This article is part of The Athletic’s series marking UK Black History Month. To view the whole collection, click here.
Arriving in Aldershot as part of a team-bonding Army exercise camp, Pierre Bolangi was in high spirits.
He had joined up with 13 of his Charlton Athletic academy team-mates a week after being selected to train with the first team — who had just been promoted back to the Premier League — for their pre-season tour in Devon.
For Bolangi, it was a dream come true and he won over the seasoned pros with his infectious energy and steely determination to succeed.
However, what followed that glorious high was a devastating tragedy as Bolangi drowned while wading through a lake during a five-day Army training course.
He was 17 years old.
For Bolangi’s team-mates, the events of that awful day are still raw and there is a lingering feeling of injustice and frustration about what followed.
Yet before revisiting the grim details of August 9, 2000, let us first remember Pierre Bolangi, the Charlton youth player with the bubbly personality and cheeky grin.
“If I was to describe Pierre as a footballer, I would say he was a bit like Aaron Wan-Bissaka,” childhood friend and fellow Charlton trainee Kevin George tells The Athletic.
“He was a left-back, he was very aggressive and good defensively but I wouldn’t say he was the most technical player. He was very reliable and consistent.
“Off the pitch, he was very warm and had an electric personality. He wasn’t the captain but he was always given captain’s duties. So if anyone came to the training ground, he’d be the one showing them around.
“He would definitely have made it as a professional footballer. He was determined, that was his mindset.”
Rob Lawrence was another close childhood friend of Bolangi from growing up in Plaistow, south east London. He explains how Bolangi, who was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, had moved to London when he was young and lived with his sister Angelique. He attended the local Cumberland Community School.
“The main thing about Pierre was his tenacious character,” Lawrence tells The Athletic. “He had an outgoing personality. His drive and work ethic were second to none.
“He could definitely have had a successful professional football career. He always wanted to better himself. So, for example, he was left-footed, so if his right foot wasn’t so good, he would do drills and training until he got to a level he was happy with. And that was with everything, both on and off the pitch.
“We were the same age but he was like a big brother in the way he’d look out for you. You could rely on him. If the coaches needed help with anything, Pierre would be the one they’d go to.”
Jamal Campbell-Ryce, now working as a coach in the U.S. after a long playing career, came through the academy with Bolangi.
“Off the pitch, Pierre was always smiling, he was an infectious character who always wanted to help others,” he tells The Athletic. “On the pitch, he was a great competitor and just a winner. He was thought of really highly by everyone at the club.”
Michael Turner was another Charlton trainee who went on to play for a variety of professional clubs. “Pierre was a bundle of joy, he would light up any room and had a really affectionate smile that would make you smile,” he tells The Athletic. “Everyone was in love with his personality and the way he was around the training ground. He had that determination to succeed in football.”
Chris Powell was Charlton’s starting left-back at the time Bolangi joined the first team for their pre-season tour. He was also one of the club’s standout players, later being selected to play for England. He remembers how Bolangi cheekily told him he was coming after his spot in the Charlton side.
“The funny thing with Pierre was he never used to call people by their first names,” Powell told Sky Sports in 2000. “So he came up to me and said, ‘Hey Powell’, and I said, ‘Who are you?’. And he said, ‘I’m Pierre Bolangi, I’m coming for your shirt’. So I realised he was a left-back. That was the first thing he said to me and from then on, he was on my good side.”
Powell’s manager at the time was Alan Curbishley, who had just led Charlton back to the Premier League for the 2000-01 season.
He recalled a polite boy who proved an instant hit with the first team on that tour.
“He was a Canning Town boy like me, he was a lovely boy, he mixed very well,” Curbishley tells The Athletic. “He wasn’t overawed by being with the first-team squad. He had a great future ahead of him.
“We always took a young player with us when we went away (on pre-season), to let him see what could happen and what was in front of him. With Pierre, with the way he conducted himself around the training ground, once we mentioned to the first-team squad that he was coming, everyone was delighted with it. He couldn’t believe it, he was so pleased to be with us.
“He would have got a chance to play for Charlton with the way we were at the time. We had young lads that were coming through on a regular basis.”
Pierre Bolangi, right, in action for Charlton’s youth team against a West Ham side featuring Jermain Defoe (Steve Bridge)
Tragically, however, Bolangi never got that opportunity. His dream was snatched away from him just a week later.
After his time away with the first team, Bolangi rejoined his fellow academy players for a five-day team-bonding retreat at the Aldershot Army School of Physical Training, a facility Charlton had used before. Peter Varney, who was Charlton’s chief executive at the time, tells The Athletic a risk assessment had been done before the visit and there had been no mention of any water.
On day three of the Army camp, the boys were woken early and told they were going on a run.
Campbell-Ryce counts himself as “one of the lucky ones” as he was called away to a reserve-team match that day and so missed the tragedy that would later unfold.
All dressed in Army overalls, the trainees went on a 40-minute jog under the supervision of Dean May, a former Army staff sergeant, who was leading at the front.
David Burke, who had recently joined Charlton as their assistant academy director, and Phil Gallagher, the club’s youth academy education and welfare officer, who had arrived that morning, were bringing up the rear.
Burke recalls how the boys were on a “squaddie run”, which meant the group ran at the slowest man’s pace and in pairs. Bolangi was with them at the back.
“It was quite jolly. It was slow-paced, we were chatting,” Burke tells The Athletic.
Tired from their run and still wearing their overalls and trainers, they went down a bank where they reached the edge of the Horse Pond on the Army’s Aldershot land. It was around 80 metres wide.
It was at this point that May led them across the water.
“I didn’t know there was going to be some water but he (May) said ‘This is what we (the Army) run through all the time’. He said it wasn’t over head height,” Burke recalls.
Burke says the boys were told they could wade through the water and hold their arms up as if they were preventing a rifle from getting wet.
As they approached the lake, Burke says May entered from the right side.
Those who were not comfortable in water were told they could walk around it instead.
However, Bolangi, who was the first of the boys to go into the lake, ran around to the other side and quickly got into difficulty as he ended up in deeper water.
“The floor was so slippery, there were weeds and silt on the ground, it almost felt like there wasn’t a floor there,” Burke says. “He (Bolangi) panicked and then everyone else who had gone in the water panicked. Some of the boys got pulled out, some were face under. And in that moment, he disappeared under the water.”
Bolangi’s friend George was one of those struggling in the lake. He had been reluctant to go in but had done so.
“That’s because of how football is: that idea you shouldn’t really have a voice, you should just do what you’re told,” he says.
Very quickly, George found himself in difficulty like many of the other boys.
“It got deeper and deeper and we were like, ‘What?’. Our clothes started to get heavy because we were wearing overalls and when they got wet, they started to pull us towards the ground,” George says. “You’ve got to remember we were wearing trainers as well, so that made it extra difficult.”
George was eventually pulled towards the bank and dragged to safety.
Turner, a confident swimmer and the tallest in the group, had managed to reach the other side of the lake. “I turned around and could see commotion behind me with a few of the lads struggling,” he remembers. “I ran back around to get back to where I went in and that’s when I heard people saying, ‘Where’s Bolangi? Where’s Bolangi?’.”
Neil McCafferty, from Northern Ireland, had only been at Charlton for six weeks.
“It was a horrendous idea (to cross the lake),” he tells The Athletic. “Why he (May) did it, I do not know. I remember asking him (May) if we could walk across and his response was, ‘Yes’.”
McCafferty recalls the water quickly becoming deep, having to swim and going up and down in the lake. He said Bolangi was on his back for a time as he struggled to stay afloat but they became separated in the water.
Realising the seriousness of the situation, Burke helped rescue McCafferty and another boy, Mark Royal, who had just been released from Chelsea.
“The whole thing was only around two to five minutes long,” Burke recalls. “But in my mind, it took forever. Neil was face down in his overalls, I pulled him out. And then left him on the side with Phil (Gallagher) and some of the other lads.”
Gallagher had also been trying to help save boys in the lake.
“People started to panic,” Gallagher recalls. “That fear transmits and is contagious. Pretty quickly I found myself in the middle of a horrific situation.
“I quickly started trying to get boys out of the water but a number of them were starting to pull on me and pull me under the water because they were panicking. I was trying to get them back to shore. I was pushing people as best I could.”
As the boys, exhausted and distressed, gathered together on the bank for a head count, the horrifying reality set in that Bolangi had disappeared under the water.
Gallagher recalls seeing Bolangi, around two yards away from him, going under the water.
“By this stage, I was out of breath. I was probably at my last,” he says. “Sergeant May came back and I said, ‘Man down, man down, there’. He started to dive in for Pierre.”
The boys were then led away as desperate efforts continued to rescue Bolangi.
His body was finally recovered more than four hours later by a helicopter and diving search team.
A floral tribute on the hearse at Pierre Bolangi’s funeral (Matthew Fearn – PA Images via Getty Images)
Some of the boys were treated at the nearby Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey.
According to George, they were given just a week off before they returned to playing football.
“We had no choice,” he says. “We had to get on with it because nobody around us actually knew what to do and because we wanted to be footballers, so it was a week off and then we were back in.”
He felt Charlton managed the fallout poorly.
Burke remembers how it was almost treated like a taboo topic.
“They told everybody not to talk about it, which was poor. With regards to wellbeing and mental health support, there was none that I remember,” he says. “I left (Charlton) shortly after. It just didn’t feel right being there anymore.”
Varney, who had the task of dealing with all the club staff, has a slightly different recollection of what happened after. “I got in professional counsellors but the problem was that not everyone wanted to talk to them,” he says. “They were offered whatever it was they wanted.”
Burke and Gallagher were rigorously questioned by police. They had to wait more than a year to find out they were not facing criminal charges.
May, however, was charged with manslaughter by gross negligence — which he denied.
He did, though, later admit to breaching health and safety rules.
That meant the boys had to relive the horrors of that day in court, during a trial that took place almost two years later.
May, who was 35 at the time, was found guilty by a jury. He received a £1,500 fine.
In his sentencing remarks, Mr Justice Turner said May had been made a “scapegoat” for the Army’s own failings around health and safety, the Independent reported at the time.
In a statement given to The Athletic for this article, an Army spokesperson said: “Whilst we can’t comment on individual cases, we take our duty of care to anyone taking part in Army-led activity extremely seriously and are wholly committed to undertaking the organisational learning which can better enable us to deliver that duty.”
Two years after the trial, May was hired by the Football Association as a scout and coach in the England women’s youth setup — a decision that was met with anger by Varney.
“We had a big row about it on the phone,” Varney tells The Athletic. “I got a call from the FA, it got quite heated. I said, ‘Are you telling me it’s appropriate when you look at… what happened for this man to be employed by the FA?’ And they didn’t see there were any issues with it all. Of course, it was raw for us.”
Since 2007, May has worked as a football coach in Australia. He is currently the head goalkeeping coach at Gold Coast Knights Football Club in Queensland.
May did not wish to contribute to this article. The FA did not respond when asked by The Athletic about May.
For Bolangi’s heartbroken family and friends, the fine handed to May was a source of frustration.
“It wasn’t enough,” Lawrence says. “But whatever the outcome was going to be, it wasn’t going to bring Pierre back.”
Lawrence says the pain of losing his close friend has never left him.
“Our birthdays were like days apart and we were planning our 18th birthdays, we were going to have a party together,” he says. “So that was another big thing. Now I don’t really celebrate birthdays because of that. It’s had a traumatic effect on me.”
Burke, who later worked for clubs including Fulham and Brighton & Hove Albion, is also haunted by what he had witnessed.
“I think about it every day,” he says. “I got married about a month before that, I had kids after and my wife says I wasn’t around for two years in my head after. Every time I’m in water with kids, at a swimming pool, every time I put my head underwater or see an underwater scene on TV, it always comes back to my mind.”
“It was traumatic and it has left its mark on all of us,” Gallagher adds.
Charlton’s players observe a minute’s silence following Bolangi’s death (Nick Potts/EMPICS via Getty Images)
Another one of the players on the trip, Michael Roche, a 16-year-old Irish boy who was only on trial at Charlton, suffered psychological trauma following the incident. Roche later brought a civil claim against the British Government and was awarded £46,000 in damages, the Irish Independent reported.
McCafferty also developed a fear of water, especially anyone pulling or grabbing him in water, for a time following the tragedy that happened when he was just 16.
In recent years, there have been renewed efforts to celebrate Bolangi’s life and cement his legacy.
Starting in 2022, Charlton set up the Pierre Bolangi award, given to the player in the academy who best typifies Bolangi’s character traits.
George, who has helped keep Bolangi’s memory alive, then set up the first legacy match in his name in the summer of 2023, with Charlton’s U16s playing a select XI at their Sparrows Lane training ground. The aim is to give youngsters a chance to get taken on by Charlton, or another professional club.
There is also the Pierre Bolangi memorial garden at the training ground.
Charlie Methven, Charlton’s current CEO, said: “I had the opportunity to meet a member of Pierre’s family and a close family friend at a recent Charlton game and the more I get told about his tragic death, the more heartbreaking it all feels.
“For us as a football club, it is important we continue our work with Pierre’s friends, family and former team-mates to ensure we all remember Pierre’s story and celebrate his life.”
“For me, it’s like it happened yesterday,” Lawrence says. “It’s still very prominent at the front of my brain. But everything that’s happening to remember his legacy — the Pierre Bolangi award, this article for Black History Month — all of these things give me strength and happiness.”
For those on that Charlton pre-season trip, the dreadful events of that day in Aldershot will never leave them.
But the name of Pierre Bolangi, the boy who was always smiling, will forever live on.
(Top photos: Steve Bridge; design: Meech Robinson)
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