Victoria Cross

The Victoria Cross is Britain’s highest award for gallantry in the presence of the enemy. The small bronze cross bearing a crown, a lion and the inscription “For Valour” could be won by any soldier or sailor of the Empire, regardless of rank, creed or colour. No other war brought as many awards as the war of 1914–1918.

A decoration for all ranks

Queen Victoria instituted the cross on 29 January 1856 to honour the bravery of soldiers and sailors in the Crimean War, and the first awards reached back to the autumn of 1854. Unlike earlier decorations it was open to all ranks, from private to general. In time colonial troops became eligible, and from 1911 Indian soldiers too, who until then had only their own Indian Order of Merit. Tradition has it that the crosses were cast from the bronze of Russian guns captured at Sevastopol, but analysis of the metal has shown that most of those made from December 1914 come from two Chinese guns.

A recommendation was normally made by an officer of the regiment or ship and had to be supported by three witnesses. It then went up the chain of command, to the Secretary of State for War and the monarch. The original warrant said nothing about posthumous awards, and in practice none were made. The Boer War changed that, and by the Great War posthumous crosses were commonplace, although a specific provision was written into the warrant only in 1920.

In 1914–1918

For this war 626 or 628 crosses were awarded, depending on the count, almost half of the 1,358 awards in the decoration’s whole history. According to the list of recipients, 159 of 627 men received it posthumously, roughly one in four.

The crosses went to servicemen from across the Empire: according to the same list, 71 to the Canadian Expeditionary Force and 63 to Australians, as well as to New Zealanders, Newfoundlanders and Indian soldiers. Airmen received 19 crosses, among them Reginald Warneford, who in June 1915 destroyed a German airship in the air.

Some of the first crosses of the war went to Lieutenant Maurice Dease, who died of his wounds, and Private Sidney Godley, for defending the bridges at Nimy in the Battle of Mons. On 31 October at Hollebeke Sepoy Khudadad Khan of the 129th Regiment earned it as the first soldier of the Indian Army. Lieutenant Norman Holbrook received the war’s first cross for a sailor when his submarine B11 torpedoed the battleship Mesudiye in the Dardanelles. For the Gallipoli landing the 1st Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers passed into legend as the winners of “six VCs before breakfast”.

Many crosses went to the fallen. At the Battle of Jutland they were awarded posthumously to Major Francis Harvey of the Royal Marines, who, mortally wounded, ordered his turret’s magazines flooded, and to the sixteen-year-old sailor Jack Cornwell, who stayed at his gun until the end of the battle. The doctor Noel Chavasse won the cross twice, the second time posthumously, for the fighting for Pilckem Ridge in 1917. In this war only Arthur Martin-Leake, who had won his first cross in the Boer War, also received a second award. A single day sometimes brought several crosses: for 2 September 1918, the breaking of the Drocourt–Quéant Line, seven Canadians received it.

The cross and the order

The British cross differed in one essential way from its German counterpart, the Pour le Mérite. The Prussian order went only to officers, and rather for command and success, such as the number of ships sunk or aircraft shot down, than for a single deed. The Victoria Cross rewarded precisely a specific act of courage, regardless of rank. Shortly before the Royal Air Force was formed in 1918, King George V agreed that all the services should wear it on the same crimson ribbon, although the navy’s had previously been dark blue. After the war the dominions long kept the British cross: Australia, Canada and New Zealand created their own, almost identical counterparts only in 1991–1999.