A COLOUR sergeant who was awarded the second most prestigious gallantry medal for his deeds in Iraq pleaded guilty yesterday to ill-treating young recruits at an army training establishment.

Colour Sergeant Christopher Broome admitted to military police that since returning from active service in Iraq he had felt like a square peg in a round hole because he was accustomed to being a frontline soldier, not a training instructor. He is now facing prison and dismissal from the Army.

At his court martial in Aldershot, Sergeant Broome, 37, holder of the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross, second only to the Victoria Cross, admitted eight charges of mistreating recruits and one of assault while working at the Army Training Regiment at Winchester.

The offences, which took place on July 25 last year, included ordering four privates to eat dust. Two others had dust put into their mouths, and Private Oliver Daley was forced to eat grass and a piece of string, and to lick candlewax off the sergeant’s marching stick.

Sergeant Broome, who served with the 1st Battalion The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment in the summer of 2004, when there were violent attacks on British troops, also admitted wiping boot polish from the end of the marching stick on to the tongue of Private Mohammad Zaman, and hitting Private Simon Eikins on the head with the stick.

The sergeant, one of 177 military staff at the training centre, also pleaded guilty to ordering Private Ryan Coop to eat a piece of plastic.

Judge Advocate Paul Camp, presiding over the court martial, said that Sergeant Broome’s military record was “extraordinary”. He appeared in uniform, wearing the ribbon for the medal.

The judge advocate will pass sentence on Friday. The maximum sentence is two years in prison, which Sergeant Broome would serve in a civilian jail if he is discharged from the Army. He will be allowed to keep his medal.

Christopher Hill, for Sergeant Broome, said that his client admitted with hindsight that he had ill-treated the recruits and that he had been reckless when he “tapped” Private Eikins with his stick, causing him to need hospital treatment.

Sergeant Broome won his medal for leading a bayonet charge after an ambush by militia fighters of al-Mahdi Army, allied to Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Muslim cleric based in southern Iraq. He led his men even though he had not had time to collect his own rifle, which remained in his Warrior armoured vehicle.

He played a major role in saving the life of Private Johnson Beharry, a comrade in the same regiment who was awarded the Victoria Cross for his extraordinary acts of bravery during the same violent summer.

Sergeant Broome was one of 30 members of the 1st Battalion The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment to win bravery medals from the six-month tour of Iraq in 2004.

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