Victoria's Cross
Page 17
A finer statement of why women might sometimes deserve a VC would be difficult to imagine.
Valiant women were not, therefore, to be subject to the erratically applied slide-rule used to gauge VC worthiness in the nineteenth century. This exclusion was perhaps understandable in an era when usually brief military campaigns were waged far from Britain, with armies numbered in thousands, the dead in tens or hundreds, and women kept far distant from the battlefield, restricted to tending for the sick or wounded. But Zeppelin raids on London and elsewhere in Britain dragged women and civilians into a front line that now existed everywhere in reach of long-range attack by air. Men were conscripted in 1916, and there were numerous calls for the same for women: ‘Official attitudes appeared to have come full circle: from rejecting women’s offers of voluntary labour in 1914, the War Office was actively considering their conscription by 1916.’14 But no one seriously contemplated giving a rifle and bayonet to a woman; any conscription for women would be for auxiliary duties, and the creation of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) in March 1917 was represented as an organization that was essentially feminine rather than military.
The hope in August 1914 that the fighting in Flanders would be brief had faded by Christmas that same year. Very few politicians or soldiers – with the notable exceptions of Lord Kitchener, Secretary of State for War, and General Sir Douglas Haig – had believed that it would last more than a few months. While men rushed to join up, eager to see some action before the war was over, women who early volunteered their services usually encountered the kind of patronizing attitude Elsie Inglis, a medical doctor, experienced when she put herself forward in August 1914. A War Office official told her: ‘My good lady, go home and sit still.’15 Little had changed in more than 2,500 years, when Homer had Hector, about to go off to fight with Achilles, instruct his wife Andromache to ‘Go home, attend to your own handiwork/At loom and spindle/As for the war, that is for men.’
Women were not seen as fighters: their role in war ‘was to symbolise the society for which the men were fighting’.16 By 1916 the war gripped almost every British home and, over the next two years, the British army reached its maximum strength of four million, pulling large numbers of women into jobs previously done by men, including roles close to the fighting. With a sprawling front line extending from the Channel coast to Switzerland, and territory gained or lost measured in yards rather than miles, individual supererogatory acts of courage became much more difficult to easily identify and almost too numerous to mention. Eyewitness accounts of supremely gallant acts by senior officers were infinitely more problematic on battlefields of such vast scale, while the scope for creative hyperbole in the writing-up of VC recommendations created even more uncertainty about their reliability than in the past. The ascending hierarchy of committees engaged in adjudicating VC recommendations faced many more such recommendations than in the past, giving them a difficult choice: either give the VC in quantities proportionate to the numbers engaged and the duration of the conflict, even though it was much larger and longer than anything seen before; or dismiss all but truly exceptional acts, in which case to gain a VC meant the risk of almost certain death. In choosing the second course, not just for the First World War but also for the Second, one category of potential VC candidates would become inescapably excluded: women. Partly this was because, even when the war ended in November 1918, women who donned uniforms were still widely regarded, by men and women, as merely playing soldiers.17 It was only with the deepest reluctance that the military hierarchy accepted women; women medics – nurses and doctors – working alongside the Royal Army Medical Corps were graded and paid according to army rank, but could not be commissioned and were denied badges of rank. In 1919 Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for War, refused to grant commissions to women doctors, primarily to avoid setting precedents.18
The arrival of the Military Medal (MM) was a step forward in one sense: women who might show bravery near the combat area would clearly never have been considered for the DCM (let alone the VC), but they were eventually drawn under the umbrella of the MM. A supplement to the London Gazette, published on 27 June 1916, announced that the MM, ‘under exceptional circumstances, on the special recommendation of a Commander-in-Chief in the Field, [might] be awarded to women, whether subjects or foreign persons, who have shown bravery and devotion under fire’.19 This was a radical departure: for the first time, women were formally eligible for a military decoration. It was such an unusual step that next day The Times commented:
It is curious to note how few are the rewards for public service or decorations or any sort hitherto conferred upon women. In England [for which read ‘Britain’] there were none until the reign of Queen Victoria, when there were instituted for ladies the Royal Order of Victoria and Albert (of which no fresh conferments have been made for a considerable time), the Imperial Order of the Crown of India, the Royal Red Cross, and the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. Women may also receive the Order of Merit . . . Foreign countries are more generous in their bestowal of rewards on women.20
The death of Kitchener, drowned on 5 June 1916 when HMS Hampshire, the cruiser on which he was travelling on a diplomatic mission to Russia, was sunk by a mine, perhaps helped clear the way for women to be granted the MM; one stalwart misogynist had disappeared.21 Of some 115,600 MMs awarded during the First World War, just 138, or 0.12 per cent, went to women, both military and civilian, of all nationalities. On 2 September 1916, The Times reported the first women MMs, awarded to five members of the Army Nursing Service, alongside a lengthy list of other MM winners, 890 names in all.22 Sixteen members of the FANY – the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, a civilian organization – were awarded Military Medals in the First World War. The citation for seven of these stated the award was for ‘conspicuous devotion to duty during an hostile air raid. All these lady drivers were out with their cars during the raid, picking up and in every way assisting the wounded and injured. They showed great bravery and coolness and were an example to all ranks.’23
The invention of new medals during wartime was politically acceptable; but tinkering with existing decorations always ran the risk of retroactive claims, something to which the War Office was congenitally opposed. Thus a consideration of the VC warrant and how it might be altered was postponed until August 1918, when the war turned decisively in favour of the Allies. There followed dilatory deliberations over almost two years, resulting in a complete revision of the VC warrant that superseded all previous warrants and amendments. Signed on behalf of King George V by Winston Churchill, then Secretary of State for War, in 1920, the third clause reiterated what had to be done to be considered for the VC: ‘the Cross shall only be awarded for most conspicuous bravery or some daring or pre-eminent act of valour or self-sacrifice or extreme devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy.’ But the most radical departure from the past came in the sixth paragraph of clause six: ‘Matrons, sisters, nurses and the staff of the Nursing Services and other Services pertaining to Hospitals and Nursing, and civilians of either sex serving regularly or temporarily under the Orders, direction or supervision of any of the above mentioned Forces shall be eligible for the decoration of the Cross.’ Against fierce opposition, as we have seen in the previous chapter, from some senior officers, women and civilians have been formally eligible for the Cross since 1920.
While most of the (all-male) 1918 Committee on Co-ordination etc. of Warrants Relating to the VC accepted that women and civilians should be included in the 1920 VC warrant, none could imagine that within two decades the twentieth century would witness an even greater conflagration than that just ended – and that women and civilians would have an even bigger role than during the years between 1914 and 1918. Ignoring Admiral Everett’s prejudices against women was only logical; in a total war none were safe from danger, all might display exceptional courage. And if civilians were to be included, it was obviously impossible to prohibit women. But Everett’s entrenched hostility was the tip
of a very deep iceberg; to contemplate awarding the VC to women offended not only his sensibilities but those of many lower-ranking officers, and men generally. And the development of other military awards gave the military hierarchy a wider selection of medals to choose from. It became easier to deny someone a VC, or to downgrade a VC recommendation; after all, they could be given something else, instead – and who was to judge whether a particular act really was worthy of a VC or not? The inclusion of women and civilians in the 1920 VC warrant proved a hollow gesture.
And it became all the easier to avoid considering women for the VC once yet another medal pair was created, shortly after the start of the Second World War. At one of the lowest points of the war, on 24 September 1940, nine days after the Luftwaffe launched its biggest raid on London, King George VI signed into being the George Cross and the George Medal;24 the first awards were gazetted a few weeks later.25 The previous evening wirelesses across Britain played the king’s address. For eleven minutes the king spoke from a bunker beneath Buckingham Palace, while outside could be heard the eerie wails of air raid sirens. In a speech carefully constructed to uplift the nation’s spirits, George VI said
civilian workers . . . worthy partners of our armed forces and our police . . . [who] earn their place among the heroes of this war . . . In order that they should be worthily and promptly recognized I have decided to create at once a new mark of honour for men and women in all walks of civilian life. I propose to give my name to this new distinction, which will consist of the George Cross, which will rank next to the Victoria Cross, and the George Medal for wider distribution.26
The king’s words were unhelpfully ambiguous about the status of the newly created GC. It is widely but incorrectly assumed that ‘rank next to’ means of equal stature, but the VC ‘outranks’ the GC in order of precedence.27 Simultaneously, Downing Street issued a statement specifying that ‘there will be a small Military Division of the [George] Cross to permit of its award to members of the Fighting Services who have performed acts coming within the terms of the Warrant’. The announcement of the new decorations was made in haste; as the king spoke, no designer of the GC had been contracted. The sixty-seven-year-old Admiral of the Fleet, Lord Chatfield, was given the job of supervising recommendations for the George Cross and Medal. He seemed in little doubt that they were primarily for civilians: ‘This task that has been entrusted to me by the Prime Minister is to watch over the recommendations for gallantry in civil defence and for the award of the two new honours created by his Majesty the King. We have to ensure that . . . no acts of gallantry meriting these new awards fail to receive recognition.’28
According to his biographer, George VI inherited ‘a great interest’ in medals and honours; as their real power dwindled, the ceremonial, ritualistic distribution of decorations gave British monarchs a revitalized sense of purpose and majesty, particularly in wartime. George VI had, at his own initiative, established in 1939 the Committee on Honours, Decorations and Medals in Time of War,29 with the intention of clearing up ‘a thoroughly confused situation . . . [The king] was also incensed by the bland Whitehall view that civilians were not fighting “in the face of the enemy”.’ But the king was dissuaded from any root-and-branch rationalization of military decorations: ‘Lloyd George, fully aware of the jealousies and competition between the services on these matters, persuaded him not to.’30 The ‘bland Whitehall view’ permeated all levels of the country’s wartime administration and helped perpetuate the exclusion of men and women from the VC. By definition, civilians rarely faced the enemy in the nineteenth-century sense of literally seeing the whites of an opponent’s eyes, but many of those sheltering in tube stations trying to hear the king’s speech through the Blitz would have been surprised to learn they were not ‘facing’ the enemy. By introducing the GC and GM, George VI may have boosted flagging national morale, but inadvertently he also did a disservice to future generations of courageous men, women and civilians, who instead of gaining the GC might have been considered for the VCs to which they were, theoretically at least, entitled.
The 1939–45 war saw more women in uniform than ever before, not merely lending medical support but engaging in tasks of utmost peril. In December 1941 the National Service Act made it compulsory for women aged between twenty and thirty (excluding, initially, married women) to register for military service. During the Second World War some 600,000 women served as commissioned officers or other ranks in the three main auxiliary services. We do not have to delve too deeply to find instances of exceptional but neglected female courage during the war; there are many unsung heroines. A fine example is that of Margot Turner, who died in September 1993 at the age of eighty-three; that she lived as long as she did was in some ways miraculous, for at the age of thirty-two Turner endured a protracted period of cruelty that today is difficult to fathom, during which she consistently displayed remarkable fortitude.
In 1937 Turner joined Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS), part of the army’s medical services.31 By 1942 she was a theatre sister – a rank then equivalent to lieutenant in the army – in Malaya. As the invading Japanese forces swiftly moved down through the east coast of Malaya, Turner helped evacuate patients from a hospital on the Johore Strait. When the last patient had been removed, a fresh outbreak of shelling forced her and a fellow nurse to retreat beneath a billiards table, taking with them a bottle of brandy from the medical stores. ‘After a number of swigs,’ she later recalled, ‘the barrage became nothing like as terrifying.’ Along with other nurses, civilian women and their children, Turner then boarded a ship destined for Singapore, but this vessel was shortly after sunk by Japanese aircraft. She then spent three days on a deserted islet before being picked up by another boat, only to be sunk yet again, this time by a Japanese warship. Turner then assembled sixteen survivors, including two babies, on a raft. After three days, everyone save Turner had died; she survived by eating seaweed and collecting drops of fresh water in her face-powder compact. On the fourth day she was picked up by a Japanese cruiser, her skin so blackened that her captors did not initially believe she was British. At some point in her early captivity a Japanese soldier knocked out two of her front teeth, when Turner failed to bow with sufficient alacrity. She was handed over to the Kempei Tai, Japan’s version of the Gestapo, who meted out harsh treatment and accused her of being a spy. Turner then endured six months of interrogation in a prison in Palembang, on Sumatra, from where she was transported to a camp. When liberated, Turner resumed her military nursing career, was appointed Chief Military Nurse in 1964, and created a Dame of the British Empire in recognition of her services to nursing. Turner’s story, along with those of other women imprisoned by the Japanese, inspired the 1981 British TV series Tenko.32 Turner helped to save lives; faced extreme cruelty with exceptional courage; inspired others bravely to face their own horrors; wore a uniform; was under the direct command of officers of the British army; and displayed ‘extreme devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy’. That it never crossed anyone’s mind to recommend Turner for the highest British military decoration sits uncomfortably with the 1920 VC warrant.
But the most egregious examples of valour by women who were not considered for the highest honour are to be found in Special Operations Executive (SOE). Their commissions may have been temporary or honorary but, following the 1920 warrant, that should not have barred them from being considered for the VC. According to M. R. D. Foot, doyen of SOE historians, SOE employed some 13,000 people, a quarter of them women; more than half of the women in the FANY were seconded to SOE. The inspiration behind SOE was Winston Churchill, who in 1919 had resolutely blocked military commissions for women doctors, but in the desperate days of 1940, when Churchill instructed Hugh Dalton, then Secretary at War, to ‘set ablaze’ Europe, quibbling over gender seemed less important.33 Women were not simply accepted into SOE, which, as Foot said employed anyone ‘from pimps to princesses’, but actively sought as field operatives; thei
r femininity provided additional cover for underground work, and might help protect them from the worst of abuses if captured. Moreover, the women SOE recruited usually had the required steeliness. In Foot’s words:
Not many women who seemed promising enough from SOE’s point of view to be worth interview would be likely to quail at the thought of a singularly nasty death, perhaps preceded by outrageous torture, if caught; and fighting enthusiasm can be quite as strong in one sex as the other.34
Selwyn Jepson, the recruiting officer for F [French] Section of SOE, faced stiff opposition to the recruitment of women, on the basis that under the Geneva Conventions women were not to be regarded as combatants, a variation of the argument put forward twenty years previously by Admiral Everett.35 Jepson evaded that obstacle by arguing that although women were not strictly permitted to fire guns, in reality some did: ‘I discovered that the anti-aircraft units always had ATS [Auxiliary Territorial Service] Officers on their strength and that when it came to firing an anti-aircraft gun the person who pulled the lanyard that released the trigger was a woman.’36
General Sir Frederick Pile, Commander of Air Defence in Britain, was an enthusiast for uniformed women of the ATS being permitted to fire guns, particularly as, in his estimate, Britain’s air defences were short of more than 1,000 officers and almost 18,000 other ranks during the Blitz in late 1940. By the middle of 1941, combing-out of men serving in home defence capacities saw 30,000 searchlight operators being removed from Air Defence, posts that were filled by women, who could thus be killed or injured fighting for their country. Officially, women remained non-combatants – an artificial distinction that fooled no one, least of all the women themselves. Pile commented that ‘there was a good deal of muddled thinking which was prepared to allow women to do anything to kill the enemy except actually pull the trigger’.37 This artificial distinction between combatant and non-combatant status meant that women working on anti-aircraft batteries were ineligible for the service medals their male colleagues could receive; they were also paid a third less. By June 1945 there were more than 190,000 ATS members, more than 6 per cent of the total British army; the statistic was even higher for the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), whose members formed almost 14 per cent of the Royal Air Force.38