cheekbone and right eye. “I expected to get hit again because there was that much stuff coming down around me. I thought ‘I can’t see myself getting out of this one’. “They couldn’t get helicopters to the wounded for 12 hours, so it was only then that I was able to be evacuated and properly treated.” Read more HERE