BRITAIN’S highest and rarest medal for valour is generally awarded for one act of heroism in the face of the enemy. Private Beharry, exceptionally, earned his decoration twice. Extreme courage is an act that the rational man in his armchair will never quite understand.

Private Beharry was the driver of a platoon commander’s Warrior armoured fighting vehicle, a 30-tonne behemoth, when his company were ordered to replenish an isolated coalition forces outpost in the troubled city of al-Amarah. It was a night mission into intensely hostile territory, and every front-line soldier knows that the best-laid plans rarely survive contact with the enemy. Private Beharry and his convoy of five other Warriors were heading into the unfriendly city when new orders came over the radio: they were redirected to rescue a foot patrol that had become pinned down under heavy fire.

Their route lay through a succession of potential ambushes. Empty streets alerted their suspicions. As the platoon commander stopped his vehicle, it was immediately engulfed by explosions. The vehicle’s commander and most of its occupants were concussed or wounded, and the radio was rendered useless. Private Beharry, sitting at the controls unable to communicate with either his own senior officer or the other Warriors, and not knowing whether his commander and gunner were dead or alive, took the initiative; he closed the hatch and drove forward, only to suffer another intense rocket attack which set his vehicle on fire and filled it with intense and noxious smoke.

Forced to open the hatch again, he drove through further intense fire, believing that the only way to save the lives of his comrades was to drive through the ambush.

Further attacks destroyed his periscope, and he had to drive 1,500 yards under enemy fire with his head exposed out the hatch. Still under fire, he stopped and in three separate missions at great danger to himself he rescued the platoon commander, the wounded gunner and the remainder of the soldiers in the vehicle, leading them all to a place of safety.

He eventually collapsed from physical and mental exhaustion and was himself evacuated — but not before he had been hit by a 7.62mm bullet which penetrated his helmet and remained lodged on its inner surface, millimetres from his brain.

Returning to duty after medical treatment, Private Beharry once again found himself driving his Warrior through the streets of al-Amarah on the night of June 11 when his vehicle was ambushed from the rooftops. He sustained a serious head injury when a rocket-propelled grenade scored a direct hit on the vehicle’s armour six inches from his head. Several others of his crew were injured.

With blood from his injury obscuring his vision, Private Beharry managed to retain control and reversed the Warrior out of the ambush to a comparatively safe area, enabling other nearby crews to rescue his wounded crew, including himself.

Only then did Private Beharry finally lose consciousness. As a result of his head injury he lapsed into a coma, from which he subsequently recovered. He is alive to tell his tale and so, as a result of his actions, are the crewmen of two Warriors who would otherwise have perished.

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