Victoria's Cross (32 page)

35
.
Major R. Clark, ‘Medals, Decorations and Anomalies',
British Army Review
, August 1969.

36
.
Miller, op. cit., p. 9.

37
.
Frank Richards,
Old Soldiers Never Die
(Faber & Faber, 1933), p. 323.

38
.
Sylvester's VC is held by the Army Medical Services Museum at Mytchett, Surrey.

39
.
Rescuing a comrade seems to be the current standard set for winning an MC. Private Alex Robert Kennedy of the Mercian Regiment was gazetted on 19 March 2010 with the MC for running to the rescue of his injured platoon commander while under intense and close-range fire from Taliban insurgents in Helmand province in June 2009.

40
.
www.thisiscornwall.co.uk/news/HERO-KATE-MC/article-1558296-detail/article.html
.

41
.
That same day, Lance Corporal Colin Spooner, of the 2nd Battalion, the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment, also received the MC at the hands of Prince Charles. Spooner's contingent had been engaged in a gun battle with Taliban fighters in October 2008, during which the fighting was so intensely noisy that it became impossible to hear orders being communicated over the radio. Spooner took it upon himself to dash to and fro between various members of his unit, carrying instructions until eventually he was hit by a shell, thirty-two pieces of which lodged in his body. But he continued to issue orders
and refused to be carried off on a stretcher because, he said: ‘It would have taken four blokes to carry me out but I knew we were still engaged so I walked. That's what did most of the damage, but I'd do the same again.'

42
.
Daily Telegraph
, Saturday, 6 November 2010.

43
.
Crook,
The Evolution of the Victoria Cross
, op. cit., pp. 100–101.

44
.
Bury & Norwich Post
, Wednesday 13 February 1856.

CHAPTER
2 A Most Grand, Gratifying Day

  
1
.
Quoted in Norman Dixon,
On the Psychology of Military Incompetence
, (Pimlico, 1994), p. 325.

  
2
.
Lloyd's Weekly
, 1 March 1857.

  
3
.
The Times
, 29 June 1857, p. 12.

  
4
.
Victoria's journal entry, 26 June 1857, Royal Archive, Windsor Castle.

  
5
.
The Times
, 27 June 1857, p. 9.

  
6
.
Illustrated London News
, 4 July 1857. In the entry for her journal for this day Victoria mistakenly put the number at forty-seven, not sixty-two.

  
7
.
The whereabouts of Lucas's original VC is a mystery. He left his medals, including his Victoria Cross, on a train and they were never recovered. His duplicate medals are on display at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London.

  
8
.
Stanlack was evidently brave – he also gained the DCM – but a bit of a black sheep. He was later jailed for being drunk on duty, and later still for assault, and compulsorily discharged in 1863. His VC is in the hands of the Coldstream Guards in the Wellington Barracks, London.

  
9
.
The actual medal was legally the property of the recipient and so could not be forfeited.

10
.
Eight men suffered this humiliation. Midshipman Edward St John Daniel, a Crimean VC, rose to the rank of lieutenant, but in September 1861 was convicted of desertion and evading court martial. Sergeant James McGuire of the 1st Bengal European Fusiliers won his VC during the Indian Mutiny and forfeited it in 1862, after being convicted of stealing a cow. Private Valentine Bambrick was in the 60th Rifles when he
won his VC during the Indian Mutiny. After his discharge in 1863 he was accused of stealing another man's medals, found guilty and sentenced to a prison term. Deeply depressed and protesting his innocence, Bambrick hanged himself in Pentonville prison on 1 April 1864. Private Michael Murphy, of the 2nd Battalion Military Train, gained his VC during the Indian Mutiny; he forfeited it as a result of being found guilty of theft and was sentenced to nine months hard labour. Private Thomas Lane of the 67th Regiment won his VC at the Taku Forts, China, on 21 August 1860; he was convicted of theft in 1881. Private Frederick Corbett of the King's Own Rifle Corps was awarded his VC on 5 August 1882 for tending an officer during the Anglo-Egyptian War, but a conviction for embezzlement in July 1884 saw him stripped of his VC status. Gunner James Collis of the Royal Horse Artillery gained his VC during the Second Anglo-Afghan War, but was convicted of bigamy in 1895. Private George Ravenhill of the 1st Battalion Royal Scots Fusiliers gained his VC during the Second Boer War. He was convicted of theft in 1908, could not afford the fine and was sent to prison. He lost his VC pension, died in poverty aged forty-nine and is buried in an unmarked grave at Witton cemetery in Birmingham.

11
.
Crook, op. cit., p. 69.

12
.
NA WO 32/7300, letter dated April 1856.

13
.
Queen Victoria in A. C. Benson and Viscount Esher (eds),
The Letters of Queen Victoria
(John Murray, 1907), vol. iii, p. 72.

14
.
Theodore Martin,
Life of the Prince Consort
, (Smith, Elder, & Co, 1879), chapter lxiii.

15
.
NA E9/29: Private William McGuire of the 33rd Regiment of Foot. Taken prisoner by two Russian soldiers, he took advantage of their inattention and seized one of their rifles, shooting one and beating the other to death. He then donned a Russian uniform and made his way back to his own line. The French awarded him a Médaille Militaire, but Victoria judiciously thought the action undeserving of a VC because it might lead to the putting to death of all prisoners.

16
.
Up to 1871 all officers of the British army up to and including the rank of colonel usually held their rank by purchase. If an officer was
deemed to have disgraced the service, he could be cashiered – i.e. stripped of his commission without being reimbursed for the money he had paid for it. The 7th Earl of Cardigan, James Brudenell, who led the charge of the Light Brigade at the Crimea, paid more than £30,000 for his commission. A recording of a British trumpeter who sounded the charge at Balaclava can be heard here:
http://archive.org/details/EDIS-SWDPC-01-04

17
.
The Army, the Horse-Guards and the People
: ‘A Soldier': published by the University of Liverpool, part of the Knowsley Pamphlet Collection (1860), p. 29.

18
.
www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/21909/pages/2699

19
.
Sir Frederick Ponsonby,
Recollections of Three Reigns
(Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1951), p. 178.

20
.
Both the DCM and the CGM were cancelled in 1993, replaced by the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross, which can be awarded for all ranks across all services. Since 1993 the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) has been restricted solely to distinguished service, i.e. leadership and command by any rank, although in the recent conflict in Afghanistan only commissioned officers have been granted a DSO – which shows how enduring is the long-standing convention that ‘orders' are for officers and ‘medals' for other ranks. According to the Ministry of Defence: ‘Although theoretically available to all ranks, the DSO, now awarded for distinguished leadership during active operations against the enemy, is likely to be awarded only to the more senior officer ranks.' (
www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceFor/Veterans/Medals/DistinguishedServiceOrder.htm
)

21
.
If a man were promoted and became an officer, he would lose the £10 annuity. The fact that the VC annuity was £10 a year less than that of the DCM was a little odd; the Treasury, however, was always keen to limit expenditure.

22
.
Hansard
, 23 January 1855, vol. 136, cc 899–910.

23
.
Royal Archives, Windsor Castle, 20 January 1855; Vic/Main/B/16/45.

24
.
Manuscripts and Special Collections, University of Nottingham; NeC9, 701/2 and 701/3. This memo also includes some acerbic comments on
the Légion d'Honneur: ‘I would advise no reference to the Legion of Honour, the distribution of which is entirely arbitrary and guided by no principles, which is given indiscriminately to Soldiers and Civilians, and has long been made a tool for corruption in the hands of the French Govt the Number of whose members extends to 40,000 & which has almost become a necessary appendage to the French dress.'

25
.
Hansard
, 29 January 1855, vol. 136, cc 1064–5.

26
.
Liverpool Mercury
, Friday, 8 February 1856.

27
.
According to Daphne Bennett (
King Without a Crown
, Heinemann, 1977, p. 259), Albert's ‘first sketch of the cross itself was made while commuting in an unheated train between Windsor and London during the freezing winter of 1854–5'. She gives no source for her claim, however.

28
.
Royal Archives, E6 69–71, December 1855.

29
.
Another document in the Royal Archives [EG 70] confirms Albert's influence. This is a letter dated 30 December 1855 – shortly after the revisions were made – from Lord Panmure to Prince Albert, in which he writes: ‘Her Majesty & Your Royal Highness have greatly improved this reward for military subjects by changing its character from an “order” to a “decoration”.'

30
.
Royal Archives, E6 71.

31
.
Royal Archives, G 44–30.

32
.
The warrant was of course later altered such that putting out a fire in a powder magazine, if not ‘at home' then certainly far away from the enemy,
did
qualify for the VC.

33
.
The Times
, 26 February 1857, p. 8.

34
.
The media have always lavished attention on ‘heroes' yet the ordinary soldier is always shabbily treated when out of the spotlight. John Geddes (
Spearhead Assault
, Century, 2007, p. 31), a paratrooper corporal in the Falklands in 1982, wrote of his family's last night together in barracks before he headed off, ‘in a damp, cold dump of a flat with no mushrooms in the fridge but plenty on the wall next to the peeling wallpaper . . . some of the 2 Para heroes who were destined to die on the Falklands spent the last night they would ever have with their loved
ones in these communal shitholes, with draughty crumbling window frames, disintegrating plaster on the walls, leaking plumbing and toilets that didn't work properly. What a disgrace.'

35
.
A. V. Dicey,
An Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution
(10th edn, 1967), p. 424.

36
.
Victoria's role in government generally was much more than merely symbolic. In her final days, when she was too ill to work, Arthur Balfour, the prime minister at the time, was ‘astounded' at the number of boxes that had quickly piled up containing business that required the sovereign's attention: ‘Judges, for instance, could not function without a warrant signed by her: all sorts of appointments could not be made without her sanction' (Ponsonby, op. cit., p. 82).

37
.
The 62nd suffered 50 per cent casualties among its officers and non-commissioned officers.

38
.
NA WO 98/2.

39
.
Michael Hargreave Mawson (ed.),
Eyewitness in the Crimea
(Greenhill Books, 2001), p. 165.

40
.
For her services, the Queen ‘decorated' Nightingale with a medallion of white enamel with diamonds, on which was the St George's Cross and the Royal Cypher and the words ‘blessed are the merciful' and ‘Crimea'.

41
.
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1854/jun/19/the-war-with-russia-the-german-powers
.

42
.
Elizabeth Longford,
Victoria R. I
. (Orion, 1998 edn), p. 241.

43
.
Benson and Viscount Esher (eds), op. cit., p. 15.

44
.
General Sir Ian Hamilton,
The Soul and Body of an Army
(Edward Arnold, 1921), pp. 86–8.

45
.
Mawson, op. cit., p. 57.

46
.
Ibid., p. 71.

47
.
The Times
, 25 January 1855, p. 6.

48
.
Colonel Alex M. Tulloch,
The Crimean Commission and the Chelsea Board
(London, 1857). The French army initially coped much better with the local conditions. Nevertheless, out of a total of more than 300,000 French troops in the Crimea, around 200,000 required medical treatment at some point; only a quarter of those were wounded in action.

49
.
Their report heavily censured Lord Lucan (who had been in command of a regiment); Lord Cardigan, Inspector of Cavalry; Sir Richard Airey, Quartermaster-General; and Colonel Gordon, Deputy Quartermaster-General. Tulloch and McNeill were offered by the government £1,000 each for their work, which they declined on principle – it was a different era. They spent fifty-five days on their investigation and examined 200 witnesses in the Crimea, each of whom was given a copy of what would be included in the report and asked to sign it.