Friday before last we had a small event in the museum with some of Pierre's family, friends and team mates.
Kevin George, his team mate who was part of the fatal training camp, has been leading on this and is keen to both remember Pierre in a positive way, such as with the legacy match, from which some players have gone on to train with Charlton's academy and the annual Pierre Bolangi award for the U18s player who best exemplifies Pierre's qualities of resilience, leadership, optimism and compassion but also to recognise and support the other players and staff who were involved.
Kevin is now a qualified clinical therapist so is very aware of the effects such traumas can and have had on people, including Kevin himself, for many years.
Kevin presented the museum with a shirt from the legacy game and Pierre's sister Angelique gave us a framed photo of him. As he best friend Robert Lawrence said when he saw the photo, "That is Pierre, always smiling".
The shirt, the photo and some testimonies from Kevin, the youth team coach at the time David Burke and Michael Turner, who went on to play for Hull, Sunderland and Norwich among others, are on display in main reception for a few months before they will be moved back to the museum.
Awww Henners, thanks for sharing. Thats beautiful. I’ll definitely come see it next time I’m over. Currently renewing the passport so have to wait for that. Hopefully won’t be long and I can bring that shirt too 🙏🏻♥️
A really difficult read at times but any article, especially in a "publication", such as The Athletic, that keeps Pierre's memory going has to be good. It's written by a journalist by the name of Tom Burrows (as opposed to Peter Burrowes):
The tragedy of Pierre Bolangi, the promising footballer who died on a pre-season Army camp
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.”
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.
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.
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.
Still very raw after all these years, have a pic of him on my pc. Glad that the award continues, is the garden that Fanny & Co worked so hard on still there?.
I, for very personal reasons, struggle to read these articles, but always do. I can also remembering being off work when it happened as my wife had just given birth to our first child. So her birthday is always a stark reminder than life can change in an instant.
I've met Kevin a number of times, and the family, and attended a couple of meetings with the club with them when I was on the Trust board.
@Kap10 yes the garden was reinstated a few years ago, Jean and her husband were there to see the re-opening.
RIP Pierre, and all of those lost, early, through tragedy. Whilst it's right and proper we consider the family in anything and everything relating to this tragic death (shame the club didn't for many years). For those around Pierre it also has a lifelong effect as can be read in many of these articles.
I took on a new apprentice 3 weeks ago. Unbeknown to me at the time her boyfriend plays for Charlton U21’s….. today in our catch up she tells me it was him who won the Pierre award this year!!
I’m not sure why PV felt the need to write that on Twitter. He's clearly very aware of feelings towards him by those involved and the family (however right or wrong that may be) and for them reading tweets like this are really not going to help but only cement or worsen those feelings and the situation. I'm sure it was also a traumatic time for lots of people around the club, including PV himself, but a little humility is needed.
Sometimes not saying anything is the right thing to do.
I’m not sure why PV felt the need to write that on Twitter. He's clearly very aware of feelings towards him by those involved and the family (however right or wrong that may be) and for them reading tweets like this are really not going to help but only cement or worsen those feelings and the situation. I'm sure it was also a traumatic time for lots of people around the club, including PV himself, but a little humility is needed.
Sometimes not saying anything is the right thing to do.
It’s a thing he does, post long quote formal views on things no one has asked for or is interested in. In this case you’re right, commenting in The Athletic when asked is probably the most he should have spoken
I've only just managed to read this article but every time I think about this young man and the devastating way in which his lost his life, it breaks my heart once again.
Richard & I volunteered to assist in remaking the original garden at SL which had been created in Pierre's name but which had sadly been neglected in recent years. Along with the Groundsman & his assistant, who generously helped us with the digging of the plot, it began to take shape over a period of months.
Once a week we drove to the Training Ground through spring, summer & autumn and gradually the Memorial Garden became a focal point for visitors and for the players & their management as they trained close by. Chris Powell was especially interested in how things were progressing & would always come over to us for a chat. Pierre had clearly touched his heart.
We were proud of our achievements and were able to give some photos of the Garden at its best to Pierre's family when we were invited to the match that Kevin refers to in the article. And I was touched & very proud to be presented with one of the shirts produced for that event as exhibited in the Museum. It was framed for our eldest Grandson's 18th birthday...a poignant reminder that this very special young man wasn't able to celebrate this milestone himself.
If you are able to do so, please consider making a donation, however small, to Kevin's fundraiser to ensure that the name of Pierre Bolangi is never forgotten.
I’m not sure why PV felt the need to write that on Twitter. He's clearly very aware of feelings towards him by those involved and the family (however right or wrong that may be) and for them reading tweets like this are really not going to help but only cement or worsen those feelings and the situation. I'm sure it was also a traumatic time for lots of people around the club, including PV himself, but a little humility is needed.
Sometimes not saying anything is the right thing to do.
He’s just lost his brother. Maybe he’s in an emotional place?
There are no winners here. RIP Pierre, you will never be forgotten 💔
Comments
Kevin George, his team mate who was part of the fatal training camp, has been leading on this and is keen to both remember Pierre in a positive way, such as with the legacy match, from which some players have gone on to train with Charlton's academy and the annual Pierre Bolangi award for the U18s player who best exemplifies Pierre's qualities of resilience, leadership, optimism and compassion but also to recognise and support the other players and staff who were involved.
Kevin is now a qualified clinical therapist so is very aware of the effects such traumas can and have had on people, including Kevin himself, for many years.
Kevin presented the museum with a shirt from the legacy game and Pierre's sister Angelique gave us a framed photo of him. As he best friend Robert Lawrence said when he saw the photo, "That is Pierre, always smiling".
The shirt, the photo and some testimonies from Kevin, the youth team coach at the time David Burke and Michael Turner, who went on to play for Hull, Sunderland and Norwich among others, are on display in main reception for a few months before they will be moved back to the museum.
Thats beautiful.
I’ll definitely come see it next time I’m over.
Currently renewing the passport so have to wait for that.
Hopefully won’t be long and I can bring that shirt too 🙏🏻♥️
The tragedy of Pierre Bolangi, the promising footballer who died on a pre-season Army camp
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.”
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.
Some of the boys were treated at the nearby Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey.
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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.
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.
RIP young man a potential unfulfilled
I've met Kevin a number of times, and the family, and attended a couple of meetings with the club with them when I was on the Trust board.
@Kap10 yes the garden was reinstated a few years ago, Jean and her husband were there to see the re-opening.
RIP Pierre, and all of those lost, early, through tragedy. Whilst it's right and proper we consider the family in anything and everything relating to this tragic death (shame the club didn't for many years). For those around Pierre it also has a lifelong effect as can be read in many of these articles.
https://x.com/_petervarney/status/1851976958424293874?s=46&t=A-w3Eq0EWWpjMxring904Q
I took on a new apprentice 3 weeks ago. Unbeknown to me at the time her boyfriend plays for Charlton U21’s….. today in our catch up she tells me it was him who won the Pierre award this year!!
Sometimes not saying anything is the right thing to do.
Richard & I volunteered to assist in remaking the original garden at SL which had been created in Pierre's name but which had sadly been neglected in recent years. Along with the Groundsman & his assistant, who generously helped us with the digging of the plot, it began to take shape over a period of months.
Once a week we drove to the Training Ground through spring, summer & autumn and gradually the Memorial Garden became a focal point for visitors and for the players & their management as they trained close by. Chris Powell was especially interested in how things were progressing & would always come over to us for a chat. Pierre had clearly touched his heart.
We were proud of our achievements and were able to give some photos of the Garden at its best to Pierre's family when we were invited to the match that Kevin refers to in the article. And I was touched & very proud to be presented with one of the shirts produced for that event as exhibited in the Museum. It was framed for our eldest Grandson's 18th birthday...a poignant reminder that this very special young man wasn't able to celebrate this milestone himself.
If you are able to do so, please consider making a donation, however small, to Kevin's fundraiser to ensure that the name of Pierre Bolangi is never forgotten.
Maybe he’s in an emotional place?
There are no winners here.
RIP Pierre, you will never be forgotten 💔