VC Heroes - The True Stories Behind Every VC Winner Since World War Two. Nigel Cawthorne
ship, along with date of the action it had been awarded for. The Times was not impressed. It said in the issue of 27 June 1857,
Than the Cross of Valour nothing could be more plain and homely, not to say coarse looking. It is a very small Maltese cross, formed from the gun-metal of ordnance captured at Sebastopol. In the centre is a small crown and lion, with which the latter’s natural proportions of mane and tail the cutting of the cross much interferes. Below these is a small scroll (which shortens three arms of the cross and is utterly out of keeping with the upper portions) bearing the words ‘For Valour’… the whole cross is, after all, poor looking and mean in the extreme… The merit of the design, we believe, is due to the same illustrious individual who once invented the hat.
However, the day before, when the first 62 medals were awarded for bravery in the Crimea, the Baltic and the Sea of Azov at the ceremony in Hyde Park, the public mobbed the recipients for a glimpse of the medal. Its award had been backdated to the beginning of the war. Nevertheless, The Times dismissed it as merely ‘tuppence worth of bronze’. But that was the point. It was not supposed to be one of those precious, bejewelled baubles conferred by one aristocrat on another. In fact, the originals cost the government £1 to cast, with an additional three shillings (15p) for the engraving on the back.
The award brought with it a pension of £10 a year, with an additional £5 if a second Victoria Cross, or Bar, was awarded. The pension has now been increased to £1,495 a year. Additionally, all officers – however exalted their rank – were to salute the holder, if in uniform, no matter how lowly the recipient.
Soon after the first Victoria Crosses were awarded, the Queen became concerned about what the recipient should be called. Correct modes of address were all-important. She expressed her concern in a memo to the secretary for war, written in the regal third person.
‘The Queen thinks that persons decorated with the Victoria Cross might very properly be allowed to bear some distinctive mark after their name,’ she wrote. But the Victoria Cross was merely ‘a naval and military decoration’, not the membership of some distinguished order, as she was used to handing out. Consequently,
VC would not do. KG means a Knight of the Garter; CB a Companion of Bath; MP is a Member of Parliament; MD a Doctor of Medicine, etc., etc. – in all cases denoting a person. No one could be called a Victoria Cross. VC, moreover, means Vice-Chancellor at present. DVC, Decorated with the Victoria Cross, or BVC, Bearer of the Victoria Cross, might do. The Queen thinks the last is best.
However, VC caught on among both the military and civilians and remains the designation to this day.
Just a year after the VC was first awarded, it was extended to those members of the armed forces who showed
conspicuous courage and bravery… under circumstances of extreme danger, such as the occurrence of fire on board ship, or of the foundering of the vessel at sea, or under any other circumstance in which through the courage and devotion displayed, life or public property may be saved.
Then, in the face of the ‘Indian Mutiny’, its award was broadened to include civilians who fought alongside troops in the field or ‘performed deeds of gallantry’ against ‘insurgent mutineers’. But, by 1881, it could again be awarded only for conspicuous courage in the face of the enemy. In 1902, Queen Victoria’s son, King Edward, decreed that it could be awarded posthumously – as it was in many of the cases in this book. It remained open to anyone in any of the branches of the armed forces, including women, though no woman has yet received one.
The first VC was awarded to Lieutenant Charles Lucas of the Royal Navy for an action in the Baltic in 1854 when he ran forward to grab a live shell and throw it overboard, saving the crew of his ship HMS Hecla.
In all, 111 VCs were awarded during the Crimean War of 1854–6, which included naval engagements between Britain and Russia in the Baltic. A hundred and eighty-two were awarded during the Indian Mutiny of 1857–8, with another two awarded during the Bhutan Campaign to put down truculent Himalayan tribes in 1864–5. Sixteen were awarded during the various Afghan wars that rumbled on from 1838 to 1880, with seven more awarded during the Tirah Campaign of 1897–8 to secure the Khyber Pass. Then 23 were awarded during the Zulu War – eleven alone at Rorke’s Drift, the largest for any single military action. The Transvaal War of 1880–1 produced six, the Matabeleland Rebellion of 1896 two and the Boer War of 1899–1900 78.
The Maori Wars of 1860–1 and 1863–6 produced fifteen. Three resulted from the Shimonoseki Expedition to Japan in 1864. Four were awarded during the Ashanti War of 1873–4. Three were given during the occupation of Egypt in 1882; another three in First Sudan Campaign of 1881–5. One resulted from the Crete Rebellion of 1898. Six came from the Second Sudan Campaign of 1896–1900. Two resulted from the Boxer Uprising in 1900, three more from the Third Somaliland Expedition of 1903–4.
World War One produced 626. Ten more were awarded during various ‘mopping-up’ operations in India between World War One and World War Two. And 182 resulted from World War Two. In all, 1,341 had been awarded by the end of 1945. Since then there have been only fourteen recipients, due to the increasingly strict criteria applied. This book tells the stories of those fourteen gallant men.
The Korean War was a direct consequence of the end of World War Two in the Far East. Throughout most of the war a non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and Japan held. But on 8 August 1945 – two days after the first atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima – the Soviet Union revoked the pact and declared war on Japan, invading Manchuria, seizing the northern part of Korea and taking more than 2 million Japanese prisoners before the Japanese capitulation on 15 August.
In an effort to disarm the Japanese Army and repatriate the estimated 700,000 Japanese who had gone to live in Korea since Japan occupied that country in 1905, the United States and the Soviet Union decided to divide the peninsula at the 38th parallel, formalising their zones of occupation. The Soviets quickly politicised the division by installing a hardline communist government in the North under Kim Il-sung, leader of the Korean contingent of the Soviet Red Army. US President Harry S Truman persuaded the newly founded United Nations to assume responsibility for Korea, while US troops guaranteed the military security of the South.
The UN then decided to set up an independent republic in South Korea, which led to a partisan uprising by communist guerrillas. When this failed, Kim Il-sung persuaded his sponsor, the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, to back an invasion of the South. On 25 June 1950, the North Korean People’s Army swept across the 38th parallel, taking the South Korean capital of Seoul and forcing the South Koreans and the Americans back to a small perimeter around the port of Pusan.
Truman returned to the UN and asked for member states to provide military assistance to the fledgling Republic of Korea. This could have been vetoed by the Soviet Union as a permanent member of the Security Council. However, the Soviets were boycotting the UN at the time in an attempt to get China’s seat on the Security Council – occupied by the Nationalists, who were by then confined to the island of Taiwan – handed over to the representatives of the People’s Republic in Beijing. Other nations, including France, Turkey, Belgium, Greece, the Netherlands, Colombia, Ethiopia, Thailand and the Philippines, sent soldiers to defend South Korea, while the British and Australians contributed a Commonwealth brigade. The entire United Nations force was under the command of the US General Douglas MacArthur.
The UN forces began to push the North Koreans back, then outflanked them with a successful amphibious landing at In’chon on 14 September 1950, reoccupying Seoul soon after. MacArthur’s forces crossed the 38th parallel and pursued the North Koreans almost to the Yalu river, which forms the border between North Korea and China.
In October 1950, the People’s Republic of China entered the war on North Korea’s side with Soviet air support. The UN forces were quickly pushed back deep into South Korea. MacArthur was sacked for