Victoria's Cross
Page 35
About the Author
Gary Mead was a journalist for the Financial Times for ten years and has worked for the BBC and Granada TV. He is the author of The Doughboys: America and the First World War (2000) and The Good Soldier (2007).
1. Hyde Park, London, 26 June, 1856: Victoria unveils her Cross for the first time.
2. The VC’s other creator: Francis Albert Augustus Charles Emmanuel, Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and husband to Victoria.
3. Winter in the Crimea, 1855: men of the 77th Regiment.
4. The Indian Mutiny, 1857: Thomas Henry Kavanagh (third from left), a civilian in the Bengal civil service, volunteered to lead a relief party during the siege of Lucknow to the beleaguered Garrison in the Residency. Here he is depicted preparing his disguise.
5. No VC for women: Ethel Grimwood, heroine of the Manipur massacre in 1891, wearing the Royal Red Cross.
6. A miserable Winston Churchill (right) among a group of Boer prisoners in 1899.
7. Lord Kitchener, depicted on a poster in 1915. Kitchener took the lead in creating the Military Cross, whose appearance was the result of haphazard selection and whose purpose was questionable – unlike the carefully designed VC, whose intent was consciously framed by Victoria and Albert.
8. 1916: a depiction of a national hero, Earl Roberts VC, who died in 1914. Trotting out earlier national heroes at times of grave crisis is one of the uses to which the VC is put – even if, like Roberts, the hero helped push through some very dubious VCs.
9. John ‘Jack’ Travers Cornwell (1900–1916). A hero or merely a shell-shocked child?
10. William Avery ‘Billy’ Bishop, the Canadian fighter pilot who authenticated many of his own victories. Fearless and undoubtedly an excellent pilot, Bishop’s VC was as much for propaganda purposes as his own courage.
11. Women Politicians at the House of Commons: (from left to right) Miss P. Hornsburgh, Mavis Tate, the Duchess of Atholl, Thelma Cazalet and Irene Ward, London, 5 December, 1935. After 1945, Ward fought a long but unsuccessful campaign to award Violette Szabo a posthumous VC.
12. Anglo-French wartime secret agent Violette Szabo (1921–45) with her husband Etienne Szabo, who was killed early in the war. Szabo was a successful and courageous agent who was tortured and probably raped before being executed at Ravensbrück concentration camp in February 1945. A clear and obvious candidate for the VC by any standard, efforts to secure her a posthumous VC were thwarted.
13. Winston Churchill shakes hands with Wing Commander Johnny Johnson on 30 July, 1944. Johnson, a fighter pilot ace with thirty-four kills, survived the war – but his form of courage was not useful enough to merit a VC.
14. Margot Turner: a nurse in the army who demonstrated astonishing courage at the hands of the Japanese when taken prisoner following the fall of Singapore in 1941. She was not awarded the VC. Remarkably enough, no-one saw fit to nominate her – or any other exceptionally brave woman – for the Cross, despite women (and civilians) being eligible since 1921.
15. Lance Corporal Johnson Beharry on 21 February, 2007. A politically useful VC in an unpopular war.