“The VC has had an eventful history, with many a bump in the road. Here are some parts of the story that might surprise you.”
By Granville Allen Mawer
IN 1929, while attending a reunion of recipients of Britain’s top military honour, the Prince of Wales proposed a toast to “the most democratic and at the same time the most exclusive of all orders of chivalry – the most enviable order of the Victoria Cross.”
Prince Edward was taking a liberty, of course. The VC is a decoration, not an order of chivalry, but the sentiment was unarguable.
He had summed up popular opinion — appreciated because it was open to all, the Victoria Cross was also esteemed because so few had been awarded. That esteem outlived the empire that gave it birth.
Today, the medal is not only Britain’s highest award for bravery in the presence of an enemy but also occupies the same lofty pinnacle in Australia, Canada and New Zealand. For all that, the VC has had an eventful history, with many a bump in the road. Here are some parts of the story that might surprise you.
The first Victoria Cross was won during the Crimean War, but not by a soldier and not in the Crimea. Charles Davis Lucas was a boatswain’s mate who threw a live Russian shell overboard from HMS Hecla, saving lives and avoiding damage, during the bombardment of Bomarsund in the Baltic Sea on June 21, 1854.
Queen Victoria, assisted by Prince Albert, took a personal interest in each award. She refused to accept one recommendation however on the grounds that it was for killing enemy soldiers after the intended recipient had already surrendered. The hero-in-question was one Private Patrick McGuire of the 33rd Regiment of Foot, who, after giving up to Russian troops during the 1854 Battle of Alma, seized a musket and killed two of his captors before fleeing back to British lines. Endorsing such behaviour, the Queen said, would put her own troops at risk because the only safe course of action for the enemy would be to kill British prisoners.
The most VCs awarded for a small unit action were given to 11 of the 137 defenders of Rorke’s Drift during the Zulu War. The last of which went to Acting Assistant Commissary Dalton, technically a non-combatant (but a former senior NCO) who was belatedly recognized for having insisted that the Drift could be defended and for successfully fortifying it.
Posthumous awards were not permitted until 1902. Since then, 265 recipients — about one in three — have been killed while winning the decoration. In the 1960s, the Ministry of Defence suggested, as a rule of thumb, that a VC should only be awarded when there was a 90 per cent possibility of the recipient being killed while performing the deed in question.
William Coltman, the most decorated British NCO of the First World War, won two Distinguished Conduct Medals and two Military Medals as well as a VC. Ironically, he was a pacifist who refused to carry arms and served as a stretcher bearer on the Western Front.
Although the VC was created to reward heroism in pursuit of military objectives, until the last year of the First World War approximately one-in-three were awarded for rescuing the wounded or protecting comrades. Eventually, the High Command judged it to be too high a proportion and restricted recognition of humanitarianism in combat only to those whose duty it was to succour the wounded. In 1918 the ratio came down to one in 15.
Canada’s famous flying ace Billy Bishop was awarded his VC for a sortie across the German lines on June 2, 1917. He returned and reported that he had attacked an enemy airfield and destroyed several aircraft. Although there was no corroboration, as required by the VC warrant, he was awarded the Cross. Enquiries made after the war failed to find any German record of the attack. Bishop’s is the only VC awarded solely on the testimony of the recipient.
As the Battle of Britain petered out in October 1940, the RAF found that it had recommended none of “the Few” for a VC. It reviewed recent paperwork and found that Eric Nicholson was up for a DSO for shooting down a Messerschmitt 110 from his blazing Hawker Hurricane in August. When told that the DSO had been upgraded to a VC Nicholson didn’t think he necessarily deserved it. “Now I’ll have to earn it,” he quipped.
When New Zealand’s Lloyd Trigg lost his B-24 Liberator bomber, his crew and his own life while sinking U-468 in the North Atlantic on Aug. 11, 1943, there was no Allied witness alive to report his unflinching heroism or to recommend him for a decoration. That fell to Oberleutnant Schamong, commander of the very U-boat Trigg had destroyed. He told his rescuers that the pilot of the Allied bomber deserved a VC and the RAF agreed. Trigg’s decoration remains the only cross awarded solely on the recommendation of the enemy.
Initially, no VCs were recommended for the Falklands War. Two were subsequently awarded only after a dismayed Prime Minister Thatcher asked “where are the VCs?” One would eventually be posthumously awarded to Lt. Col. Herbert Jones, 42, who was killed while leading the 2nd Battalion, Parachute Regiment against an Argentine machine gun position during the May 28, 1982 Battle of Goose Green. The second went to a 29-year-old sergeant named Ian McKay who died while single-handedly assaulting and destroying an enemy bunker during the June 11 to 12, 1982 Battle of Mount Longdon.
The VC is a good indicator of the likelihood of career success. Of the thousand-plus awardees who lived to wear the decoration, one-in-seven would go on to be elevated to starred rank – brigadier or equivalent and above, while seven rose to the very top: admiral of the fleet or field marshal.
Although the warrant provides that a VC winner can be struck off the register for serious crime, he is not required to surrender the medal itself. Indeed, when the question was put to King George V he reportedly declared that even if a winner were being hanged for murder he should still be permitted to wear the decoration on the gallows if he so chose.
Granville Allen Mawer is the author of Uncommon Valour: The Story of the Victoria Cross, published this year by Pen and Sword, Barnsley. A former senior Australian public servant who has devoted his retirement to 25 years of independent historical research. His published works include Ahab’s Trade: The Saga of South Seas Whaling; South by Northwest, about the quest for the magnetic poles; and Incognita, an account of the invention and discovery of Terra Australis. He has also edited his father’s wartime journals, which were published as Diary of a Spitfire Pilot
An interesting book with an original approach. However, the Ministry of Defence did not in the 1960s suggest a 90% possibility of being killed in performing the deed for a VC but the author of a paper, that should have never seen the light of day but ended up as WO98-10 at TNA.