Victoria's Cross

by Gary Mead

  Such indiscriminate medal distributions rankled, as The Times pointed out when the VC was first mooted:

  Many men who never heard the pealing of the artillery at Waterloo . . . received the Waterloo medal, in common with the bleeding survivors of the diminished squares. The same principle has been observed in the Crimea. Medals and clasps have been given for particular actions to men who took no further part in those actions than the troops now encamped at Aldershott.66

  Away from the battlefield, the typical redcoat was assumed to be drunk, debauched, dirty and disreputable; during combat his only duty was to stand his ground and unquestioningly obey orders. Nor was this image a vast distortion: ‘In the British army . . . a staggering 5,546 men (roughly one in eight of the entire army in the field) behaved so badly that they were court-martialled for various acts of drunkenness during the Crimean War.’67 While the rank and file could expect no individual recognition for any act of exceptional courage, officers might hope for a CB, KCB or even a GCB, the Knight Grand Cross. In 1815 the Prince Regent decided that the Order of the Bath, hitherto a purely civilian title, should also have a military version, for officers only.

  But in general, money, not medals, was what the victorious British soldier or sailor looked for. This might come through private enterprise – corpse-robbing68 – or state-distributed prize money.69 Two years after Waterloo, Parliament sanctioned a financial grant to all surviving veterans, which was paid on a sliding scale. The Duke of Wellington received £61,000 (almost £4 million in 2014, using the retail price index, and more than £60 million if we consider it on the basis of economic status);70 lesser generals more than £1,27471 (more than £81,000 or £1,322,000 respectively). Corporals, drummers and privates were awarded £2 11s 4d (£164 or £2,665). A silver medal was better than nothing – but for the majority, no doubt, cash was better still.72

  By the time the eighteen-year-old Victoria became queen in 1837, it was a largely unquestioned assumption that, constitutionally, the army was subject to a system of ‘dual control’: raising the money to finance the army was a matter for Parliament, while its command, the way in which that money was spent, was in the hands of the Crown. This division was blurry, not least because Parliament provided a home for many senior officers on half-pay, all of them regarding their allegiance as being first and foremost to the monarchy that had appointed them: between 1790 and 1820 almost 20 per cent of MPs had spent time in the regular army.73 Nevertheless, there was an accepted division of control between monarchy and Parliament, consolidated by a royal warrant of 1812, which stipulated that while the Secretary at War – a civilian minister – was responsible to Parliament for the financial control of army expenditures, the commander-in-chief was answerable to the Crown for discipline and army administration. This was thought to ensure that the tendency of monarchs to use military power for their own ends would be counterbalanced by a penny-pinching parliament, which would keep a close eye on the cost (and therefore the size) of the army. At the same time, by giving the Crown ultimate authority over military appointments, the army was believed secure against the undue influence of parliamentary factions. In reality, this distinction ensured that succeeding monarchs felt themselves to have the right of a royal veto over not just senior army appointments but all military affairs – and Victoria exercised this supposed authority to the fullest extent possible.

  The bonds that knitted together monarchy and army were consolidated by the appointment of trusted friends and relations to the most senior military posts. In 1795, for instance, George III appointed his son, Prince Frederick, the Duke of York and Albany and a career soldier, as commander-in-chief of the army. The erosion of the military and civilian division of authority reached its acme in 1828, when the Duke of Wellington became prime minister while simultaneously occupying the post of commander-in-chief. Wellington was determined to ensure that ‘the command of the army should remain in the hands of the Sovereign, and not fall into those of the House of Commons’74 Henry Hardinge, who succeeded Wellington, was no less a defender of the royal prerogative. In Hardinge’s view:

  The King, and not that House, was the disposer of grace, favour, and reward to the Army . . . It was of the utmost importance that the army should look up to no authority but that of the King. It was by his Majesty’s direction that punishments were inflicted, and by him alone should rewards be conferred. This was the constitutional doctrine.75

  In the opinion of Victoria, a soldier pledged an oath of fidelity not to Parliament but ‘to defend Her Majesty, her heirs and successors, Crown and dignity, against all enemies’ and ‘to observe and obey all orders of Her Majesty, her heirs and successors, and of all Generals and Officers set over him’.76 In January 1855, when, under pressure from both Parliament and the public, the Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of State for War in the Aberdeen administration, sent a despatch to Lord Raglan seeking explanations for the poor management of the war, Victoria chided him:

  The Queen has only one remark to make, viz. the entire omission of her name throughout the document. It speaks simply in the name of the People of England, and of their sympathy, whilst the Queen feels it to be one of her highest prerogatives and dearest duties to care for the welfare and success of her Army.

  Victoria was conscious of the fact that her father, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, had been a soldier, and that she had been taken by him as a baby to a military review on Hounslow Heath. Although he died when she was just eight months old, in 1876 she presented new colours to her father’s old regiment, the Royal Scots, saying: ‘He was proud of his profession, and I was always told to consider myself a soldier’s child.’77 In 1838, her coronation year, she supervised a large review of the army in Hyde Park and such reviews became a regular feature of her reign. She even formally approved army uniforms; during the Crimean War Panmure informed Victoria that he understood and respected her ‘sole right to determine . . . all patterns for the arms, clothing, and accoutrements and equipment of the Army’.78

  Victoria had no desire to dissolve the innate conservatism of the army, yet the introduction of an inherently democratic military honour flouted the established order. For her, the VC was no more than an extension of noblesse oblige into military affairs; for many senior officers, it threatened a dangerous erosion of their status, for which they had often paid large sums of money out of their own pocket. In retrospect they had much and nothing to fear: the creation of the VC certainly helped open the way for more profound army reform, including the abolition of the commission purchase system, but the preservation of the officer class as an elite, separate from and socially superior to the other ranks, was left intact.

  The VC was therefore born out of a ghastly shambles. More positively (at least as far as the monarchy was concerned), it helped deflect public anger and dissipated the wrath of the press. It massaged that justified anger into an enhanced reverence for the Crown, thereby staving off the inevitable decline of royal authority over the armed forces. Queen Victoria saw the VC as a personal gift of the monarch, helped by Albert’s astuteness in naming the decoration for his spouse. The VC publicly symbolized Victoria’s gratitude to ‘her’ armed forces and cemented the affectionate loyalty the military extended to her.

  The Times loftily dismissed the Victoria Cross when it first appeared as ‘a dull, heavy, tasteless affair’ and ‘coarse-looking . . . mean in the extreme’. The newspaper held its nose and sneered at the VC’s ugly appearance, apparently unaware that the decoration’s unadorned crudity was deliberate:

  Much do we suspect that if it was on sale in any town in England at a penny a-piece, hardly a dozen would be sold in a twelve-month. There is a cross, and a lion, and a scroll or two worked up into the most shapeless mass that the size admits of . . . Valour must, and doubtless will, be still its own reward in this country, for the Victoria Cross is the shabbiest of all prizes.79

  The Cross’s down-at-heel look was widely deprecated, not merely by the metropolitan press. The ‘Private Corre
spondent’ of a regional newspaper remarked:

  The ungainly Victoria Cross has already disappeared from the breasts of those who can afford to get rid of it for something smaller, and therefore less conspicuous in its ugliness. A London jeweller occupies himself in making miniature decorations, and these are worn by many commissioned officers in place of those given them by their Queen and their country.80

  But The Times’s rhetorical flourish was disingenuous. Valour is not and has never been its own reward; successive generations of VC winners have tried to leverage their moment of battlefield prowess, whether by arguing for more rapid promotion, publishing a book, becoming a public speaker, or maybe just advertising themselves in a pub, like Hitch.

  The New York Times naturally saw the Cross through a different prism; democracy was on the march in Britain, and the VC was ‘a further indication that the British Government are resolved to make some concession to the democratic principles which, steadily and surely, are in course of progress in the realm of Victoria . . . It is, in effect, an “Order of Merit” for the humblest persons in the army and navy.’81 The deliberate eschewal of ostentation in the VC’s design certainly burnished its democratic image, by distancing it from the glittery pomp of Thistles, Garters and Baths; but appearances deceive. Despite its humble appearance, the VC out-glitters a whole chest full of honours. Most of the British press concurred with the New York Times; rare were critical comments such as this from the republican Reynolds’s Newspaper:

  [T]he preamble of QUEEN VICTORIA’S proclamation, instituting the ‘VICTORIA CROSS,’ is positively insulting to the lower ranks of the army, for she says the necessity for founding it has originated from the impossibility of conferring the Order of the Bath upon ‘any but the higher ranks of the service.’ This is tantamount to saying, that not even the bravest man in the ranks of the British army, whatever services he may have rendered his country, is qualified to be placed on a level with such miserable, blundering, timid old dolts, as the SIMPSONS, RAGLANS, and DUNDASES, which the present war has turned up!82

  Some contemporary newspaper coverage was remarkably level-headed. Tinsley’s Magazine, which specialized in popular fiction, considered that:

  Select though the sacred circle of Knights of the Victoria Cross be, it would be uncandid to pretend that there is universal satisfaction in the service with all to whom it has been adjudged. Nor are those wanting who rail against the institution, and hint that it has an evil effect, and creates irritating distinctions. But those are the men who have never earned it. Nobody despises pedigree so much as the knave without a grandfather. Still, it is true that there is reasonable complaint that many who ought to have got the Cross have not got it, and that many who have deserved it less than the unsignalized have got it. All the accident of war.83

  For some correspondents, the VC perpetuated a very different and deeper social division. The Cheshire Observer published this from an irate civilian:

  Where is a class of men more deserving and unpitied than our merchant sailors, yet, what surprising and astounding feats do these poor fellows kindly and voluntarily perform to save the lives of the crews and passengers of the sinking vessel. Then there are our firemen, policemen, coalpitmen, and numbers of others . . . men who have to risk their lives by performing actions of gallantry which are appalling to reflect upon . . . Such is the class of civilians to whom the presentation of the ‘Victoria Cross for Valour,’ would be but a just and graceful act of encouragement, and a royal and official acknowledgement of their truly meritorious services, and would be the means of stimulating others to the performance of perilous and heroic deeds.84

  Even the art world took notice. Louis Desanges, an English painter of French extraction, capitalized on the popularity of the VC by mounting a highly successful exhibition in London of fifty oil paintings, executed between 1859 and 1862, each taking a particular VC episode for its subject matter. Desanges’s Victoria Cross Gallery was exhibited at the Crystal Palace throughout the 1860s and remained there until about 1880.85

  The Victoria Cross has been depicted as marking ‘the moment when . . . common soldiers ceased to be regarded as cannon fodder rounded up by the likes of Lord Cardigan, but were seen to be the equals of any peer of the realm in the face of the enemy’.86 The reality is that common soldiers would still be cannon fodder, and the new award merely ushered in new uncertainties, not the least of them being disgruntlement among senior officers, some of whom felt the VC would undermine discipline and order, and others who were annoyed that this new and prestigious decoration was beyond them, simply because the opportunity for displaying such courage was usually unavailable to high-ranking officers. Jostling to be considered for the new award, and complaints of having been overlooked, swiftly followed.

  Sergeant William McWheeny of the 44th Foot gained his VC in part for his rescue of Private John Keane who, according to the citation, was

  dangerously wounded on the Woronzoff Road, at the time the sharp-shooters were repulsed from the Quarries by overwhelming numbers . . . [he] took the wounded man on his back, and brought him to a place of safety. This was under a very heavy fire. He was also the means of saving the life of Corpl. Courtney. This man was one of the sharp-shooters, and was severely wounded in the head, 5 Dec. 1854. Sergt. McWheeny brought him in from under the fire, and dug up a slight cover with his bayonet, where the two remained until dark, when they retired.87

  This account was disputed by William Courtney in a letter to The Times in March 1857. Courtney claimed that he had carried Keane on his back to a place of safety and continued:

  as to Sergeant M’Wheeny [sic] having saved my life, that is also entirely untrue. I was left on one side for many hours after I was wounded; and as to the assertion that I and M’Wheeny retired after dark, anyone with common sense must see how impossible it was. I received three balls in my head at once, and my right eye was shot out, besides other injuries. Of course, I was utterly incapable of moving, and it was equally impossible for anyone to have covered me, &c., as M’Wheeny is said to have done . . . I ask not praise; I did my duty to my Queen and country; all I request is justice.88

  At this distance, no one can say with any certainty if Courtney was right or simply chancing his arm.

  For junior officers and the other ranks, the VC was and is a grand lottery: a previously obscure nobody could achieve overnight fame. Editors quickly exploited the VC’s potential as a source of colourful, dramatic copy, attractive to both readers and advertisers, and much better than the usual run-of-the-mill military reporting, such as another dull despatch from a commanding officer. The Aberdeen Journal, for example, ran a series from March 1857 of ‘some of the more striking incidents’ which had gained the VC in the Crimea, beginning with the Naval Brigade. Even in her dotage, Victoria cultivated opportunities to promote the indissoluble link between herself, the Cross and ‘her’ soldiers. In 1898 she visited the Royal Victoria Hospital at Netley in Hampshire to pin the VC on the tunics of two wounded soldiers, both of whom were found sitting down.89 ‘They were ordered to rise, but the Queen said, “Most certainly not,” and raised herself without help (a very unusual thing) and stood over them while she decorated them with the cross.’90

  By the end of the first investiture of the VC on 26 June 1857, much had changed, although in many respects everything remained the same. Holders of the VC found themselves entitled to take precedence over the highest peer of the realm on any ceremonial occasion; but few of those peers regarded VC holders as their equal once the ceremonies and ritual obeisance were over. Of greater long-term significance was that the establishment of the VC opened the way for a subsequent rash of new distinctions, which, by trying to distinguish more finely different grades of courage, helped restore the social divisions dissolved by the VC.91 In novels, journalism and popular ballads, the VC winner was to be depicted as an icon of courage, on whose valiant shoulders rested the empire. Victoria could not foresee what a Pandora’s Box she and Albert had opened: if me
rit was to be the principal means of selection in the recognition of supreme courage, why should merit not become more widespread in the armed forces, for promotion to its higher ranks? The course of the rest of the VC’s history has been one in which a gradual rise in the level of courage demanded and expected, has imperceptibly taken hold. A new military aristocracy – the elite class of VC winners, no women and very few civilians allowed – was born on 26 June 1857.

  3

  Small Wars

  ‘I have heard it said that no one could be so immodest as to ask for the Victoria Cross. Poor deluded souls!’

  LIEUTENANT GENERAL H. J. STANNUS1

  ‘Christianity and thirty-two-pounders are better than swords and spears and heathenism.’

  CHIEF THAKAMBAU OF FIJI2

  In the forty-five years between 1856, when the VC was first created, and Victoria’s death in 1901, no challenge to the empire went unpunished. British soldiers fought 200 greater or lesser wars in Abyssinia, Africa, China, Egypt, New Zealand, Sudan and India, as Britain gobbled up land and peoples, quadrupling the size of the territory it controlled. Colonel Charles Callwell summarized in a textbook for officers the nature of these ‘small wars’: ‘Small wars include . . . campaigns of conquest when a Great Power adds the territory of barbarous races to its possessions; and they include punitive expeditions against tribes bordering upon distant colonies.’3 This extension and consolidation of empire turned the world map pink, while spattering red across jungle, desert and bush, as British rule was imposed with varying degrees of brutality. Indigenous peoples were subjugated, while domestic British opinion developed an appetite for heroes; men were needed to police new territories, and the struggles to defeat skilled, often poorly armed yet fierce opponents, placed a steadily rising premium on military professionalism. For readers of most of Britain’s newspapers and periodicals, these decades were a record of gallant armies ‘civilizing’ natives, extending and deepening Britain’s might against supposedly merciless barbarian hordes. To the Victorian mind, every soldier was potentially a Homeric hero, an evangelizing agent bent on imparting the values of Christianity. Over most of these campaigns were sprinkled the imparted ‘glory’ of Victoria Crosses, some deserved, some undeserved, and others obtained by the kind of machination that never occurred to Victoria and Albert when they put flesh on what was, in principle, a noble ideal. One who truly deserved the VC, Winston Churchill, who in the late nineteenth century fought in four wars in as many years, was, as we will see, excluded from the club, probably the victim of a capricious senior officer whom he had offended. Leaving aside larger ethical considerations of how the empire was gained and managed, it became clear that human frailty – ambition, greed, selfishness, posturing – was to become a consistent strand in the history of the Victoria Cross, entangled with the collective tale of exceptional individual courage. Senior officers had little compunction about using the VC to reward favourites and build their own careers; individuals who wanted the Cross and thought they deserved it exploited personal connections to achieve their aim. Noble idealism and ignoble politicking are but the obverse and reverse of the same medal – of all medals, perhaps; but the higher the reward, the greater the temptation to resort to corrupt means of obtaining it.