The impressive qualities of leadership manifested in his keen sense of duty, intelligence, and fitness allowed him to face the Special Selection Board at which the late General Sir Lashmer Whistler, C.M.G., D.S.O., O.B.E., M.C., then colonel-in-chief of the Royal West African Frontier Force, was chairman.

After a successful Young Officers' Course at Hythe and Warminster, Bangura was posted on secondment to the British Army on the Rhine in West Germany.

After a period of successful military career, he was arrested and detained at Pademba Road Prisons prior to the March 1967 general elections by David Lansana under orders from Sir Albert Margai.

He was, however, released in March that year by Brigadier Andrew Juxon-Smith and appointed counsellor and head of the chancery at the Sierra Leonean Embassy in Washington D.C.

On 17 April 1968, the Sergeants' Coup overthrew the National Reformation Council (NRC) military junta, led by Brigadier Andrew Juxon-Smith, which had seized power following Siaka Stevens winning the contested 1967 general election.

Bangura had been released and was serving as Sierra Leonean Ambassador to the United States, but fled his diplomatic post to hide in Guinea with Stevens and the rest of the exiled APC in the aftermath of the election and coup.

Guinean president Ahmed Sékou Touré enabled them to train guerillas to prepare to retake Sierra Leone.

Sir Henry Josiah Lightfoot Boston was invited to return as Governor-General, after being deposed and placed on 'leave' when he announced Stevens as the winner of the election.

Leautenent Colonel Sam King said in the broadcast, "A large percentage of the members of the Sierra Leonean military forces wish to assure all and sundry that they dissociate themselves from the earlier action of the army commander", and that "we regard the present Government of Prime Minister Siaka Stevens as the legally constituted authority in the country.

[4] Stevens then signed a defense pact with Guinea, led by Ahmed Sékou Touré who had helped him and Bangura retake power in the Sergeants' Coup.

[3] Stevens wrote in his 1984 autobiography What Life Has Taught Me,"I am fully aware that many people were shocked when these sentences were carried out and that even today, much speculation goes on as to what prompted me to allow the law to take its course.

There is even a fantastic rumour circulating that I had actually decided to commute the sentences to terms of imprisonment but that certain strong party members had forced me to change my mind.