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Attached is a copy of the article that appeared in todays edition of The Times in London. I think everyone should be proud for him and his bravery.




March 18, 2005

'Maybe I was brave but anyone could do the same'
By Michael Evans
Armoured vehicle driver saved the lives of his comrades under heavy fire on two occasions




Private Johnson Beharry is one of only 14 surviving holders of the Victoria Cross (TOBY MELVILLE / REUTERS)

A YOUNG soldier who enlisted in the Army less than four years ago became a member of the most exclusive club in the world yesterday after being awarded the Victoria Cross for exceptional bravery in Iraq.

Private Johnson Gideon Beharry, 25, is now one of just 14 living recipients of the award which he received for saving the lives of 30 comrades under remorseless attacks from grenades and machinegun fire in the volatile city of al-Amarah, north of Basra. Only 1,355 have been awarded, many of them posthumously.

Despite suffering appalling head wounds in a later incident that led to numerous operations on his brain, Private Beharry proved yesterday that he had lost none of the sense of humour that marked him out among his colleagues in the 1st Battalion The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment.

Asked what was going through his mind when he was trying to rescue his comrades under rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) attack from Iraqi insurgents in the early hours of May 1 2004, Private Beharry simply replied: “RPG.”

Nor had he lost his modesty. “Maybe I was brave,” he said. “I don’t know. I think anyone else could do the same thing. If I had to go back to Iraq, I would and if I found myself in the same position I would do it all over again.”

The announcement yesterday was the first award of a VC since Colonel “H” Jones and Sergeant Ian McKay of The Parachute Regiment won theirs posthumously from action in the Falklands in 1982.

It also that meant his battalion becomes the most decorated regiment in the history of the Army. Twenty-eight other members of the regiment appear in the list of gallantry awards for Iraq published in the London Gazette. Private Beharry is the 57th holder of the VC in his regiment and yesterday he met the only other living VC from his regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel Eric Wilson, aged 92.

Didy Grahame, secretary of the Victoria Cross and George Cross Association, said other VC holders were delighted to have a new member.

“The surviving VC holders had begun to feel that they were somewhat of an extinct breed,” she said. “So it’s heartening to know that the unique qualities required for this award still exist today.”

Private Beharry, who was born in Grenada and whose parents still live there, won his accolade for courage during one of the most hostile periods in southern Iraq experienced by any British unit after the combat phase of the war was over.

He saved the lives of 30 of his comrades by sheer guts and determination, driving his Warrior armoured vehicle through an ambush while his turret was on fire and 2nd Lietenant Richard Deane, his platoon commander, lay wounded.

Had he come to a halt, the four Warriors behind him would have been trapped and many would have been killed.

Not satisfied with driving his comrades, all from C Company, through the ambush, Private Beharry dragged his severely injured platoon commander to safety and rescued other soldiers from their Warriors, all under intense enemy fire.

Just over a month later, his platoon was ambushed again, and this time, a rocket-propelled grenade exploded six inches from his head and fragments dealt hima a near-mortal blow.

His wife, Lynthia, who was with him to hear of the award recalled yesterday: “I got a visit from the sergeant-major on June 10 at 6am at my house [in Southampton] and was told he had a 50-50 chance that he wouldn’t survive. I just had to take it day by day.”

Private Beharry said that because of the injury to his head, he could not remember anything of the second incident, adding: “I joined the Army because I wanted a change of life [he had previously worked in the construction industry]. It was a good decision and I’ve never regretted it.

He said that when he came under fire, what he feared most was “losing a track” on his Warrior, because that would have prevented him from driving through the ambush to safety.

“I can’t explain what it is like to have a VC. But it feels good that we are the highest-decorated regiment in the British Army.”

Standing before the cameras, with the scar from his operations visible, he said it was his wish to stay in the Army, despite constant pain in his head, shoulder and back.

He admitted that he had been “speechless” when Lieutenant-Colonel Matthew Maer, his commanding officer, called him in to tell him of the medal. Colonel Maer is also included in the gallantry awards. He won the Distinguished Service Order, two of his sergeants won the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross (one below the VC) and seven other members of the regiment won the Military Cross.

Colonel Maer said another dozen soldiers from his regiment deserved medals. During their tour last summer, he said his regiment faced constant assaults from the first day of the deployment, including 237 shootings, 51 rockets, 185 RPGs and 360 explosive devices. “The total was 850 attacks, or six a day every day for five months, except that one day we had 109 attacks,” he said. Forty soldiers were wounded, two of them fatally.

General Sir Mike Jackson, Chief of the General Staff, summed up his feelings about Private Beharry and others awarded medals for service in Iraq.

He said: “I can’t remember feeling as proud of the Army as I do today.”



DEVOTION TO COUNTRY



Private Beharry is easily the youngest holder of the Victoria Cross. Twelve VCs have been awarded since the Second World War but six of them were posthumous

The medal that will be presented by the Queen at Buckingham Palace later this year has already been made. When Colonel “H” Jones and Sergeant Ian McKay won theirs posthumously in 1982, Messrs Hancocks & Co of London, the court jewellers who have been responsible for making the medal since its inception in the 1850s, produced 12

The medals are made from the bronze cascabels (knobs) of two Chinese cannon, captured from the Russians at the siege of Sebastopol — the last great battle of the Crimean War (1854-56). There are 358 ounces left for future medals



The first was won on June 21, 1854, by Mate (later Rear-Admiral) Charles Lucas of the Royal Navy in the Crimea. Keith Payne, an Australian, a VC from the Vietnam War in 1969, was the last man not to be awarded the medal posthumously

Although Private Beharry is the first VC winner since 1982, another soldier, Trooper Christopher Finney, of the Blues and Royals, won the George Cross in 2003 — which has the same pedigree as the Victoria Cross. He would have been awarded the VC had it not been that he saved the lives of his comrades under “friendly fire” from two US Air Force aircraft. The VC is awarded only for acts of extraordinary courage under enemy fire

Queen Victoria had pronounced that the VC was “to be awarded to those officers and men who have served us in the presence of the enemy and shall there have performed some single act of valour or devotion to their country”

He and his family should qualify for the LIFETIME proceeds from at least ONE Iraqi Oil Well, just like the White Ruling Class do-------instead of some sh8tty little medal.

BRITISH HERO OF THE 21ST CENTURY
YET THEY WANT TO STOP IMMIGRANTS .

exactly my point....to hell with the monarch..another form of babylon...