Good topic.
Too much attention is devoted in the press and popular culture to rare spectacular acts of courage rather than to less spectacular acts which demonstrate a different and often more prolonged form of courage.
I agree.
One could even argue that SF VC’s are lesser because SF are so select; highly trained; better equipped; better supported; generally are not employed as assault or other infantry but in roles which avoid the full-on chaotic conflict of normal infantry; and have a survival advantage over other troops for those and other reasons.
But that is a meaningless quibble and insulting to SF VC winners, as is Lord Ashcroft’s claim that SF VC’s are superior a meaningless quibble and insulting to the vast bulk of VC winners who weren’t SF.
A VC is a VC. The circumstances of a navy VC versus an air force VC versus an army VC are necessarily quite different, as are the circumstances of VC’s awarded to various arms and services in an army. Regardless, they’re bloody hard to win and all highly deserved.
Everyone with any knowledge of military and war reality knows that for every valour award there were numerous acts which should have got one, but for various external and internal personal, technical and political reasons they weren’t awarded.
[Teddy Sheahan’s] ship, H.M.A.S. “Armidale”, a Royal Australian Navy Corvette, survived two days bombing by the Japanese Air Force, but on the third day, 1st December 1942, she became the victim of a Japanese aerial torpedo and sank in the Arafura Sea, about ninety miles off the Timorese Coast.
When the second torpedo struck, the ship began to sink and listed to Port. Captain Richards, recognising the critical situation, gave the order to “abandon ship”.
The Japanese Air Force gunners continued their strafing and more of the crew were killed or wounded as they took to the water. Teddy Sheean was one of the wounded. He went to the Port side of the ship as if to go overboard, but instead, turned and dragged himself to the abaft Oerlikon Gun, which had been his action station. No doubt, he’d seen his mates in the water, being strafed by the enemy aircraft and wanted his revenge - he wouldn’t be kicked while he was down.
Teddy strapped himself to the gun and immediately opened fire on the aircraft which were continuing the onslaught. At this time, the ship was going down by the head and with heroic determination, he continued his attack, until the “Armidale”, taking a second torpedo slipped quietly under the water, taking the gallant gunner with her.
As the Arafura Sea closed over the stern, the gun was still firing. Teddy Sheean had given his life for his country and his mates in true Australian tradition.
During the short action, which lasted possibly three minutes, Sheean shot down one bomber observers credit him with damaging two others. For his incredible and unselfish action, he was posthumously “Mentioned In Despatches”! The action had passed almost unnoticed. In later years, an endeavour was made to have this award replaced with a "Victoria Cross granted posthumously, but to no avail.
Those of us who survived, well remember Teddy’s action, for, who knows, we too may have perished at the hands of the Japanese gunners except for his bravery.
http://www.gunplot.net/sheeanarmidale/Sheean.html
Here’s a few examples from memory of courage which didn’t get VC’s or, in two cases, any decoration but which in my view display courage in the circumstances which, while lacking the spontaneity of an armed battlefield act with the blood up, were perhaps nearer to Lord Ashcroft’s apparent belief that there is a colder form of courage which merits greater recognition that spontaneous battlefield acts.
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Australian officer about to be executed by Japanese. He turned to the Australian troops assembled to witness his execution and said in a clear voice ‘Mark these bastards for future reference.’ Then he knelt and was beheaded.
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Australian soldier severely but not fatally wounded several times by Japanese firing squad after several botched attempts to execute him in front of assembled Australian troops yells "Can’t any of you bastards shoot straight?’.
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Perhaps the best example of the spirit of the Diggers during the withdrawal came from a group separated from the main body of the defenders after Isurava. About 50 men, three officers and 47 other ranks, found themselves behind enemy lines during the confusion of the withdrawal. Under the command of Captain Sydney Hamilton ‘Ben’ Buckler, they began a six week odyssey to skirt around the Japanese and regain their own lines.
The party was slowed down by a group of wounded – four stretcher cases, three walking wounded and the remarkable Corporal John Metson.
“He’d been shot in both ankles but he refused to let his mates carry him. He knew how much energy was needed to carry stretchers through the thick jungle, a task made even more onerous because Buckler’s party had to avoid the Track and travel through the jungle for fear of running into the enemy. So John Metson wrapped a torn blanket around his knees and hands and he crawled. For three weeks he cheerfully crawled through the jungle, ignoring the growing pain in his shattered ankles and the damage to his hands, knees and legs as he kept up with his mates in the cloying mud and torrential rain. He was a constant inspiration to the others in the party as they lived off the land and avoided Japanese patrols before reaching a friendly village called Sangai on September 20 1942.” ( from The Spirit of The Digger)
Buckler was forced to leave John Metson and the other wounded at the village to give the main group a chance of making it to safety. Buckler ordered his party to ‘present arms’ in salute to the wounded before reluctantly leading the rest back to the Australian lines down a parallel track to the Kokoda Track and, finally, by raft down the Kemp-Walsh River.
Unfortunately, when a rescue party returned to Sangai village for the wounded, they found they’d been betrayed and massacred. John Metson won him the British Empire Medal – and a place in the annals of the Digger.
http://www.kokodatrackfoundation.org/track.html
While I’ve cited Australian examples because that is my main area of knowledge, every nation has its own examples of military, and under oppressive regimes such as Germany and Japan, civilian courage.
Some of the acts of greatest courage were, in my view, of sorts such as those by officers, medical and otherwise, who stood up for their men and copped various brutal punishments from the Japanese on the Burma Railway and elsewhere. Like soldiers on the battlefield they had a choice about whether or not to act but, unlike soldiers in an assault who came from and had a reasonable prospect of returning to their own lines, they knew they were in the hands of a brutal enemy who would treat them harshly, to the point of killing them, if they defied their enemy.
