Victoria's Cross

by Gary Mead

  These two acts of courage are in essence identical: the medical helpers demonstrated complete indifference to their personal safety while going to the aid of a wounded comrade. But there the similarities end. The (male) Crimean assistant surgeon was Henry Thomas Sylvester, the last Crimean War VC holder to die. He certainly tried his best, but his wounded lieutenant unfortunately died on the battlefield. The (female) able seaman was Kate Nesbitt, and her lance corporal survived. For his deed Sylvester gained the VC.38 Nesbitt was honoured in November 2009 with the Military Cross (MC). This was a remarkable step – Nesbitt was only the second woman to receive the MC (and the first female from the Royal Navy), the first being Michelle Norris, of the Royal Army Medical Corps, who gained her MC for a similar action in Iraq in 2006.39 What Sylvester may have thought about his deed is not recorded, but we know Nesbitt’s modest reaction: ‘I just did what I’m sure everyone else would have done for me.’40 Sylvester would probably have said very much the same, because modesty and self-deprecation are intrinsic to our understanding of what it means to show gallantry. Nesbitt’s citation read (in part): ‘Under fire and under pressure her commitment and courage were inspirational and made the difference between life and death.’ The Prince of Wales, who pinned the MC on Nesbitt at Buckingham Palace on 27 November 2009, described her act as an example of ‘extraordinary’ heroism.41

  While the Military Cross is unquestionably highly esteemed, it ranks third – a kind of bronze medal – in the hierarchy of military decorations, after the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross (silver) and the Victoria Cross (gold). Why was it thought that Nesbitt deserved the MC rather than the CGC, or even the VC? Why will Sylvester’s name be forever up there with the ‘bravest of the brave’, whereas Nesbitt’s will eventually be lost on a list of tens of thousands? What separates Sylvester and Nesbitt, apart from 154 years? Objectively their deeds were no different in terms of what they did, the courage it took, and the (minimal) consequences for the overall campaign in which they participated. While women are nominally eligible to be considered for a VC, any chance they might have of winning one has actually been reduced almost to zero, partly because newly-created gallantry awards have served to push the VC almost beyond male, never mind female, attainment.

  Lord Ashcroft, in an interview in 2010, dismissed the issue of inconsistencies in the awarding of the VC when he opened his eponymous gallery at the Imperial War Museum:

  Even in my own House of Lords there are some that should be there and some who shouldn’t. We shouldn’t get side-tracked by saying maybe X shouldn’t have received it and Y should. Such debates should not detract from the aggregate bravery of this group of people.42

  There are a number of reasons why Lord Ashcroft would say this; he would not want his gallery’s showpieces to be in any way diminished, and no doubt he genuinely feels that discrimination of this kind is unhelpful, although he himself has publicly called for a VC to be awarded in one case where a lesser decoration was granted. Yet it is possible to rationally demur from his opinion, and call for a public debate about the criteria for VC eligibility; a need to open up for discussion past cases of those who failed to receive a VC and why; and a need to remove the suspicion that the bestowal of a VC, while not entirely arbitrary, is, thanks in part to the quota system, a matter of chance. This would not detract from the ‘aggregate bravery’ (if such a thing exists) of the group of VC winners as a whole.

  In the contrast between the cases of Sylvester and Nesbitt lie 154 years of the British establishment grappling with the intractable problem of how to maintain military morale in the context of a tarnished honours system, an aggressive media with a rapacious appetite for heroes, and a general public that, in recent years at least, seems bewitched by celebrity culture. The VCs awarded to the gallant defenders of Rorke’s Drift in January 1879 and that granted to Private Johnson Beharry in 2005 in Iraq share something other than courage. In the first instance, the pride of the British army had previously been smashed by a black African army at Isandlwana; the second was one of the most unpopular wars Britain has ever engaged in. The award of their VCs was not simply a matter of personal heroism, but also of wider political purpose, to rally the nation at a time of crisis.

  The way to preserve the VC as a respected living symbol is, paradoxically, to return to its historic origins and permit wider and more generous distribution. This would be easier to achieve if some of the other decorations were eliminated. If the process of judging who deserves a VC was more transparent, then there would be a greater chance of avoiding future anomalies. Fears that the VC would be cheapened if more were given out are overdone; if a dozen VCs were distributed tomorrow for good work in Afghanistan, the medal would still remain exceptionally rare. This suggestion – to relax the astonishingly stringent rules that have been applied for the past fifty years or more – might evoke protest, yet all it would do is to return us to past practice, when battlefield courage was not so scarce as it apparently is today.

  A further useful reform would be to reiterate and promote the ‘elective peer principle’, whereby officers and men can choose from their own number individuals to be recommended for a VC. The election system was first used in the 1859 Indian Mutiny, when twenty-nine such ‘balloted’ VCs were awarded. Clause 13 of the 1856 warrant provided for the election of one VC per officer, one per NCO, and two for privates, for each regiment involved in an action. Eight regiments in the sieges of Delhi and Lucknow (and for the later relief of Lucknow) elected VCs from their ranks, but only two adhered to the strict regulations; three regiments submitted (and had accepted) five recommendations, while three others submitted fewer names than authorized.43 This election by officers and men actually involved in a military operation of candidates to be recommended for the VC has unfortunately been neglected for far too long, having fallen into abeyance since the First World War. This dormant procedure injects a healthy dose of something that was inherent in the original VC statute: democracy. The elective principle has continued to be part of successive warrants. It stipulates that if a ‘gallant and daring act’ was performed by a unit, and the commanding officer deemed that all were ‘equally brave and distinguished’ and was unable to single out any one person, he ‘may direct’ officers to nominate one, and the other ranks two, of their own number, to be recommended for the VC. In the 1961 warrant this principle endures as clause 9, which addresses the case in which a ship or flotilla, a regiment or other ‘detached body of soldiers’, a squadron ‘or other body of airmen’ (the categories were deliberately broadly drawn) has ‘distinguished itself collectively by the performance of an act of heroic gallantry or daring in the presence of the enemy in such a way that the Flag, General, Air or other Officer in Command of the Force to which such a unit belongs’ cannot choose a specific individual; in such a case, ‘one or more of the personnel comprising the unit shall be selected to be recommended’ for the VC by a secret ballot of the whole unit. Of the total number of VCs, just forty-six have been allocated by self-selection, more than half of these – twenty-nine – during a single and fairly brief campaign, that of the Indian Mutiny in 1857. This is only 2 per cent of the total VCs. Yet surely this is a more equitable method of initial selection than a write-up by a senior or commanding officer? Let the personnel serving in the field themselves choose who is worthy to be considered for a VC. There might be mistakes, which happen in any case; but there would also be a strong dose of raw honesty, beyond the opaque adjudication of desk officers in Whitehall who may never have heard a shot fired in anger.

  Early views of the VC’s significance emphasized its democratic nature:

  Every Colonel in the army will be eager for the new distinction, and we are sure will not consider it plebeian because it is not the Order of the Bath but the Cross of Victoria. Every soldier who wins it will prize it highly, not only because it is the gift of his Queen, but because it will be the common mark distinguishing the bravest men in the army. Every officer will prize it, and none the less because
it will be worn by the men; because there is nothing brave men recognise more cordially than bravery in others.44

  This democratic promise has been lost sight of in the determination to avoid cheapening the VC.

  2

  A Most Grand, Gratifying Day

  ‘There is nothing so stupid as a gallant officer.’

  DUKE OF WELLINGTON1

  ‘We have moved a step. Valour in Private Jones is to be alike distinguished with valour in Major Mayfair . . . This is something.’

  LLOYD’S WEEKLY2

  London, Friday, 26 June 1857: a blazing sunny day. Thousands of hot and excitable people, slaking their thirst with slugs of porter and ginger beer, flocked to Hyde Park from the early hours of the morning. All were anxious to catch a glimpse of the first investiture of a new medal, one that had tantalized public interest by being widely and – mostly – favourably reported by the newspapers. No one knows how many were actually in the throng that day, but there was room for several thousand of the most eminent – courtiers, MPs, judges, senior clergy and the like – to take their places in a ticket-holders-only grandstand, from where they could observe the ceremony without being forced to rub shoulders with their social inferiors. These privileged individuals tightly clasped their red passes for the enclosure, where they were able to have an elevated view of proceedings; a dubious pleasure, it turned out, since the stand was merely a sloping set of planks, forcing the illustrious guests to perch painfully at an angle, craning for a view as they sweltered. One anonymous MP sarcastically informed The Times, it was ‘slow torture . . . two or three benches . . . would have been far more comfortable . . . than the awkward structure standing upon which for some hours last Friday morning 7,000 ladies and gentlemen did not see the distribution of the Victoria cross by her gracious Majesty’.3 Many thousands more lined the nearby streets and jostled to enter the park, eagerly craning their necks to glimpse the sixty-two soldiers, sailors and marines, judged the bravest of the brave, who were about to receive their Victoria Crosses from the Queen’s hand.

  On display that day was the ritualized pomp of a great power, one that had only recently narrowly avoided complete humiliation in a calamitous war 2,000 miles distant. The splendour of the uniforms, the glittering military bands, the crashing thunder of the twenty-one-gun salute – all reasserted the ritualistic bonds between Crown and subjects, and affirmed the majesty not just of queen but country too. They also imparted a sense of planning that helped disguise the fact that the final details of the ceremony had been hastily arranged. The final list of VC recipients was not delivered to Lord Panmure, Secretary of State for War, until 19 June, just a week before the investiture; Hancocks, the London jewellers who had the contract to produce and engrave the Crosses (and retain it to this day), were only handed the final list of names on 22 June.

  Riding her horse Sunset and wearing a military-style scarlet jacket above a dark-blue skirt, with a gold-embroidered sash and a gold-banded black riding hat with red and white plumes, Victoria entered the park at 10 a.m., whereupon the guns of the Royal Horse Artillery unleashed a royal salute. Victoria had breakfasted ‘early’ at 9.15, full of ‘agitation for the coming great event of the day, viz: the distribution of the “Victoria Cross”’.4 At her side rode Albert, Prince Consort and Victoria’s fellow architect of the VC, decked in the uniform of a British field marshal, followed by a train of dazzlingly attired family members. As Victoria rode through the glittering ranks of dragoons, life guards, hussars, highlanders, engineers, marines and sailors – almost 600 representatives from each branch of the services and Crimea veterans – the horrors of the recent war were put aside, as the crowd revelled in the haughty demeanour of their thirty-five-year-old monarch. Britain’s pride had been pricked by events in the Crimea; this day was to be devoted to the restoration of self-esteem. The Times, with customary hyperbole, wrote: ‘everybody went who could; everybody suffered considerable discomfort in doing so; and everybody was nevertheless much delighted with the smallest share in the day’s work.’5

  On behalf of the War Office, Lord Panmure, gouty and intellectually ponderous, handed Victoria the eponymous Crosses, one by one. She remained mounted as twelve sailors, two marines, and forty-eight soldiers smartly marched up to have their queen pin the medal to their breast; crimson ribbons for the army, blue for the navy and marines. Never again would so many VCs be handed out on a single occasion. It is said that Victoria inadvertently stabbed the flesh of Commander Henry James Raby as she pinned his VC to his left breast, while he maintained a stoical silence. It might be true; after all, his rank placed Raby first in line to receive the VC, and perhaps the Queen needed a little practice to get it right. But the same was said of other personal investitures of the VC by Victoria; it is the stuff of VC legends, of which there are many. Raby had gained his Cross at Sebastopol on 18 June 1855, when he had been second-in-command of a scaling party. Together with John Taylor, who held a rank equivalent to petty officer, and Henry Curtis, a boatswain’s mate, Raby spotted at seventy yards’ distance a soldier of the 57th Regiment sitting up and calling for help; he was immobilized, having been wounded in both legs. Raby, Taylor and Curtis left the shelter of their battery and, reportedly under heavy fire, ran to retrieve the wounded man. For this they each received the VC, a show of generosity that was not unusual at the time.

  The crowd cheered as each of the recipients marched forward for his Cross, the hurrahs rising to a crescendo for Sergeant George Walters, late of the 49th (Royal Berkshire Regiment) and now dressed in the uniform of his new profession, a policeman. The official government journal, the London Gazette, published on 24 February 1857 the names of the 111 inaugural VC winners, ninety-six of them from the army; of the sixty-two distributed by Queen Victoria on 26 June 1857, more than a third – twenty-four – went to officers.6 The first Victoria Cross in the list was that of Lieutenant Cecil William Buckley, for his actions in the Sea of Azov on 28 May 1855; the earliest action to gain the VC was that of the Irish-born Charles David Lucas, a twenty-year-old lieutenant serving on the HMS Hecla, who, on 21 June 1854, threw overboard a fizzing live shell which had landed on his ship, which was on service in the Baltic, far from the Crimea.7 The investiture was over in a few minutes. The troops then marched past the Queen, the bands of the Coldstream Guards and the Fusilier Guards playing ‘See the Conquering Hero’.

  One of those soldiers not present to receive his VC in person was Private William Stanlack of the Coldstream Guards, a Devonshire lad who, at the Battle of Inkerman, had crawled to within a few yards of the Russian lines and brought back some useful information; such was the relative ease with which the first VCs might be gained. Shortly before the Hyde Park investiture, Stanlack had been summarily punished by his CO for theft from a fellow soldier; he would have entirely forfeited the right to be included on the VC Register, the list of names of the honoured, had he been found guilty in a court of law. Instead he was deprived of receiving his VC from the hand of the Queen.8 This moral dimension – the monarchy could not be embarrassed by association with a criminal – was covered by the fifteenth clause of the founding statues of the VC, the 1856 warrant,9 which permitted the removal from the Register of the Cross of those convicted of ‘treason, cowardice, felony or of any infamous crime’ – a clause that was removed in the 1919 revisions of the warrant.10 Another absentee was Mrs Elizabeth Taylor, wife of John Taylor, one of Commander Raby’s two helpers. John Taylor died of his wounds on 24 February 1857, the very day the VCs were gazetted. Mrs Taylor asked the War Office if she might attend the Hyde Park ceremony to receive her husband’s Cross. She was politely informed that that would not be necessary; the Cross was forwarded to her.11

  Victoria herself wrote in her journal later that day: ‘I never saw finer troops, nor better marching. The heat was very great, but I felt it less than I had expected. It was indeed a most grand, gratifying day.’ It was less gratifying for those relatives of dead soldiers and sailors who thought their sons deserved a Cross
, but were denied. In early 1856 Mr John Godfrey importuned the War Office on behalf of his dead son, killed in action in the Crimea, and so first raised the issue of posthumous awards, on which the warrant was silent. Lord Panmure regarded the VC as an ‘Order’ rather than a medal, analogous to the Order of the Bath; to qualify for an Order, one had to be alive. He decreed in April 1856 that posthumous awards of the VC were impermissible and authorized a reply to Mr Godfrey: ‘Inform Mr G that in this Order, as in the Bath, the friends of deceased Officers cannot have any claim for it as in the case of medals. It is an order for the living.’12

  This was not Victoria’s first public medals’ investiture. By November 1854 the War Office had agreed to Victoria’s wish that there should be a Crimean campaign medal, with clasps for various battles such as Alma and Inkerman. As Victoria said: ‘Sebastopol, should it fall, or any other name of a battle which Providence may permit our brave troops to gain, can be inscribed on other clasps hereafter to be added . . .The Queen is sure that nothing will gratify and encourage our noble troops more than the knowledge that this is to be done.’13 Victoria personally distributed some of these campaign medals to Crimean survivors, some terribly injured, at Horse Guards Parade in London on 18 May 1855. Victoria wrote of her emotions that day to King Leopold I of Belgium, himself a British field marshal and the widower of Prince Charlotte of Wales, George IV’s only legitimate offspring:

  From the highest Prince of the Blood to the lowest Private, all received the same distinction for the bravest conduct in the severest actions, and the rough hand of the brave and honest private soldier came for the first time in contact with that of their Sovereign and their Queen! Noble fellows! I own I feel as if they were my own children; my heart beats for them as for my nearest and dearest. They were so touched, so pleased; many, I hear, cried – and they won’t hear of giving up their Medals, to have their names engraved upon them, for fear they should not receive the identical one put into their hands by me, which is quite touching.14