"Tumbledown" was a 2-part BBC production based on the true story of a British soldier (I forget his name) who was seriously injured in the final land battle of the Falklands War in 1982.
Historically - Mount Tumbledown was one of several high points that overlooked the capital of the Falkland Isles, Port Stanley. The British Army needed to secure it in order that the town would be cut off by land, and effectively surrounded with the Royal Navy fleet out to sea.
The battle for Mount Tumbledown was initiated overnight by British troops who had fought and walked their way across East Falkland from their beachhead at San Carlos Water on the far side of the island. The action was part of a combined arms attack on all of the high points overlooking Port Stanley. The intention was that once the mountains had been taken overnight, artillery would then be helicoptered up to the peaks to support a final push on Stanley. As it happens, once the Argentines realised the hopelessness of their situation, they surrendered the next morning.
The soldier in question was amongst those who fought their way to the top of the mountain in a vicious night battle - often involving hand-to-hand combat as they broke through the Argentine defences. They had just reached the summit when an enemy soldier shot him in the head.
When he was taken to the Field Hospital, the surgeons basically wrote him off for dead since about a quarter of his brain was missing from the grievous head wound. He was left on a stretcher in the corner of the tent for over two hours in extreme pain whilst the Army surgeons treated those with less serious injuries - as you would expect, they were trying to save as many lives as possible and they figured that they would be wasting time and effort if they treated this guy – so IIRC they never even gave him anything for the pain, they just didn’t expect him to live long.
When they came to look at him again - i.e. once circumstances permitted, they found that he was still alive and so they patched him up.
The amazing thing is that even with a huge chunk of his brain missing, he went on to live a completely normal life - apparently with no side effects.
The program that the BBC made was OK - but, typically for the period, had a somewhat left-wing bias to the storytelling (the BBC can be very anti-war when it wants to be).
It's definitely something I'd like to see again though.
Regards,
Dr. S.