Victoria's Cross Read online

  The Indian Mutiny of 1857–8 provided the perfect opportunity to test precisely how much independence officers in the field might have over the bestowal of this relatively new decoration. The seventh clause of the founding warrant of the VC in 1856 permitted the VC to be provisionally – and subject to confirmation by the sovereign – conferred on the spot if the deed had been performed ‘under the eye and command of an Admiral or General Officer commanding the Forces’. Immediate subordinates of the admiral or general in overall command had the same authority. Clause eight further refined the witness/proof requirement: if no commanding officer witnessed the action, then individual soldiers, sailors or marines were able to lay claim to the VC, so long as they were able to prove ‘to the satisfaction of the Captain or officer Commanding his Ship or to the Officer Commanding the Regiment to which the Claimant belongs’ that the deed was sufficiently worthy. If one of these tests was passed, the claim was then to be passed up to the highest ranks for consideration, who ‘shall call for such description and attestation of the act as he may think requisite and on approval shall recommend that grant of the Decoration’.

  On 29 October 1857, while the fighting was continuing, the Indian Mutiny gave rise to the first amendment of the VC warrant, extending eligibility to the military forces of the East India Company. On 10 August 1858 another amendment was made, stating that cases of bravery not before the enemy were admissible. And on 13 December 1858, civilians who had served the Crown courageously during the Mutiny were also rendered eligible, by virtue of yet another amendment. Unhelpfully, this last revision did not seem to limit the scope purely to those civilians who had fought during the Mutiny; the key ambiguous phrase merely said ‘against the mutineers at Lucknow and elsewhere’.4 These ex post facto amendments were resisted by War Office civil servants who had the task of ensuring that all VC recommendations complied with the strictures of the warrant, but they were overruled by forceful senior officers on the ground in India, who had an entirely different view of the VC; for them, it was simply a useful tool to reward, recognize and encourage. This tension – between civilian administrators determined to defend a strict interpretation of the grounds for awarding the VC, and senior officers who took a much more cavalier approach – endured until well into the twentieth century.

  When the Mutiny finally ended, Victoria reasserted in her speech to Parliament on 3 February 1859 her sense of ownership of all things military: ‘The Blessing of the Almighty on the Valour of My Troops in India, and on the Skill of their Commanders, has enabled Me to inflict signal Chastisement upon those who are still in Arms against My Authority, whenever they have ventured to encounter My Forces . . .’5 Yet Victoria’s unquestioned authority over ‘her’ army was already waning. The Indian experience, coming so soon after the narrow victory in the Crimea, jolted British self-esteem and focused minds on the need for army reform, and led to the transfer of India’s administration from the East India Company into direct British government control. En passant, it also undermined Victoria’s personal control over military affairs, although, with a sense of something precious slipping from her grasp, she clung to what petty authority remained:

  Whether the subject was the design of the gold lace sword belt worn by field marshals or the state of the barracks at Windsor or the dismissal of a particular colonel who had lost so much money gambling on horse races that he set a bad example for his troops, or the appropriateness of khaki as a uniform in which to fight battles or even the relative merits of different rifles . . . the queen invariably held and voiced an opinion.6

  The farther flung the fracas, the more difficult Victoria found it to exercise personal control over the armed forces – and the VC. As the supervision of the confusing and sometimes contradictory VC regulations slipped from the hands of the sovereign who created it, and seamlessly passed into the nervous fingers of War Office bureaucrats, some senior officers seized the chance to exploit their authority to confer dubiously earned VCs.

  In the early days, none was more questionable than that given to Lieutenant Henry Marsham Havelock, awarded the VC in the field by his own father, Brigadier General Henry Havelock, who died of dysentery shortly after, while besieged at Lucknow. The elder Havelock commanded a column which set forth from Allahabad on 7 July 1857, destined to relieve the garrison (eventually brutally massacred) at Cawnpore, before marching to relieve Lucknow. As it marched to Cawnpore, Havelock’s force encountered a cannon in the hands of mutinous sepoys; he sent his aide-de-camp, who happened to be his son, to take command of the apparently leaderless 64th Regiment and lead an assault to destroy it. Mounted on horseback, Lieutenant Havelock failed to notice that Major Stirling, now on foot, his horse having been killed, was still in command of the 64th. Under fire from the cannon and rifles, Havelock junior duly captured the gun, along with others, and, much to the chagrin of Stirling, was granted the VC by his father on the spot.

  Havelock senior justified his decision by referring to a favourable report from Major General Sir James Outram: ‘On this spontaneous statement of the Major General, the Brigadier General consents to award the Cross to this . . . officer [who]might from the near relationship Lieutenant Havelock bears to him assume the appearance of undue partiality.’7 The War Office found this VC difficult to swallow; but the field bestowal of VCs was legitimate and, not wishing to undermine the authority of local commanders, it let this one pass; but it declined to concur with a second VC recommended by Havelock senior to his son in an action shortly thereafter. For that second recommendation, Sir Colin (later Lord) Campbell, commander-in-chief in India, was called on to convene a board of inquiry, which came up with an appropriately legalistic reason to deny the award: it ruled that a bar (the second award of the same medal) to a VC could not be recommended for a first VC that had yet to be officially confirmed by the sovereign. On such legalistic cavilling rests much of the VC’s history. The younger Havelock may have been denied a bar to his VC, but 182 Crosses were nevertheless sanctioned for the Indian Mutiny, 71 more than during the Crimean War. Was this a high number? No one really knew – the whole business of granting medals to individuals was too new for any sensible comparisons to be possible. Were there really 39 per cent more acts of exceptional courage during the Indian Mutiny than the Crimean War? Was it that senior commanders in India made free with the VC, with little care as to standards? Or was it that – unusually – the elective principle, with officers electing from their own number candidates for the VC, came into play on several occasions, thus inflating the number of VCs that were handed out?

  The truth is that it was early days for the VC and no settled, widely agreed standard had yet been reached. That perhaps was inevitable – but it created ill-feeling and public complaints. The Times’s letters page carried for months its own mutinous correspondence, as contributors – probably officers, as they adopted pseudonyms – complained about the unfair distribution of Crosses during the Mutiny. In January 1859 ‘Justitia’ wrote:

  I know full well that the officers and privates of the Delhi army consider that they have not had their due share of reward. All India depended on Delhi. The troops know it, and Delhi fell; yet in 25 engagements, in storming the walls, and six days’ street fighting afterwards, only six men performed acts of bravery sufficient to make their claims to the Victoria Cross incontestable, whereas 64 of those engaged at Lucknow and in [the state of] Oude are found worthy recipients of it. All who have it deserve it doubtless; but more than the six fortunate recipients in the Delhi army deserve it also.8

  Some critics felt that the medal was being unfairly restricted to the rank and file, and that democracy was being carried too far. Others complained that insufficient recognition had been given to the defenders of Lucknow (as opposed to those who had relieved the city), for whom there was not a single VC.9 The imbalance – if such it was – between the Lucknow and Delhi VCs came down to the vigour in pursuing the VC by the respective commanding officers. At the lengthy siege of Delhi, two successive
generals, Barnard and Reed, were quickly struck down with cholera; the third, Major General Archdale Wilson, was weak and inept, and had failed to block the rebel sepoys’ occupation of Delhi in the first place. At Lucknow the much tougher – and more politically astute – Major General Sir James Outram and Lieutenant General Sir Colin Campbell were in charge.10 The highest number of VCs won on a single day – twenty-four – was given out for the second (and lasting) relief of Lucknow, on 16 November 1857, with four going to civilians. These latter went to Ross Lowis Mangles, William Fraser McDonell, Thomas Henry Kavanagh, all of the Bengal Civil Service, and George Bell Chicken – an unfortunate surname for a man deemed to be of exceptional courage – who was a civilian volunteer with the Indian Naval Brigade. At the time of their award, none of these civilians was actually eligible. Shortly after the Mutiny ended, The Times forcibly argued for civilians to be drawn into the VC ambit:

  [T]he difference between an Englishman and a soldier is but the colour of a coat. Although not professionally trained to arms, [civilians] defended positions, concerted operations, and performed feats of individual valour which the bravest soldier in the British army might have been proud to number among his achievements. They were soldiers in all but name, and we rejoice to see that the Queen has been advised to give a soldier’s reward to two men who have done a soldier’s work.11

  The two men The Times had in mind were Thomas Kavanagh, Assistant Commissioner in Oudh, who, disguised as an Indian, guided Outram in and out of the Lucknow siege, and Ross Mangles, Assistant Magistrate at Patna, who rescued a wounded soldier of the 37th Regiment.

  Some who felt they had been unfairly jilted of a VC at the Crimea had better luck in the Mutiny. Evelyn Wood fought at the Crimea as a midshipman, part of the Naval Brigade. He had sufficient foresight to appreciate that a decoration created by the Queen, and for which the Queen had great personal affection, might be a useful stepping stone for a military career.12 Wood had served as an aide-de-camp to Captain Peel and joined a fellow aide-de-camp, Edward St John Daniel, in rescuing Peel once he was wounded in action. For this, Daniel received the VC; Wood did not. Wood’s father, Sir John Page Wood, decided to pull some strings. He wrote to Lord Panmure, Secretary of State for War, on 4 March 1857, pleading for his son to be awarded a VC, adding that Daniel was unscathed, while his son was wounded yet still carried on. His letter ended with a rhetorical flourish: ‘I appeal to your Lordship from the decision of the Admiralty, to do justice to this young man, who has fairly deserved this order, by his blood.’13 Evelyn Wood had better luck in the Indian Mutiny. The London Gazette of 4 September 1860 announced that the Queen was ‘graciously pleased to signify her intention to confer the decoration of the Victoria Cross’ on Lieutenant Henry Evelyn Wood of the 17th Lancers. He gained his Mutiny VC for attacking ‘almost single-handed, a body of rebels who had made a stand, whom he routed’. That ‘almost’ is a nice touch. Wood’s case is an example of the tendency at the time to award VCs not simply for one but for several gallant acts – and for rewarding individuals who may have, for one reason or another, been unsuccessful on previous occasions. Wood’s Mutiny VC was an instance of persistence, as well as courage, being rewarded.

  Others lacked a Baronet to write to the War Office on their behalf. Private Dennis Dempsey of the 10th Foot very probably was semi-literate. Nevertheless he put forward a VC claim for himself on 14 March 1858 for his services at Lucknow, when he carried a powder keg out of a burning village. Dempsey’s case was ignored by the War Office, loftily indifferent to a solicitation from a humble private. It took a strong letter of recommendation on 23 January 1860 – almost two years later – from Lieutenant Colonel (and former Lieutenant and Adjutant) Percy Beale, now in command of the 10th Foot, to gain sufficient notice for Dempsey. Beale had witnessed Dempsey’s act:

  Captain Alderley the Adjutant, the storming party and myself saw Pte Dempsey creep up this native street alone, with the powder bag, exposed to a very heavy fire from the Enemy behind loop holed walls, and an almost still greater danger from the sparks which flew in every direction from the village which was on fire. I and in fact the whole Company expected to see Pte Dempsey blown to pieces by the powder, the men were astonished at his cool bravery: and expressed their admiration of his conduct at the time.14

  Dempsey was finally gazetted VC on 17 February 1860.

  Relatives, civilians, militias – all who had served in the Mutiny clamoured to be heard, despite efforts by the War Office to hold back the tide. The issue of posthumous awards was resurrected, after five individuals on whom Sir Colin Campbell had conferred VCs on the spot died before the decoration was confirmed by Queen Victoria. Campbell suggested a solution: why not send a batch of VCs to him in India for his personal distribution? Edward Pennington, the senior War Office clerk responsible for handling VC recommendations, proposed instead that a notice be published in the London Gazette, stating that the soldier concerned would have received the VC if he had survived.15 This was backed by the Duke of Cambridge, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and Victoria. Technically, the dead were ineligible, but this – the case of one awarded the VC but dying before confirmation by the Queen – was a grey area. The Panmure diktat against posthumous awards was inadequate in such cases, and a handful of Crosses were sent to surviving relatives, with a message from the Queen expressing the satisfaction it would have afforded her to confirm the grant of the VC, had the soldier survived – although the government, ever parsimonious, ruled that the gratuity accompanying the medal would not be paid. In the London Gazette of 28 December 1858, a memorandum appeared to the effect that Cornet Bankes of the 7th Hussars, deceased, would have been submitted to the Queen for confirmation of the VC had he survived; his relatives were sent the medal. In cases where the Queen had not yet received the VC recommendation for the deceased, no Cross was granted. This anomaly was clearly unjust, the consequence of long delays in communications between India and London, but the ruling – you had to be alive when recommended in order for your family to receive the Cross – was fairly consistently applied throughout the nineteenth century.

  It was, perhaps, a charitable compromise; but it cracked open the door for posthumous awards. Some dead soldiers – or at least their relatives – had to wait many years to receive the VC for which they had been recommended by a senior officer. One such was Private Edward Spence of the 42nd Royal Highlanders, the Black Watch. On 15 April 1858, during the Indian Mutiny, Spence and Private Alexander Thompson volunteered to assist Captain William Martin Café, in command of the 4th Punjab Rifles, in recovering the body of a Lieutenant Willoughby from the ditch surrounding Fort Ruhya, coming under heavy fire as they did so. Thompson survived and got his VC almost immediately; Spence was severely wounded and died two days later, so was ineligible; but a decision by Edward VII in 1907 to grant posthumous VCs in a handful of cases meant that distant relatives of Spence were tracked down and received his Cross – forty-nine years after the event.16 Later, during the First World War, although nothing in the VC warrant permitted posthumous awards, many were given. According to Michael Crook: ‘The only authority therefore upon which the many posthumous awards of the First World War were awarded was that there was nothing in the rules that precluded it.’17

  Debate over the supposed injustices regarding the distribution of the Indian Mutiny VCs prompted widespread suspicion that for promotion and reward in the British army it was not what you did, but who you knew, as the Saturday Review asserted: