Johnson Beharry VC has been through the most extraordinary life experiences. Bernardo Moya meets him, and finds out what drove him to incredible feats of heroism one day in Iraq in 2005.
I
t isn't often you meet a man who has put his life on the line to save others, who has looked death in the face and been wounded so badly that doctors didn't think he would survive, but that is
the story of Johnson Beharry, VC. Johnson is a quiet, self-contained man who has a defi nite presence. Born and brought up in Grenada, in the Caribbean in 1979, from an Afro-Indian family, Johnson moved to the UK in 1999 at the age of 19. As a teenager, his life was hardly the conventional mould from which heroes are cut. He started out as a small-time drug dealer, selling cannabis. But this was clearly not something Johnson
felt right about and he joined the Princess of Wales Regiment at the age of 21. Johnson: I just looked at my life and I said
to myself, "why am I doing this? What would my Gran think of me knowing I’m in a country where I could do something positive with my life and this is what I’m doing? And what would she think of me?" I couldn’t cope with the answer... So I decided I had to stop there and then... One day on my way to work I saw the
advert in the papers for the army so I said, "Right, I’m going to join the army." ...So... I went into the recruiting offi ce...”