Robert Lawrence (British Army officer)

Robert Alasdair Davidson Lawrence MC (born 3 July 1960) is a former British Army officer who fought and was severely wounded in the Falklands War. His account of his experiences during and after the war was later adapted into the controversial television play Tumbledown, and his book co-written with his father, John Lawrence, When the Fighting Is Over: A Personal Story of the Battle for Tumbledown Mountain and Its Aftermath.

Lawrence was born on 3 July 1960; his father had served in the Royal Air Force. Lawrence was educated at Rose Hill School, Alderley and then Fettes College, but left at the age of 16; some accounts state that he was expelled. He decided to join the army, largely to placate his father. After attending Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, he was commissioned into the Scots Guards as a second lieutenant with a short service commission on 4 August 1979. He was promoted to lieutenant on 4 August 1981.

Second Battalion, Scots Guards were part of the second wave of British land forces committed to the Falklands War.

Lawrence wrote about his experience in the Scots Guards at the Battle of Mount Tumbledown when, in his moment of victory on the eastern slopes, he was almost killed when a bullet fired by an Argentine sniper tore off the side of his head. He was awarded the Military Cross for bravery, but he spent a year in a wheelchair and was almost totally paralyzed. The Argentinian sniper (either Private Luis Jorge Bordón or Walter Ignacio Becerra, according to Argentine Second Lieutenant Augusto Esteban La Madrid who clashed with Lawrence's platoon), armed with a FAL rifle, had helped cover the Argentinean retreat, firing shots at a Scout helicopter evacuating wounded off Tumbledown and injuring two men, before the Scots Guards mortally wounded him in a hail of gunfire.

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