On the 20th anniversary of the start of the Falklands War, Nick Morrison talks to a man involved in the last major battle of the conflict.

LYING helpless on the ground, shot in his leg and arm and unable to defend himself after his rifle was knocked out of his hand, Alasdair Mitchell could only wait and watch as the tracer fire danced around him.

"The only time I felt pure terror was when I got shot and my rifle was hit at the same time," he says. "It disappeared and being without a rifle was absolutely terrifying. You could hear the Argentines were just 50 yards away and they're trying to kill you and there's not a lot you can do about it.

"Daylight came and I was still lying there, without medical attention for six or seven hours. Being shot doesn't actually hurt - it is like a big hammer blow and it hurts more later than at the time. It is very numbing at the time."

Daybreak saw stretcher parties arrive and Alasdair was taken off the top of Mount Tumbledown, but even then his troubles were not over. As he was stretchered down the hill towards the regimental aid post, a mortar landed less than 20 yards away.

"When I came to I found all they had done was sprinkle a few more bits of metal into me. It didn't do me a huge amount of damage because I was lying flat."

When Alasdair eventually made it to the operating theatre, surgeons removed four 762mm machine gun bullets from his right arm and right leg, although he still has more than 30 bits of metal in his leg. Although he returned to the Army, completing an in-service three-year degree at Durham University, he was invalided out in 1986.

Alasdair, who now works in public relations in Newcastle, was a 22-year-old lieutenant in the Scots Guards when news broke of the Argentine invasion of the Falklands. He was listening to a lecture on radar at Sandhurst when orders came through to join the second wave of the Task Force sent to recover the islands, sailing to the South Atlantic on the QEII.

'I got this phone call and they said 'Right, get your winter woollies on, you're going to the Falklands', I said 'When?' and they said 'The day after tomorrow'. It was out of the blue and at first my reaction was just stunned disbelief, but also quite excited. I thought 'What the hell. You have trained for it'."

The trip to the South Atlantic provided an opportunity to train, and for Alasdair - a late substitute for another officer - to get to know an unfamiliar platoon.

"We knew we were going to war, but once the thing started nobody knew how long it was going to go on for. We were taking photographs of the exercises and the company commander told us to make sure we took lots of pictures because not everybody was going to come back. It hadn't really sunk in before, but he was right."

After landing at San Carlos Bay, Alasdair's platoon marched inland, soon approaching a farmhouse.

"We didn't know whether the enemy was there or not, although we could see some people standing around. We advanced in combat formation and, as we got closer, they realised we were British and they ran a Union flag up the flagpole.

"The Falklands had been completely cut off and the first they knew we had landed was when they saw us coming over the hill. There was a middle-aged woman in tears and she was handing out mugs of tea and saying 'We never thought you would come'. They hadn't been ill-treated but their freedom had been taken away, and that was the first time it hit home that there was such a thing as freedom."

As the British forces advanced, it was clear that the Scots Guards would be given the task of taking Mount Tumbledown. Their night attack would be the last big battle of the war, and as commander of one of the two platoons in the initial attack, Alasdair's role would be crucial.

"We knew it was going to be a tough one. There were Argentine regulars on the mountain, not conscripts, and they had the latest kit. We dug in, waiting for night to fall. I was more apprehensive than scared.

"We scaled the mountain at night, walking in a line abreast, and when we were getting close, shots started ringing out. It rapidly became clear that we were facing a very determined enemy and they were in some entrenched positions. They outnumbered us and we started taking some casualties.

"It was taking a long time getting through and eventually we decided the only thing to do was to go back to old-fashioned tactics. We dropped our field guns right in close and then just charged with fixed bayonets at a range of 70-100 yards and got straight into them.

"We took 13 casualties and there were only seven of us left, but we were standing on the top of Mount Tumbledown and I remember looking down and seeing the lights of Stanley and the enemy retreating down the other side. They just cracked - when we really got stuck in we felt them go and start running."

But, at what should have been a moment of triumph, disaster struck.

"They saw us silhouetted on top of the mountain and they opened up with a machine gun. You knew you were going to get hit, you could see this red tracer flashing and hear it crackling all around you.

"One guy went down on one side of me and then the guy on the other side and I knew it was my turn next. I was trying to fling myself to the ground but it was almost like diving through a hailstorm. I got hit through the leg and the arm. We had just cracked the battle and to get wounded right at the end was annoying, to say the least."

Alasdair had no option but to lie on top of the hill, while another company came up and mopped up the rest of the Argentine resistance. Fortunately, the bullets had not broken any bones or severed any major blood vessels, although his wounds meant he was unable to continue in the Army and he is technically disabled. But he has been free of many of the psychological scars which have affected other veterans.

"I did have nightmares, which I think is completely normal, immediately afterwards, but I have never had many problems since. I know that some people get affected differently, but we were right in the thick of it and I don't have post-traumatic stress.

"I spent six weeks motionless in hospital, and that was the most miserable time of the whole thing. They said I was not going to walk again, and that was entirely miserable, but I got over that and I can walk pretty well now."

As platoon commander, it was Alasdair's responsibility to visit the families of those killed on Tumbledown, for whom the justice of the war must be hard to grasp. But, as one of the survivors, he has no regrets.

"I think Britain was probably right to go, and if you join the Army I don't think you can complain when you get sent on these things. In the big picture, we had to go and free people, and I remember that middle-aged woman with tears running down her face handing out cups of tea. I think it was justified."

Tomorrow: why the war had nothing to do with freedom.