For Valour
Just two words appear on the scroll engraved into the face of the Victoria Cross: ‘For Valour’. The definition of bravery and courage leading to the award of a VC, however, is difficult to define.
It would be invidious to single out any particular act of valour which led to the award of a Victoria Cross as more extraordinary than any other. Indeed, it would be as disrespectful as it would be impossible to identify any such act of bravery as more worthy than another. That said, those reading the truly extraordinary stories of the most incredible heroism across the pages of this publication will, as likely as not, have been struck more by some of the stories than by others. But no award of a Victoria Cross was any more worthy than another.
The selection as to which stories I should include, and which I had to leave out, was certainly the hardest part of editing this work. Quite simply, all the stories reviewed for possible inclusion were worthy of setting down on these pages. Thus, it was with considerable regret that the editor found himself having to cut some of the most astonishing heroic accounts.
The accounts published here come from differing times of extreme adversity; times where service personnel lived with the prospect of death and injury every day. None of the young men across the preceding pages knew what would be asked of them. They did not choose their time, or the terrors they would face. They did not sign up for inclusion on war memorials or Rolls of Honour. Instead, such inclusion came to find them as they met the demands of war with bravery, endurance, and stoic determination.
Bravery, though, takes many forms. Feeling fear yet choosing to act is the most obvious and, without doubt, the majority of those bestowed with a Victoria Cross would recognise that definition.
Thus, it might be said that the brave man is not one who feels afraid, but one who conquers fear.
On the other hand, many of those awarded the Victoria Cross were honoured for deeds that were performed ‘on the spur of the moment’ and with little time for any thought as to the personal consequences of their actions. Such bravery, though, is no less than it is in those acts that were premeditated or well considered.
In his book Maximes, François de La Rochefoucauld wrote: “True bravery is shown by performing without witness what one might be capable of doing before all the world”, while the writer Diane Mariechild said that we should trust the still, small, voice inside us that sometimes says: “This might work, and I’ll try it.” It is a sentiment that must surely have been at the very forefront of Sergeant James Ward’s mind as he clambered out onto the burning wing of his Wellington bomber, high above enemy territory, to extinguish the raging inferno. For James Ward there is no doubting the bravery needed to step beyond the bounds of the known, and into the untried, untested, and unknown. But that is just exactly what James Ward and many other recipients of the Victoria Cross achieved; they stepped far beyond those bounds.