Unquestioned Valour
Johnson Beharry carried out two acts of great courage when serving in Iraq. They were actions leading to him being the first living soldier in 50 years to be awarded the VC.
Born in Grenada at the end of the 1970s, Johnson Beharry came from humble beginnings and grew up in poverty, living with his five brothers and three sisters in a small hut with two rooms.
Just before the turn of the millennium, Beharry moved to West London, but his life took a turn for the worse and he quickly became involved in criminal gangs, including dealing in drugs. Once, he was nearly caught by the police while carrying an Uzi sub-machine gun. Realising his life was going in the wrong direction, and that he would end up dead or in prison, he enrolled in the 1st Battalion, Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment, in August 2001.
After completing his training, Beharry learned how to drive Warrior vehicles and from his first tour of duty in Kosovo to a three-month tour of Northern Ireland it quickly became clear that he was a valuable asset to the Army, although it was to be in Iraq where his true mettle emerged.
On 1 May 2004, while on duty in AlAmarah, Johnson Beharry was driving a Warrior tracked armoured vehicle that was hit by multiple rocket-propelled grenades. In the attack, the platoon commander, the vehicle’s gunner, and others in the vehicle were injured. He was also shot in the head, the bullet lodging in his helmet.
To extricate the vehicle from danger, Beharry opened the driver’s hatch to steer, thus exposing his head to further withering small arms fire.
Driving the crippled Warrior through the ambush, Beharry led five other Warriors to safety before extracting his wounded comrades, all the time exposed to further enemy fire. Once he had extracted his injured comrades, and got his vehicle to safety, Beharry disabled the vehicle and its weapons before collapsing from exhaustion.
As if this wasn’t enough heroism for one man, the next month, on 11 June, Beharry was again driving a Warrior when ambushed and a rocketpropelled grenade hit his vehicle, exploding inches away from his head. Nevertheless, he drove backwards at great speed, thus saving the lives of those in his vehicle. However, he was seriously wounded and had a fractured skull that left him in a coma for weeks.
In recognition of these two selfless acts of bravery, Beharry became the first person to be awarded a Victoria Cross in the 21st century, and he also became the first living recipient of the VC in more than 30 years and the first serving VC in the Army since 1985.
Still serving in the Army when this publication went to print, Johnson Beharry currently holds the rank of Warrant Officer Class 2 (WO2).