Victoria's Cross (38 page)

23
.
Brooks (ed.), op. cit., pp. 192, 206. Harry Crerar was GOC (General Officer Commanding), First Canadian Army in north-west Europe in 1944.

24
.
Quoted in Hugh Halliday,
Valour Reconsidered
(Robin Brass Studio, Toronto, 2006), pp. 208–9.

25
.
www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/36030/supplements/2361
.

26
.
Nettleton was later killed in action, on 13 July 1943.

27
.
Leo McKinstry,
Lancaster: The Second World War's Greatest Bomber
(John Murray, 2009), pp. 87–9.

28
.
www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/35539/supplements/1851
.

29
.
www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/36693/supplements/4175
.

30
.
Lachhiman Gurung survived the war and died in 2010, aged ninety-two.

31
.
Upham died at the age of eighty-six in November 1994.

32
.
Daily Telegraph
, obituary, 23 November 1994.

33
.
The Times
, 15 October 1941, p. 5. The other VC mentioned was that of Sergeant Alfred Hulme of the 23rd Battalion, New Zealand Army. He survived the war.

34
.
Upham's three daughters sold his medals in November 2006 to the Imperial War Museum for an undisclosed sum. As New Zealand legislation bans the export of historic items, the museum agreed to their permanent loan to the QEII Army Memorial Museum at Waiouru in New Zealand, where they were on display until a well-planned theft of a total of ninety-six medals, including nine VCs, on 2 December 2007. On 17 December 2007, the Commissioner of Police offered a reward of up to NZ$300,000 for information leading to recovery of the medals and Lord Ashcroft and Tom Sturgess, a New Zealand businessman, funded the reward. In January 2008 Christopher Comeskey, an Auckland lawyer, approached the police offering a deal under which the medals would be returned in exchange for the reward. The Commissioner and Mr Comeskey struck a deal and the medals were returned in February 2008. The police paid in excess of NZ$200,000 under the agreement. The police eventually arrested James Kapa and Ronald Van Wakeren and charged them with burglary. They both pleaded guilty. Upham was a tough no-nonsense man who frankly loathed Germans. He denounced Britain's membership of the Common Market and said in 1971 that ‘your politicians have made money their god, but what they are buying is disaster', adding, ‘they'll cheat you yet, those Germans'. He took up farming back in New Zealand after the war, but declined £10,000 raised by public donation to help him buy a farm, instead using the money to establish the Charles Upham Scholarship Fund to send the sons of ex-servicemen to university.

35
.
Daily Telegraph
, 28 September 2000.

36
.
See
Courage and Service
for the following, a CD available from Service Publications,
www.servicepub.com
.

37
.
Projector, Infantry, Anti Tank; an unreliable weapon that was effective against tanks only over a very short distance of around 100 yards.

38
.
Earlier in the war Byce had won the Military Medal. His father, also named Charlie, had won the DCM in the First World War, along with the Médaille Militaire.

39
.
Richard Reid,
For Valour: Australians and the Victoria Cross
(Australia Post, 2000), p. 29.

40
.
The Times
, 24 March 1944. Derrick was killed in action during the landing at Tarakan, an island off the coast of Borneo, on 23 May 1945. Once again, note the ‘inspirational' element in his citation.

41
.
Martin Gilbert,
Churchill: A Life
(William Heinemann, 1991), p. 730.

42
.
The Times
, 18 December 1945, p. 4. The others that he would personally bestow were: GC, Knights Grand Cross, Knights Commanders, Knights Bachelor, Companions and Commanders of Orders, DSO, DCM, Conspicuous Gallantry Medal (Naval and Air), Albert Medal, George Medal, Police and Fire Services Medal for Gallantry, and Edward Medal.

CHAPTER
7 The Integrity of the System

  
1
.
Spencer Fitz-Gibbon,
Not Mentioned in Despatches
(Lutterworth Press, 2001 edn), p. xiii.

  
2
.
C. W. McMoran [Lord Moran],
The Anatomy of Courage
(Constable & Robinson, 2007 edn), p. xxv.

  
3
.
There were also three living holders of the VC for Australia and one for the New Zealand VC.

  
4
.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/4625376.stm
.

  
5
.
Richard Vinen, ‘The Victoria Cross',
History Today
, vol. 56, issue 12, 2006.

  
6
.
General George S. Patton,
War As I Knew It
(Bantam Books, 1980), p. 376.

  
7
.
Ibid., pp. 341–2.

  
8
.
Foote's VC was not gazetted until 14 February 1946, when he was liberated.
www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/37466/supplements/941
.

  
9
.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/6201670/Royal-Marine-to-sell-Conspicuous-Gallantry-Cross-won-in-Iraq.html
. Thomas's CGC was sold at auction for £88,000 on 18 September 2009.

10
.
And the existence of the George Cross renders absurd attempts to
finely grade courage; the case of Corporal Mark William Wright, 3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment, killed in action in Helmand province, Afghanistan, in September 2009, highlights the problem. Wright was awarded a posthumous GC after needlessly dying of wounds after he entered a minefield trying to save the life of another injured soldier. A subsequent military inquiry judged that Wright could have survived if the Chinook helicopter sent to his rescue had possessed a lifting winch; all such winches were back in the UK at the time, having a fault checked.

11
.
William I. Miller,
The Mystery of Courage
(Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 12.

12
.
J. O. Urmson, ‘Saints and Heroes', in
Moral Concepts
, ed. Joel Feinberg (Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 60–73.

13
.
Rudyard Kipling, ‘Winning the Victoria Cross',
www.telelib.com/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/prose/LandandSea/victoriacross.html
– originally published in the
Windsor Magazine
, June 1897.

14
.
Michael Ashcroft, ‘A Century and a Half of Conspicuous Bravery',
The Spectator
, 22 April 2006.

15
.
This committee relates to, but is distinct from, the Committee on the Grant of Honours, Decorations and Medals, which is a permanent standing committee that considers general questions relating to honours and decorations, reviews the scale of awards (civil and military), and considers new awards and changes in conditions of existing awards.

16
.
NA WO 98/10. ‘Examination of the Standards of Australian Citations for the Award of the Victoria Cross': no date but probably 1970, written by an unnamed lieutenant colonel.

17
.
www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/44198/supplements/13567
. Wheatley's citation states that he was told Swanton was dying by a medical assistant.

18
.
Can suicide be courageous? It's a grey area for the VC. The history of the Cross is of course littered with acts that turned out, loosely, to be ‘suicidal' and for which a VC was awarded. Wheatley's act made ‘the Palace' – and senior officers – uncomfortable about giving him a VC. But at least one overt suicide gained the Cross. Corporal Sefanaia Sukanaivalu of the 3rd Battalion, Fijian Infantry, gained his on 23 June 1944 at Mawaraka in the Solomon Islands. Under fire, he crawled forward to rescue wounded men of his platoon. He then returned to get another man and on the way back to his own lines he was seriously wounded. Several attempts were made to try to rescue him; each failed. He called out to his would-be rescuers not to try to fetch him. His citation reads: ‘Realising that his men would not withdraw as long as they could see that he was still alive . . . Corporal Sukanaivalu, well aware of the consequences, raised himself up in front of the Japanese machine gun and was riddled with bullets.'
www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/36774/supplements/5016
.

19
.
Ian McNeill,
To Long Tan: The Australian Army and the Vietnam War, 1950–1966
(Allen & Unwin, 1993), p. 48.

20
.
British Army Review
, no. 101, August 1992.

21
.
Political considerations intrude on all aspects of the VC. In 2005 Gordon Brown, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, vetoed a new design for a fifty-pence piece commemorating the creation of the VC. The original design, by the sculptor Clive Duncan, depicted a soldier carrying a wounded comrade, with the cross-hair of an enemy sniper's rifle focused on his back. Brown decided it was inappropriately gloomy. The designer reportedly wanted to spurn histrionics and ‘to do justice to the cold reality of combat' (
Daily Telegraph
, 21 June 2005).

22
.
www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/44925/supplements/8873
.

23
.
As of November 2013 only two VCs – both posthumous – had been awarded for the Afghanistan War, remarkably few considering the length of the campaign and the numbers of armed forces personnel. Lance Corporal James Ashworth, 1st Battalion, Grenadier Guards, was killed on 13 June 2012 in a close-combat action; he was gazetted VC on 22 March 2013. Corporal Bryan Budd, 3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment, was killed in action on 20 August 2006 and gazetted 14 December 2006. Wounded, Budd independently pressed on with an assault; subsequently (and after his VC had been gazetted) a coroner ruled that Budd had probably been killed by a NATO bullet, caught in cross-fire.

24
.
The Independent
, 24 July 2008.

25
.
Private William McFadzean's posthumous Somme VC in 1916 was for an act remarkably similar to Croucher's.

26
.
Daily Telegraph
, 19 March 2010.

27
.
The need for this perverse interpretation exists only because the GC exists. The most outstanding example of this bizarre judgement in the post-1945 period is that of Captain Robert Nairac who, on 13 February 1979, was gazetted with a posthumous GC for ‘exceptional courage and acts of the greatest heroism in circumstances of extreme peril . . . [He] showed devotion to duty and personal courage second to none.' Nairac was with the SAS, in civilian clothing, when he was taken prisoner by the IRA, tortured and killed. Who would honestly argue that Nairac was not in the presence of the enemy?
www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/47769/supplements/1991
.

28
.
NA WO 373/188/247. This shows that Illingsworth's original VC recommendation was downgraded to ‘Distinguished Service Medal' (an error: no such medal existed) by the ‘Special Honours Committee'.

29
.
Jones's widow spoke to the
Observer
in March 2002 and said: ‘If anybody does anything heroic or good, the British look for reasons to denigrate them. It seems to be inevitable and it's a great shame that we have this sort of national psyche. Why don't we cheer for things that are good?'

30
.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1486650/A-Falklands-hero-and-the-VC-that-never-was.html
.

31
.
www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/49134/supplements/12845
.

32
.
The case of Flying Officer Lloyd Allen Trigg of RAF 200 Squadron set the precedent. In command of a Liberator bomber, Trigg attacked the surfaced U-boat 468 in the Atlantic on 11 August 1943. The U-boat's anti-aircraft guns hit the Liberator and set it on fire. Nevertheless it circled for another (and this time successful) depth-charge run, before crashing 300 yards behind the submarine, with no survivors. The U-boat commander, Oberleutnant Klemens Schamong, was captured, and on
his high praise for the pilot's courage, Trigg was granted a posthumous VC on 2 November 1943, the citation mentioning his ‘grim determination and high courage'.

33
.
John Geddes,
Spearhead Assault
(Century, 2007), pp. 209–10.

34
.
Fitz-Gibbon, op. cit., p. 20.

35
.
Geddes, op. cit., pp. 211–12. Abols rose to the rank of captain in the Parachute Regiment; for his action at Goose Green he was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal.

36
.
The 2012 Holmes review of military medals acknowledged that there is a problem with the lack of transparency in the way decisions about military decorations are arrived at:

the current system of decision-making is vulnerable to the charge of being a ‘black box' operation, where those outside have no knowledge of what is being decided or why, and have no access to it; and where the rules and principles underlying the decisions, while frequently referred to, have never been properly codified or promulgated.

37
.
The Spectator
, 7 May 2005.