Victoria's Cross

by Gary Mead

  The military prefer a (rarely acknowledged) quota system rather than a (difficult-to-administer) avowedly merit system of operational gallantry decorations, because rationing is seen as a bulwark against the VC, and other gallantry awards, becoming commonplace. Lieutenant Colonel ‘X’ (speaking on condition of anonymity), then Secretary of the Armed Forces Operations Awards Committee, explained this supply-and-demand defence against cheapening the VC. This committee is chaired by the Defence Services Secretary and includes the Secretaries for the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force and the Army, and the Deputy Chief of Joint Operations.15 ‘X’ described his role

  [as auditing] the system to keep it credible. The number of overall awards [including VCs] that will be distributed depends on various factors, partly on the number of troops engaged in an operation; the length of the conflict; the level of overall risk involved; the number of casualties . . . Our work must be guided to some extent by custom and practice. The system knows what to expect, and no one wants to upset the integrity of the system [my emphasis].

  Step outside the military world for a moment and it is obvious that the moral ‘system’ in which the VC exists is far wider than the purely military, and that its ‘integrity’ depends as much on how well our society defends itself against surreptitious language debasement as on any perpetuation of artificially elevated requirements for VC eligibility. If anyone can be a ‘hero’, what price the ‘heroism’ of the VC?

  During the Second World War the ‘integrity of the system’ began to be privileged above the recognition of individual supererogatory acts of military valour. The nineteenth century saw a lengthy tussle over the VC between War Office civil servants who tried (and sometimes failed) to implement strictly the terms of the VC warrant and senior officers who would do their best to ride roughshod over those scruples. Some nineteenth-century senior officers – Lord Roberts being a notable example – chose to distribute the VC generously, while their twentieth-century counterparts believed that the Cross should be handed out on a much more restricted, but equally informal, basis. Today, we are living through a period in which control over the VC has been vested almost entirely in the hands of the military, and the policy they implement is one of extremely tight control over the numbers of VCs handed out – yet still with scant regard to the strict terms of the existing, 1961, VC warrant. Crudely speaking, throughout the VC’s history the military has loosened or tightened the strings around the VC ‘bag’ as it sees fit, no matter what the warrant says. Currently, the military establishment gets extremely agitated whenever it believes the Cross may be given too easily. That may be right or wrong, but it is a matter of (possibly wayward) judgement, for which there would be no need if the VC Warrant were actually referred to, rather than ignored, in making recommendations. The establishment has painted itself unnecessarily into a corner; very few VCs are given because no one dare suggest giving more; the VC has become untouchable, and is placed on such an elevated pedestal that it is almost beyond reach. This is not how it started, and is not how it should be today.

  The military’s obsession with ‘the system’, which entails comparing and contrasting current and past VC recommendations, rather than ‘integrity’ – the judgement of individual cases on their merits – can be seen in the case of the four VCs that went to Australian troops during the Vietnam War. Australian regular soldiers joined a purpose-built unit created in 1962, the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV), Australia’s contribution to America’s war against the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese regular army. The AATTV initially consisted of thirty officers and warrant officers, although by the time it was disbanded in 1972 around 1,000 men – mostly Australians but also a few New Zealanders – had served in its ranks. The ‘advisory’ role of the AATTV was a mask that rapidly slipped, and the unit was soon fighting alongside the South Vietnamese regular army. All the AATTV VCs were written up by senior Australian officers attached to the unit. Two of the VCs were posthumous, one of them witnessed by no senior officer. A complicating factor was that, between 1975 and October 1992, Australia ran two parallel systems for awarding medals, its own and the Imperial (British and Commonwealth) system. Any recommendations for the Imperial VC were channelled via the Foreign Office to the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in London. Curiously, the VC committee in London lacked the authority either to judge Australian VC standards or to reject recommendations.

  The MoD regarded four VCs as excessive, and there was suspicion that the Australians were cheapening the decoration. The MoD diplomatically waited four years before commissioning an internal study to consider – actually, to undermine – the four AATTV VCs.16 That four VCs went to such a small contingent was only remarkable, however, if the analysis compared – as it did – what happened in Vietnam with the Korean War of 1950–3, when the same number of VCs (including two posthumous) was distributed among some 20,000 British and Commonwealth armed forces personnel, more than 1,000 of whom were killed in action. Thirty-three AATTV members were killed in action and 122 wounded during its ten-year existence. In Korea, the chance of winning a VC was one in 5,000; for members of the AATTV it was one in 250. Four VCs for the AATTV was only remarkable if the blinkers of a quota system were donned; if each action was judged purely on its own merit, then why not four, or five, or more?

  The report took a dim view of the posthumous VC awarded to AATTV Warrant Officer Kevin Wheatley, although it tactfully added that ‘it would be completely improper to make comment today on a standard that was not criticised at the time’. On 13 November 1965, Wheatley’s platoon was surrounded while in action in Tra Bong Valley, in Quang Ngai province. Wheatley refused to leave his comrade, Warrant Officer Swanton, who had been grievously injured, even though Wheatley knew Swanton was dying from a chest wound.17 According to the original VC recommendation, Wheatley ‘discarded his rifle and radio to enable him to half drag, half carry Warrant Officer Swanton, under heavy machine-gun fire and automatic rifle fire, out of the open rice paddies into the comparative safety of a wooded area some 200 metres away’. Wheatley was then seen to pull the pins from two hand grenades; shortly afterwards an explosion and gunfire were heard. The MoD report observed that Wheatley’s VC recommendation had been massaged before it became a citation: ‘the words “rifle and” [were removed] on the grounds that a soldier should never discard his weapons . . . The two bodies were found at first light the next morning after the fighting had ceased, with Warrant Officer Wheatley lying beside Warrant Officer Swanton. Both had died of gunshot wounds.’ The report noted that this paragraph had drawn ‘comment from the Palace . . . As the citation [actually, recommendation] stood it could have been a suicide pact.18 In conjunction with the Australian Army Liaison Officer the words “Both died of gunshot wounds” were added.’ It then concluded: ‘It is questionable if this act is really to VC standard.’

  An authoritative history of the Australian involvement in the Vietnam War provides an altogether more subtle context for Wheatley’s tragic end:

  AATTV was an extraordinary unit, elite and unique . . . The normal role for team members was advising or leading forces of Vietnamese or Montagnards in combat or calling in artillery and air power for their support, with only one other Australian or American close at hand. Under these circumstances advisers developed a code of mateship . . . It was a kind of pact. Each looked after the other, and neither left the field of battle alone. Sometimes they died together.19

  Desk officers at the MoD in London, almost 6,000 miles away from Vietnam, can have had only the faintest understanding of Wheatley’s situation. It probably was suicide, the final defiant act of a man who in his last moments must have experienced a vast array of conflicting emotions – the most powerful, perhaps, that he would not desert his mate. To have denied Wheatley the Cross at the time it was awarded, on the basis that he deliberately chose to die while standing by a dying comrade, would have caused a serious diplomatic row between Canberra and London; even four years later it was impossible for the MoD�
��s report author to state baldly that Wheatley’s VC did not, in his opinion, meet VC requirements. But Wheatley’s VC certainly fulfilled the critical term of the 1961 VC warrant: ‘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’. Wheatley’s VC citation, the sole entry in a supplement to the London Gazette on 13 December 1966, stated that ‘the Queen has been graciously pleased on the advice of Her Majesty’s Australian Ministers to approve’ Wheatley’s VC; it omitted that he discarded his rifle and bluntly asserted that he and Swanton died ‘of gunshot wounds’, even though the precise cause of death would have been impossible to ascertain, given the two grenades that exploded. The VC was deserved; the citation was massaged to fit required form; and the MoD belatedly and in private undermined Wheatley’s claim to receive it. Such is the muddle that results from an over-protective desire to preserve the fictions and myths surrounding the VC, rather than relax and – as is within their right under VC statutes – let the men and officers on the ground actually choose for themselves.

  In 1992 the British Army Review published a pseudonymous article by ‘Sustainer’, who claimed to be a recently retired General Officer Commanding. He advised how to maximize the chances of getting a gallantry decoration: ‘First you have to be in the somewhat unattractive situation of having your life endangered. Then you have to do something damned irrational and what’s more be seen doing it by a cove with a flair with the old pen and who can cobble together a passable citation.’20 Sustainer’s irreverence disguised a serious point. A good write-up by an officer is today almost de rigueur for the VC, the first stage of an onerous process, comprising not just comparisons with past ‘standards’ but an assessment of how any VC awarded might fit a wide political, media and personal arena.21

  The write-up issue was considered by the MoD report regarding the VC awarded to AATTV Warrant Officer Ray Simpson.22 Simpson, who had already won a DCM while in Vietnam, gained his VC for actions on two separate occasions: he was in action in Kon Tum province, near the border with Laos, when, on 6 May 1967, he rescued a wounded fellow warrant officer and unsuccessfully attacked an enemy position; on 11 May he fought alone against heavy odds to cover the evacuation of some wounded. The report judged that the recommendation for Simpson represented ‘A good VC badly told. There are too many clichés and a great lack of detail. “Disregarding the danger involved . . . at great personal risk . . . complete disregard for personal safety . . . at the risk of almost certain death.” It is a pity the author of the citation was not able to describe the detail of the dangers involved in short and clear sentences.’ Overall, concluded the report: ‘In each of these four citations it seems as though the person writing the report knew that if he had all the “correct” phrases his citation must succeed. This theme of poor expressive capability . . . is the cause of comment on the standards of the current Australian awards.’ The fact that ‘poor expressive capability’ in the initial write-up of a VC recommendation might swing the balance between getting and not getting the Cross might be thought to cast doubt over the ‘integrity of the system’. According to Lieutenant Colonel ‘X’:

  A well-written recommendation is more likely to be approved than one that is poorly written. For a VC we would normally expect two eyewitness accounts, but there is a degree of fluidity about this. There’s not much experience around as to what constitutes gallantry. For a VC recommendation there has got to be a major punch-up somewhere.

  In the case of ‘operational honours’, the theatre commander initially judges each recommendation, weighing the degree of courage displayed. If endorsed at this level, the recommendation then passes up to the operational commander for further comment and comparison, until a higher committee of senior officers gives its judgement and the recommendation is passed up to government, with the fig leaf of royal assent, for final approval. A further step is necessary in the case of the VC and the George Cross. A VC or GC recommendation alerts the chiefs of staff, and they then invoke the VC committee, chaired by the Chief of the Defence Staff and comprising the Permanent Under-Secretary at the MoD and the chiefs of staff of the various services, representatives from the Armed Forces Operations Awards Committee, and others. At every step this process has scope for subjectivity, for factors other than the act itself to enter into the discussion. The process may also be blighted by groupthink. Intent on preserving standards, the VC committee will naturally incline towards conservatism: challenging the system in such a setting would require exceptional – perhaps VC standard – courage. That the integrity of the system is questionable inevitably follows from a situation where officers wrestle with an informal policy requiring almost certain death in order to merit a VC, while simultaneously considering a plethora of alternative possible decorations.

  That the judgement of Solomon is called for is illustrated by the recent campaign in Afghanistan.23 It is invidious to select an individual example, but the VC is, after all, an individual award. Lance-Corporal Matthew Croucher, a former regular soldier with the Royal Marines who later joined the Royal Marines Reserve, was awarded the George Cross in July 2008. On 9 February 2008 Croucher was part of a four-man night-time reconnaissance patrol in Helmand province. As the patrol moved through a compound, he felt his leg touch a trip-wire that released a grenade which would, within seconds, blast shrapnel and probably kill or severely injure not only him but other members of the four-man team. The quick-thinking Croucher immediately threw himself onto the grenade, pinning it to the ground under an enormous rucksack on his back and tucking up his legs to make himself as small as possible. ‘Then there was the loudest bang I have ever heard, a flash of light and I was flying through the air.’24 The explosion ripped the rucksack from him and sent metal splinters into his body armour and helmet. Of the other three troops, the rear man managed to take cover behind a building, the patrol commander threw himself to the ground, and the final one remained standing. The rucksack took most of the blast and Croucher – stunned, deafened, disoriented and with blood coming from his nose – was luckily relatively unscathed. He then insisted, against the advice of a medic who was quickly on the scene, on staying to fight off a Taliban ambush, during which he shot one insurgent. Croucher’s instinctive reaction saved his life and that of at least one other soldier. He later recalled thinking, ‘I’ve set the bloody thing off and I’m going to do whatever it takes to save the others.’ Croucher received the GC and not the VC because his selfless bravery was ‘not in the presence of the enemy’. There have of course been numerous VC precedents for actions similar to Croucher’s. Charles Lucas was a midshipman on HMS Hecla when, on 21 June 1854, he gained his VC for picking up an enemy shell that had just landed on Hecla with its fuse fizzing; Lucas threw the shell overboard, where it exploded. Without this quick-wittedness, many lives might have been lost.25

  The VC–GC distinction hinges on the single word ‘not’: the VC is ‘for gallantry of the highest order during active operations’; the GC is ‘for gallantry of the highest order not in active operations’. Sergeant Olaf Schmid, gazetted with a posthumous GC on 19 March 2010, is another anomalous case arising from the creation of the George Cross. Schmid was with 11 Explosive Ordnance Disposal Regiment, Royal Logistics Corps, and in June 2009 he arrived in Afghanistan. Between then and his death on Saturday, 31 October 2009, he dealt with more seventy improvised explosive devices (IEDs). That day he had already tackled three IEDs before a fourth exploded and killed him. Schmid was due to leave the field that same day and be back in the UK one week later. Lieutenant Colonel Robert Thomson, commander of 2nd Rifles Battle Group, said Schmid was ‘simply the bravest and most courageous man I have ever met . . . Superlatives do not do this man justice. Better than the best of the best.’ His London Gazette citation read (in part): ‘his selfless gallantry, his devotion to duty, and his indefatigable courage displayed time and time again saved countless military and civilian lives and is worthy of the highest recognition
.’26 There is an absurd quality to such hair-splitting: one moment Croucher was ‘not in active operations’, the next he was; once the Taliban fire-fight was over, was he once again ‘not in active operations’?27 To award Schmid the GC was a fine and justified recognition, and the GC has enormous esteem; but to deem that a soldier is not in the ‘presence’ of the enemy when he was killed in action by an explosive device, laid by an enemy that surrounded him, seems inappropriate.

  Preservation of the VC’s scarcity means that, when one is bestowed, it can be a match to a tinderbox: the winner’s life is altered forever, amid relentless and continual publicity. As Lieutenant Colonel ‘X’ put it, the VC committee asks itself: ‘Can someone “carry” the VC? Is it fair to give someone such a burden? I don’t want to see the VC becoming something which is unattainable; but ultimately it’s the politicians who call the shots – and they are all above the system. The military are ultra-conservative in not wanting to abuse the system.’ Nor is the pressure associated with the VC purely personal. Lieutenant Colonel ‘X’ acknowledged that gallantry decorations are occasionally subject to political pressure, interference even: ‘regrettable, but human nature’, as he put it. When I asked for an example, he suggested that Margaret Thatcher may have taken a hand in the VC awards for the 1982 Falklands War, and she would have been within her constitutional right to make a direct recommendation to the sovereign on a particular medal issue. According to him, the list of recommendations for Falklands military decorations was sent to 10 Downing Street for approval, and the list was returned with a note from the prime minister, asking: ‘Where are the Victoria Crosses?’ Lieutenant Colonel ‘X’ offered no evidence to support this, however; he may indeed have sought to distract attention from the fact that the Special Honours Committee, formed by the three armed services to consider the Falklands gallantry decorations, appears to have been in some disarray at the time. For while two posthumous VCs were approved, for Lieutenant Colonel Herbert Jones and Sergeant Ian McKay, both of the Parachute Regiment, a third member of the regiment, Private Stephen Illingsworth, had his posthumous VC recommendation downgraded to a Distinguished Conduct Medal.28 The Jones VC was controversial and remains so; if awarded for recklessly suicidal courage, then perhaps it was thoroughly deserved; but if it was for Jones’s leadership, then it is highly questionable.29 By contrast, Illingsworth’s recommendation appeared to tick all the right boxes.