Widow ‘disappointed’ her soldier husband’s body laid in barracks for three weeks

The widow of a soldier who died in his barracks has said it is ‘unforgivable’ that it took three weeks to find his body.

Father-of-three Lance Corporal Bernard Mongan’s decomposing body was discovered on January 23, 2020, in his bedroom at Catterick Garrison, North Yorkshire.

His widow Beth Mongan believes he ‘took his own life while in crisis’ after complaining of being bullied by senior officers.

But senior coroner Jon Heath said at his inquest on Thursday it was ‘not possible to determine’ how Mongan died. He recorded an open conclusion.

The inquest at North Yorkshire Coroner’s Court had heard that doctors couldn’t be sure of the 33-year-old’s medical cause of death due to the decomposition of his body.

Beth, who was separated from Mongan at the time of his death, called the conclusion ‘an enormous disappointment’ and said her husband was ‘very badly let down by the Army’.

Other soldiers and officers told the inquest how Mongan had suffered bullying behaviour in the barracks.

One former corporal Stephen Timmerman said ‘bullying would be an understatement’.

He described how the lance corporal was ‘shouted, screamed and swore at’ and ‘forced’ to do extra runs in his lunch break without being given time to eat.

Three other witnesses said he was ‘spoken to in a despicable manner,’ ‘100% victimised’ and ‘never spoken to respectfully’.

The coroner’s found that Mongan had ‘on occasions [been] treated and spoken to by his chain of command in a way that caused him distress’.

The last person to speak to Mongan described him as distressed, crying and drunk.

In the days leading up to when he was last seen, he gave away his Nintendo to a friend’s son and told another friend he ‘had bought pills but not taken them’.

He also made two donations to a suicide charity.

They added: ‘Bernie was supposed to be checked on over the Christmas period while he was staying alone in his Army accommodation.

‘Astonishingly one of the men Bernie had accused of mistreating him was assigned to do those checks and he admitted at this inquest that he did not perform a single one of them.

‘For that failure, he was ordered to perform an “extra duty” as punishment.’

The coroner said Mongan was not checked on in his accommodation block over the Christmas period.

Speaking after the inquest, Beth Mongan had been expecting the open conclusion because of ‘the Army’s failure of leaving him for so long’.

She added: ‘I’ve come to my own conclusions over the years. It’s hard not having it for the kids.

‘Knowing Bernie, and he did suffer with his mental health over the years and his treatment in the Army, I believe he took his own life.

‘I believe (the Army) failed him, they didn’t investigate the bullying accusations the way they should have done.’

The widow added that ‘it forever will be unforgivable’ that Mongan’s body was undiscovered for three weeks on a military site.

‘I know they’ve apologised but that doesn’t take away the fact that they failed him on that front,’ she added.

Mongan was due to start a deployment with 77 Brigade in January 2020, but they did not report him absent ‘as he should have been’ from January 7.

He had been looking forward to his new deployment, Heath said in his findings, and had made a list of ‘things to do in 2020’ on a post-it note found in his room.

Mongan had tired to kill himself several years earlier when his marriage was breaking down, the inquest heard.

The coroner said of these previous suicide attempts were ’caused by feeling he was not going to see his children again’.

Heath said this was not the same with Mongan’s death in January 2020.

The two most likely causes of death were that the soldier poisoned himself or suffered sudden abnormality of the heart, the inquest heard.

Barbiturates, a depressant drug, were found in the solider’s system. He had bought one of them illegally.

Pathologist Dr Nigel Cooper was unable to decide which cause of death was most likely.

He said: ‘I’ve thought about this long and hard but I just don’t think I can, I don’t think I have enough positive evidence to go in one direction or the other.’

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