Victoria's Cross Read online

  Merit stands a man in little stead in the British Army. The few prizes that exist are for the most part bestowed by jobbery . . . A friend at the Horse-Guards, or a long bill with a fashionable tailor may do more for an officer than all the merit and ability in the world. The power of writing self-laudatory letters has been said to go far towards obtaining a Victoria Cross; and possibly the adoption of the same method might prove the shortest road to a staff appointment.18

  Few VC winners in the nineteenth century either thought their story worth recording, or were literate enough to do so. An exception was the civilian Assistant Commissioner of Oudh, Thomas Kavanagh, who in 1860 published a rather self-serving book, How I Won the Victoria Cross, with a suitably romantic engraving of himself opposite the title page, bearing the title ‘Lucknow Kavanagh in his disguise’, in which he was shown garbed in Indian costume, casually holding a sword across his right shoulder. Kavanagh almost failed to get his VC, not because of his civilian status but because, as the Glasgow Herald revealed, the directors of the East India Company, his employers, refused to back the recommendation by Lord Canning, the Governor-General of India, ‘alleging that he would have the Lucknow medal in common with the other brave men who had earned it!’19

  Lampooned and immortalized by George Macdonald Fraser in his 1975 novel Flashman in the Great Game, Kavanagh (or Kavanaugh as Fraser has it) is seen by Flashman – not the most reliable of narrators – as a buffoon:

  It’s a fact that Kavanaugh stole all the limelight when the story came out . . . he broke off the kneeling-and-praying which he was engaged in, looked up at me with his great freckled yokel face, and says anxiously:

  ‘D’yez think they’ll give us the Victoria Cross?’

  Well, in the end they did give him the V.C. for that night’s work, while all I got was a shocking case of dysentery. He was a civilian, of course, so they were bound to make a fuss of him . . .20

  But Kavanagh was prophetic in his judgement of British rule in India:

  No government was ever actuated by better intentions, or had more talented servants. But it made the mistake (and will go on doing so till another rebellion,) of endeavouring to govern an immense empire by very few and almost irresponsible subordinates . . . the interest of the State was considered to be of greater importance than the welfare of the people, who were, almost without exception, treated as rogues and liars.21

  This critique sullied Kavanagh’s reputation and he returned to India a profoundly bitter man. He regarded his £2,000 gratuity as insufficient,22 and as he wrote to The Times on 10 August 1859, the VC was only an honourable bauble:

  I desired the Victoria Cross, and I wear it with pride where it was pinned by our good and gracious Sovereign. But it is only a badge of valour. The State has only recognized the great service rendered to it by the bestowal of a decoration no one is bound to respect . . . I am merely endeavouring to induce [my superiors] to reward me according to my deserts. Caste prejudices are so strong in the India-office that I have hitherto failed, and I grieve to add that one of my superiors thought proper to threaten me . . .23

  Another East India Company employee, Frederick Roberts, eclipsed all other Mutiny VC winners in later life. Born in Cawnpore in 1832, Roberts was a sickly but determined child; his sisters nicknamed him ‘Sir Timothy Valliant’. After Eton, Sandhurst and the Addiscombe Military Seminary – the training academy for young officers of the East India Company – Roberts sailed for Calcutta; apart from a brief interlude in Natal he was to spend the next forty-one years in India. In letters published in 1924,24 Roberts recounted his Indian Mutiny experiences, including the brutality on both sides. From Amritsar on 11 June 1857 he wrote:

  We have come along this far, doing a little business on the road such as disarming Regiments and executing mutineers. The death that seems to have the most effect is being blown from a gun. It is rather a horrible sight, but in these times we cannot be particular . . . A man (a native) who was at Delhi during the massacre told me he saw 8 ladies let out, and shot one after the other, they nearly all had children with them, who were killed before their eyes.

  Present at the capture of Delhi, Roberts gained his Cross – a classic VC action, in which he galloped off alone to retake a captured standard – while attached to the staff of Sir Colin Campbell in the build-up to the relief of Lucknow. Was his gallantry inspired by being under the eyes of Sir Colin? Might he have thought better of it had no senior officer been present? We shall never know.

  Certainly, Roberts could hardly contain his delight when he wrote to his mother on 11 February 1858, ‘My own Mother, I have such a piece of news for you, I have been recommended for the “Victoria Cross” . . . Is this not glorious? How pleased it will make the General [his father]. Such a Medal to wear with “For Valour” scrolled on it.’ Under the watchful eye of generals such as Sir Colin Campbell, who groomed talented and dedicated officers such as Roberts, imperial VCs went to those who showed themselves unafraid, dashing and plucky. As a man who rose to be perhaps the most powerful, and certainly the most popular soldier of his day, feted by Kipling in several ballads, Roberts sealed his public fame in September 1880 when, as commander of a field force of 10,000 troops, he marched across 300 miles of harsh terrain to relieve Kandahar. Five years later, he was appointed commander-in-chief in India, his imperial prowess owing much to those two initials, VC.

  As the Indian Mutiny dragged on, more minor incidents elsewhere prompted some remarkable revisions to the original VC warrant, revealing the extent to which luck played its part in gaining the Cross in its early days. On 11 November 1857, the coal-fired steamship Sarah Sands was carrying reinforcements to India in the form of the 54th Foot – and a lot of gunpowder – when she caught fire 800 miles off the Indian coast and the crew abandoned ship. Despite a severe squall, the soldiers who remained on board threw most of the gunpowder kegs into the water, preventing the fire reaching either the explosive or the coal stores, and the ship managed to limp into Port Louis, Mauritius, ten days later. Although there was an imminent threat to life, the soldiers did no more than their duty and were, no doubt, guided as much by self-preservation as any heroic instinct; there were not enough lifeboats on the Sarah Sands to ferry everyone out of danger, and those who managed to escape might not have been able to row fast enough to avoid death or injury if the Sarah Sands had blown up. Those who stayed to toss the powder kegs overboard made the only rational decision; it took nerve and discipline, certainly, and fulfilled one definition of courage – the overcoming of fear – but the alternatives were unattractive. As matters stood in November 1857, none of the 54th who fought the blaze or prevented an explosion was eligible for the VC; the fifth clause of the 1856 warrant stated that it ‘shall only be awarded to those Officers or Men who have served Us in the presence of the Enemy and shall then have performed some signal act of valour or devotion to their Country . . .’ [author’s emphasis]. No enemy was present; the case should therefore have been cut and dried, and in this instance bravery should have been truly its own reward.

  But public opinion – which so often has influenced the course of the VC’s history – swayed events. When the Sarah Sands arrived in Port Louis, the soldiers of the 54th were treated to a sumptuous banquet, and the general stationed at Mauritius issued an order praising the soldiers as heroes. In London, the Duke of Cambridge issued an order to be read before every regiment in the army, recording ‘the remarkable gallantry and resolution displayed by the Officers and soldiers of the 54th Regiment, on board the ship Sarah Sands, under circumstances of a most trying nature, namely, when the vessel took fire at sea, having at the time a large quantity of ammunition on board’. The British press lapped up the story, and the swell of public acclaim eventually washed across the desk of General Sir Colin Campbell in India.25 On 29 January 1858 he wrote to the Duke of Cambridge, wondering if the VC might be suitable for the 54th on this occasion. The Duke agreed that a relaxation of the statutes seemed justified in this case, as did Genera
l Jonathan Peel, Secretary of State for War. Peel went so far as to say in the House of Commons on 30 July 1858 that the Queen supported bending the rules in this instance:

  At present it was requisite that some extraordinary proof of valour [for gaining the VC] should be given in the presence of the enemy. There were, however, instances of valour exhibited not in the presence of an enemy that ought to be rewarded, such for example, as the case of the men on board the Sarah Sands. He was happy to say that he had received the sanction of Her Majesty to such an extension of that order as would include them and persons in similar situations.26

  Thus an amended warrant, signed by General Peel and dated 10 August 1858, extended VC eligibility to officers and men of the naval and military services who displayed ‘instances of conspicuous courage and bravery under circumstances of extreme danger, such as the occurrence of a fire on board Ship, or of the foundering of a vessel at Sea, or under any other circumstances in which through the courage and devotion displayed, life or public property may be saved’. The lone defender of rules being rules, Edward Pennington, the civil servant responsible for the VC at the War Office, counselled that this revised warrant should not be published in the London Gazette. It was therefore left in limbo, its existence widely known but not officially acknowledged.

  Rumours of its existence reached Canada, from where, early in 1867, the commanding officer of the British forces expressed his curiosity about the revised warrant. In March 1867 Sir Edward Lugard, parliamentary under-secretary at the War Office, declined to forward to Canada a copy of the 1858 revision, stating that ‘the Warrant in question has never been printed, or published in the London Gazette’ and that it was not ‘expedient’ to distribute it.27 In Pennington’s view, the 1858 revision cheapened the VC and he, for one, regarded it as his duty to block awards made under it.28 On his return to London in July 1860, former Major (and now Lieutenant Colonel) Brett, who had taken command of the 54th regiment on the Sarah Sands during the crisis,29 wrote a letter to the new regimental CO, Colonel Michel, applying for a VC to be awarded to Private Andrew Walsh of the 54th Foot. Private Walsh was out of luck; despite being endorsed for the VC by the Duke of Cambridge, Lugard took the advice of Pennington that the unpublished revision of the warrant was not retrospective, even though it had been created specifically to cover the incident of the Sarah Sands. Walsh fell foul of a diligent if now forgotten civil servant.30

  Only six VCs, all of which today appear aberrations, were granted under this revised and obscure warrant. Perhaps the oddest case was that of Private Timothy O’Hea of the 1st Battalion, Rifle Brigade. Stationed in Canada, on 9 June 1866 O’Hea was travelling on a train when a fire broke out in a truck loaded with ammunition. The truck was disconnected from the train while a sergeant dithered over what to do. O’Hea grabbed the key to the truck and opened it, called for a ladder and water to extinguish the fire, and apparently single-handedly put it out after more than an hour. The indefatigable Pennington raised objections to O’Hea’s VC, the strongest being that what O’Hea did might be considered an act of duty and that doing one’s duty had never been sufficient to merit a VC. Had this stipulation been implemented, then many subsequent VCs might never have been awarded. Pennington must have imagined that his killer blow was to reiterate that, as the 1858 revised warrant had never been invoked, then to do so after eight years might set an unfortunate precedent. But the board of officers which met to consider VC recommendations passed O’Hea’s, no doubt confident in their judgement thanks to General Peel’s return to the War Office as Secretary of State. So O’Hea got his unusual VC, gazetted on 1 January 1867, the only VC to be awarded on Canadian soil, and the only one to have been published in the London Gazette stipulating that it was awarded under the terms of the warrant signed and dated 10 August 1858.31

  Equally bizarre were the VCs awarded for a single incident on Little Andaman Island, in the Bay of Bengal. On 21 March 1867 the British captain and seven crew members of the Assam Valley went ashore and disappeared. A few days later a small expedition went in search of them, but retreated after they were attacked by a group of Onge, the island’s indigenous population. On 6 May 1867 a larger expedition landed on the shore, but again came under attack from the Onge and had to be rescued; four privates under the command of an assistant surgeon of the 24th Regiment landed and rescued the seventeen officers and men stranded on shore. Apart from the lavish distribution of VCs on this occasion – all five of the rescue party got one – this incident is notable for the debate as to whether the VCs were awarded under the original warrant or the revised 1858 version. The official notice in the London Gazette of these VCs made no mention of the 1858 warrant – unlike the O’Hea case – but nor did it refer to any enemy being present. Even today it is not entirely clear under what terms the five Andaman VCs were awarded. This case was particularly anomalous because the Albert Medal (named for Victoria’s deceased husband, and with two classes) had been established by royal warrant on 7 March 1866 and was specifically designed to be awarded for the saving of human lives at sea. But in one sense it does not really matter. The Andaman VCs demonstrated a determination to recognize the bravery of the men concerned in the most public way possible; the Victoria Cross suited that larger political consideration much more than the rather less well-known Albert Medal. The Andaman VCs went to men who were, no matter how bathetically, defending the empire; their example was felt at the time to demand the highest recognition the empire could offer.

  Such were the vagaries and rule-bending in the early years of the VC; it was not so much a matter of what you had done, but what allies could be pulled upon to back your case. Some VCs, such as ‘Sir Timothy Valliant’s’, were virtually nodded through; others had to be fought for, both on and off the battlefield. The case of Charles Heaphy illustrates the extent to which lobbying for a VC could succeed, if pursued with sufficient tenacity and with the right political influence.32

  British-born Heaphy was a talented draughtsman and water-colourist who gained a bronze and a silver medal from the Royal Academy before he was seventeen. In 1839 he took a job as draughtsman with the New Zealand Company (NZC), established in 1837 to colonize the country. Heaphy settled in Auckland and spent the next decade surveying and exploring the country, at a time when the indigenous people of New Zealand were fighting a lengthy guerrilla campaign against the NZC’s land-grabbing rapacity. An eager imperialist, Heaphy volunteered his services to the local militia, whose task – backed by regular British forces – was to repress local resistance. He learned the Maori language and, according to his obituary in The Times, ‘by his judicious mediations he prevented much native heartburning and bitterness of spirit towards the colonists’.33 Judiciousness was in scant evidence in 1864.

  On 11 February that year, the now Captain Heaphy was in command of a small force of local irregulars involved in a skirmish at the Mangapiko River. Heaphy went to the aid of a fatally wounded militiaman and was himself slightly wounded. Major Sir Henry Havelock VC of Indian Mutiny fame was in command of the regular forces during the Mangapiko episode, and saw fit to recommend Heaphy for a VC to Major General Galloway, a regular army officer and local commander of all forces. Havelock at least was unlikely to be ignorant of the formal VC regulations of the 1856 warrant, which did not embrace the type of local colonial forces to which Heaphy belonged. Up the chain went Heaphy’s recommendation, first to Sir George Grey, Governor General of New Zealand, who in turn sent it to Edward Cardwell, then Colonial Secretary in London, until finally it reached the War Office – which, obedient to the terms of the warrant, refused the VC. Heaphy appealed, exploiting a loophole in the 1856 warrant, arguing that the phrase ‘our military and naval forces’ was open to interpretation in his favour. Heaphy’s VC became a political issue: it was a matter of denying a great honour to a new colony. On 11 August 1865 the General Assembly of New Zealand heard a statement from the Governor-General, expressing regret that technicalities should prevent Her Majesty bestowing this d
istinction on officers and men of a colonial militia; the New Zealand government asked for an extension of the VC warrant. Heaphy wrote to Lord Palmerston to push his case, pointing out that Palmerston was acquainted with his father. Palmerston died before he could act on Heaphy’s letter, but – such was the political necessity of placating a remote colonial government, in this case that of New Zealand – that the rewriting of the regulations of the VC was of lesser significance. The VC warrant was thus amended and promulgated on 1 January 1867 to include ‘persons serving in the Local Forces of New Zealand’ – and Heaphy got the VC he so craved, gazetted the same day, almost three years after his act.34

  Did Heaphy merit his VC? At this distance the question is unanswerable, if we restrict the discussion purely to a consideration of the degree of courage displayed. The success of a VC recommendation has always depended, in part, on considerations of the broader political usefulness that might be gained. Heaphy’s case might be seen as highlighting and overcoming an unhelpful ambiguity in the phrasing of the original warrant. On the other hand, it might equally be felt that rules are, after all, rules; what is the point of having them if they are to be altered simply by tugging at a few influential strings? By the time Heaphy’s case cropped up, there had already been so many anomalies in the decoration’s brief history that he, no doubt, felt entirely justified in pursuing his VC so assiduously.

  Some – very few – dared to ask the question: was the VC such a marvellous creation? The senior ranks of the British army had a spectrum of views, ranging from those who thought it might be useful as a means of rewarding favourites or outstanding examples of gallantry, to the indifferent, through to those who regarded it with outright hostility. Few senior officers devoted much time and energy to a serious analysis of the Cross; those that did generally kept their doubts private. One who publicly attacked the VC was Lieutenant General Henry James Stannus, an Irish career officer in the Indian army. Stannus loyally served queen and country for almost forty years before ultimately being squeezed out of the army and the only life he had known and loved, at the age of fifty-seven. A deeply conservative figure, Stannus was pushed into becoming something that he had previously given no sign of – an outspoken and highly critical maverick. If Stannus had not been shabbily treated by the tight nexus of power that operated between Simla, the Indian viceroy’s summer residence, Horse Guards, the London army HQ, and Whitehall, he may never have committed to paper just how much contempt he felt for the army’s highest ranks, or how much he and – so he claimed – others of his rank despised the Victoria Cross.