WINNING THE V.C.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 December 1915, Page 10 (Supplement)

WINNING THE V.C.

SOME CURIOUS 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 decoration was first instituted. For Queen Victoria, of course, never saw an aeroplane or an airship, nor ever dreamed of the possibility of an aerial duel between the two types of aircraft such as gained for the late Flight Sub-Lieutenant Warncford the coveted bit of bronze.

Neither could she, nor any of her advisers probably, have, imagined the episode in the Dardanelles, when Lieutenant Holbrook dived his submarine under five rows of Turkish mines in order to torpedo the battleship Mcssudiyeh, thereby winning the first naval V.C. of the war.

Even in the days gone by, however, many Crosses 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 fists at El Teh, after his sword had been broken off short at the hilt, a feat which also earned for him his popular nickname, the original Tug Wilson having been an English boxer who about that time gained a certain brief notoriety by standing up to John L. Sullivan, the heavy-weight champion of the world.

Nor was Wilson the only British officer who earned the V.O. through skill in fist cull's. At Jeeroin, in India, durin" the Mutiny, the late General James Blair knocked down Beveral armed mutineers in almost precisely similar circumstances, his sword having been broken off early in the scrimmage; while at Inkermau Captain Hugh Rowlands saved his commanding officer, Colonel Hay, by bowling over with a straight left-hand-er a gigantic Russian who was running up to bayonet him as lie lay pounded on the ground, Both these officers received the V.C. in duo course. Of the five civilian recipients of the Victoria Cross, two gained it in exceptional circumstances. One of them, Lucknow Kavanagh, as he was afterwards called, was given his for penetrating the lines of the mutineers disquised as a native at a time when Lucknow was closely invested and besieged. Another, Fraser M'Donnell, an Indian magistrate, who practised carpentry as a hobby in his spare time, was similarly decorated because he rigged a new rudder to a disabled boat while under fire.

Dr. Douglas and four young soldiers ■of the 24th Regiment named Bell, Cooper, Griffiths, and Murphy, won 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 some days before on the wild and savage island of Little Andaman, in the Bay of Bengal. This constitutes the biggest batch of Crosses won at one time, with the single exception of Rorlcc's Drift, for which eleven were awarded.

A V.C. has been gained by raising the white flag. But it was raisad by a Medical Staff Corps man as a sign that he had wounded under his care. The hero of the exploit was Corpora) Fanner, who at Majuba Hill waved a white handkerchief as a signal to the Boers to cease firing, and when hand and flag were shot away raised the latter aloft again with his other sound hand, until that, too, was shattered by a bullet.