A SOLDIER awarded one of the highest gallantry honours for action under enemy fire in Iraq has been charged with assaulting a young recruit at an army training barracks.

Sergeant Christopher Broome, an instructor at the Army Training Regiment at Winchester, won the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross for leading a bayonet charge against Iraqi Shia militia in the summer of 2004.

It is second only to the award of a Victoria Cross for an act of extraordinary bravery under hostile fire.

The fact that he was a non-commissioned officer rather than a private and, therefore, expected to display outstanding leadership under fire, probably pushed him down one level in the medals hierarchy.

Yesterday the Ministry of Defence said that Sergeant Broome had been charged with assault causing actual bodily harm. The alleged victim was one of the trainee soldiers at the Hampshire barracks, which provides basic training for 2,300 recruits a year.

Sergeant Broome, 37, who was one of 177 military staff at the training centre, has now been removed from his job as an instructor, pending his court martial, which has been set for May 8 at Aldershot.

The court martial will be supervised by a Judge Advocate and will take evidence from witnesses who worked at the same Winchester barracks.

He will be prosecuted by a military lawyer but a civilian barrister will be provided for him at his trial.

Any conviction for a violent offence would normally lead to automatic dismissal from the Army. Sergeant Broome was sent to Paderborn in Germany where his regiment, the 1st Battalion The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment, is based.

Sergeant Broome, from Dover, was one of 30 members of the regiment to receive gallantry awards after a six-month tour in Iraq in 2004 that brought them into almost daily violent confrontation with the so-called Mahdi army, allied to Moqtadr al-Sadr, the firebrand Shia cleric.

The battles led to the first award of a Victoria Cross since the Falklands conflict in 1982.

Private Johnson Beharry won the VC for saving the lives of 30 of his comrades under relentless enemy fire in al- Amarah, north of Basra.

Sergeant Broome led the bayonet charge in May 2004 in the town of al-Majar al-Kabir, but without the protection of his own weapon, which was inside his Warrior vehicle.

He took command of the charge, the first of its kind since the Falklands conflict, and acted without his SA80 rifle because, according to army sources, he felt that there was no time to be lost.

“It’s quite difficult to get your rifle out of the rack and he felt it was vital to dismount without his weapon to make sure the charge did not falter,” a source said at the time.

A month later Sergeant Broome played a crucial part in saving the life of Private Beharry who suffered serious head wounds in a rocket-propelled grenade assault that left him in a coma. Under sustained enemy fire he leapt from his Warrior to rescue Private Beharry from another armoured vehicle.

If Sergeant Broome were to be found guilty of the charge of assault, he would be allowed to keep his gallantry medal.

Only soldiers convicted of treason, sedition, mutiny or cowardice and desertion during hostilities are obliged to hand back medals.

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