Most days when the British media feature a black man from the Caribbean it's something depressing. A black male face stares out from your newspaper and you know that the story will be about a mugging, a rape or a murder.

Diane Abbott

So it was wonderful to wake up one morning last year and see the handsome black face of Private Johnson Beharry on the front page of all our newspapers. He looked dashing in his military uniform, and well he might.

Because for once this was no criminal staring out at you. This was a truly heroic young black man. Private Johnson Beharry had been awarded Britain's highest honour for valour, the Victoria Cross. And it was the first time that this particular medal had been given to a living person in 40 years. When the Queen pinned it on him at Buckingham Palace she said, "You are a very special person. It has been rather a long time since I've awarded one of these."

Sometimes heroic figures seem less so on close examination. But what Private Beharry did to deserve his medal was truly astonishing. He was serving in Iraq and was driving the platoon commander's vehicle at the head of a five-vehicle convoy. Beside him was his best friend, a gunner from Jamaica named Troy Samuels.

Troy was also to be awarded a medal, the Military Cross, for his bravery in the incident that happened next. The convoy came under attack. But Private Beharry burst through a roadblock to safety although his tank was on fire and all his communications had gone. By this time the hatch of his vehicle had been blasted open by enemy fire, his head was exposed and a bullet was lodged in his helmet. Despite this he continued to drive, leading his convoy of five other vehicles through enemy fire for a mile until he reached a walled compound.

At this point he might have run off and saved his own life. The metal of the vehicle was searing hot because of gunfire and it could have blown up at any time. But he climbed into the vehicle and pulled two badly wounded colleagues, one of them his commanding officer, from the turret.

Beharry.... had been awarded Britain's highest honour for valour, the Victoria Cross.

That might have been enough for some of us. But Private Beharry went back to the vehicle, despite the fact he was under fire, and rescued the other soldiers. Then, finally, he parked the vehicle in a safe place and disabled it so the enemy fighters could not use it or its weapons system against his fellow British soldiers.

His saga of astonishing bravery was not over. Six weeks later a rocket again hit his vehicle. The bomb exploded a few inches from his head and this time the shrapnel penetrated his helmet and entered his brain. His skull was shattered. But somehow he managed to reverse his vehicle across open ground until it was out of danger before losing consciousness.

In the movies people perform these acts of heroism and wake up the next day with hardly a scratch. In real life Private Beharry's injuries were horrific and he will suffer from them for the rest of his life. His skull was smashed like an eggshell and had to be rebuilt. There is now a metal plate inside his head, his forehead is bumpy and one eye is still slightly out of alignment. He suffers constant pain in his head, shoulders and back that painkillers cannot touch. And, because of the brain injury, his head continuously feels as if there are ants crawling about inside.

He will never go back to front-line military duties and, at 27, it is not clear whether he will ever be able to return to work at all. Worse, the brain injury means that his personality has changed. He suffers from mood swings and flashbacks about the incident.
He will never again be the happy-go-lucky Grenadian boy who joined the British army at age 19. His marriage broke up under the pressure.

Relatives in Grenada sold negative stories about him to the British newspapers. Interviewed in the Daily Telegraph by Elizabeth Grice, Private Beharry said, "Everyone forgot the old person. They see this great person and they expect me to be that person. It is hard to live to please everyone." He went on to say about his act of bravery, "I did not do it because I wanted a medal. I did it because these soldiers were in danger and I could help them.

I feel good knowing that they are all alive and without injury and knowing that it's me that saved them. I do not think I would have been able to live with myself knowing I could have done something and I didn't. To me the medal represents all those guys who have a life. But you do not get something like this for free. You get it and survive with the pain; or you get it and die."

Life is not going to be easy for Private Johnson Beharry. But he is a true British hero.

Johnson Beharry's autobiography Barefoot Soldier: A Story of Extreme Valour is available on Amazon.com.

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