WINNING THE V.C.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11482, 2 September 1915, Page 4

WINNING THE V.C.

4 SCME CPRIOPS EXAMPLES. [DEEDS OF DARING. Twice during the present war has the Victoria Cross been won in a way that could by no possibility have been foreseen when the dcoration was firet ill" stituted. For Queen Victoria, of course, never saw an Aeroplane or an airship, nor ever dreamed of the possibility of ah aerial duel between the two types of aircraft such as gained for the late Flight S«b-Lieutenant Warneford the coveted' bit of bronze. Neither could ehe. nor any of her advisers probablyj have imagined the episode in the Dardanelles, when Lieutenant liolbrook dived his submarine under five rows of Turkish mines in order to torpedo the battleship Messudiyeh, thereby winning -the first naval V.C. of the war. Even irt the days gone by, however, many Oro-sses have been won in quite curious and exceptional circumstances. Admiral Tug "Wilson, for example, got his for bowling over half a dozen Arabs with his fiats at El Teb, after his isword had been broken off short at the hilt, a feat which also earned for him his popular nickname, the original Tug Wilson having been «n English boxer who about that time gained a certain brief notoriety by standing up to Johu L. Sullivan, the heavy-weight champion of the world. Nor was Wilson the only British officer who earned the V.C. through skill in fisticuffs. At Jeerum, in India, during the Mutiny, the late General James Blair knocked down several armed mutineers in almost precisely, similar circumstances, his sword having been broken off early in the sorimmage; while at Inkermann Captain Hugh Rowlands saved his commanding officer. Colonel Hay, by bowling over with a straight left-hand-er a gigantic Russian who was running Sto bayonet him as he lay woundon the ground. Both these officers received the V.C. in due course. ( Of the five civilian recipients of the Victoria Cross, two gained it in exceptional circumstances. One of them, Luoknow Kavanagh, as he was afterwards called, was given his for peneI trating the lines of the mutineers di:s----i guised as a native at a tim« wuvm 1 Lucknow was closely invested and beI sieged. Another, Fraser M'Donvieli, I an Indian magistrate, who practised : carpentry as a hobby in bis spare time, was smilarly decorated because he riggod a new nidder to a disabled boat while under fire. Dr. Douglas and four young soldiers of the 24th Regiment, named .Bell, j Cooper, Griffiths, a.nd Murphy, won J their Crosses, five in all, by what was practically a plucky exhibition of amateur lifeboat saving, they having put off in their boat to the rescue of the crew of the sailing ship Assam Valley, cast away soma days before on the wild find savage island of Little Andaman, in the Bay of Bengal. This constitutes the biggest batch of Crosse < ' won at one time, with the single ox- ' caption of Rorkc's Drift, for which ( eleven were awarded, ! A V.C. has been gained by raising j the white flag. Rut it w;;s raised bv J a MedicaJ Stall' Corps man as a sign that be had wounded under his care 1 The hero of the exploit was corporal ! Farmer, who at Miiuba Hill waved a ! white handkerchief as a signal to the i Boers to cease tiring, and when hand 1 and fiag were shot s.way raised the I&t- | ter alo'ft again wifn his other sound j hand, until that, too, was shattered j : bv iv bullet. : 1 ■ 1 1

A btiminer macrocsrpa nt the : comer of "Burlington ami Hnxify Street ;it i-.0-l this niornmp. Link' <la?najiv vv.-is done. :