EMPIRE’S MOST COVETED DECORATION

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 80, 28 December 1929, Page 8

EMPIRE’S MOST COVETED DECORATION

THE V.C. AND ITS HISTORY

Dominion Special Service

London, November 14. We speak of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, but if a man is a K.G. and a V.C. it is the letters V. 0., that come first after his name, and though a man’s breast be loaded with decorations and famous orders of chivalry, if he is a V.C. he wears his bronze cross on the right of them all. There have been three civilian V.C.’s; these were awarded to Indian Civil Servants in the Mutiny. Two pairs of brothers gained it, and two fathers and sons, including Lord Roberts, and his son who was killed at Colenso. The first of four clergymen to win the Cross was the Rev. James W. Adams, Chaplain of the Kabul Field Force in 1899. There are two survivors who won it as clergymen, the Rev. W. R. F. Addison and the Rev. E. N. Mellish- Irish and Scottish names have always been very prominent . The greatest number who received the Cross at one time on parade was the great military ceremonial held in Hyde Park on June 26, 1857, when the Order was inaugurated. Queen Victoria decorated sixty-two officers, warrant officers, n.c.o.’s and men of the Navy, Royal Marines, and Army. Every recommendation for a V.C. passes through several scrupulous examinations, and it has often happened that a recommendation which has been passed by an Army Commander has been turned down at the War Office. The consent of the Sovereign is finally sought before an award is made. A ballot determined the order .in which the 320 V.C.’s who dined with the Prince of Wales should sit at table, and such use of lots is in keeping with the history of the Victoria Cross. d On occasions where a small group of men have done some heroic deed and one or two Crosses have been allotted to it, the survivors have drawn lots. In many campaigns, from the Indian Mutiny onwards, a Cross has been offered to a battalion or to a company, and has been awarded by the vote of officers and men.