Career Awards

[David Cochrane]

Four airmen & one sailor during the Second World War received their VCs for their entire operational careers. The citations for each one, while extolling the accomplishments over a long period, always emphasized one incident/mission in particular:

Commander Linton (28/29 May 1942 - convoy attack off Libya)
Flight Lieutenant Newton (16 & 18 March 1943 - Salamaua raids)
Wing Commander Gibson (16/17 May 1943 - Dams raid)
Wing Commander Cheshire (24/25 April 1944 - Munich raid)
Squadron Leader Palmer (23 December 1944 - Cologne raid)

Oddly enough, while Linton & Cheshire are always mentioned as having received the VC for years of service, most lists that one finds (such as the Register, the War Office list, or the old chapter-one.com site) mention only the specific incidents in the case of the other three.

Why the difference? Two possible reasons:
The operations that were singled out for special mention in Linton & Cheshire's citations both occurred some months before the end of their operational careers (and the awards being made); in contrast, the other three men's missions came at the very end of the period cited for the VC.
A second reason can be described, perhaps, as laziness on the part of compilers. The dates of the operations given special mention for Newton, Gibson & Palmer were specified in the citations, while for Linton & Cheshire no dates were given. In past years the casual researcher would probably have difficulty finding exactly when these missions took place, but in these days of so many reference books - not to mention the internet - they're pretty easy to find.

[anthony]

You put up an interesting argument. I agree there is no dispute about Cheshire and Linton although I think the end date for Linton’s award is worth examining. Is it the penultimate patrol or the last patrol? And of course some think that the start date is 1939 without considering that the Italy did not enter the war until June 1940 and I think Linton did not arrive from the China station until a little later. The case for Palmer is the strongest of the three other cases. The focus of Gibson is the Dams raid and the focus of Newton is Salamaua and I see these to be the ratio decidendi of the citations and the introduction obiter dicta more in line with post war citations.

[David Cochrane]

The recommendation for Linton was submitted after his sub was judged to have been lost, so I'd say the period referred to in the citation goes all the way up to his death.

As for the start dates, one could also claim that the period of Newton's service should begin in January as that was when he began operations over New Guinea. One could also quibble with the start dates for Gibson & Palmer (Gibson didn't fly his second operation until a few months after his first, while Palmer originally flew as a second pilot before getting his own crew), but I consider the end of the period of service to be the more important date to get right.

A number of other citations (such as Trigg's) begin with a brief overview of the man's service, much in the way that the post-War awards (Wheatley & Badcoe, I assume you're referring to?) do - as well as some Crimea & Indian VCs that begin with phrases like 'Gallantry throughout the campaign, but especially at . . . ' - but the three awards that I mentioned above (as well as Cheshire's) spend the first half (or close to it) of the citations outlining the recipient's period of service, and the second half describing in considerable detail the mission being singled out. I'd judge that, in all of those cases, the entire career was being rewarded.

I'd actually argue that the strongest case would be Gibson - even more so than Cheshire - given that the Dams raid only gets a brief mention (similar in size to Linton's convoy attack), while the Munich raid occupies a very large portion of the announcement for Cheshire.
On the flip-side, I'd say that the weakest would probably be Newton given the emphasis the citation places on his last two raids, but considering that the first four paragraphs are devoted to his previous service and provide a few details of other dangerous operations, I'd still place him in this 'career-award' category.

Similar to our earlier conversation about supplementary details in WWI awards, I figure that if the CO thought it was worth writing several paragraphs about the man's past service in the recommendation then those periods should be included.

[anthony]

Your emphasis is the citation which is valid. Interestingly, the 1953 War Office list has Gibson as Germany 1943 which is really only the dams raid, with specific dates for Newton and Palmer. How about an article on the whole issue. The only thing I do not like is the term career awards but at the moment I cannot think of a better term. Well done.

[David Cochrane]

I don't much like the term either, but like you I'm damned if I can think of anything else!

When trying to fix a set of dates for a VC where the person was rewarded for a span of time, my general rule is to fix things within a month if the period encompassed two different years, and to the day if the period was in the same year. The only exceptions were some of the Crimea VCs (and a few Mutiny ones) where someone was rewarded for two or three specific acts that were many months apart.

For that reason, dates for people like Captain Probyn & Lord Gifford, which were very vague, I narrowed down (to Oct 1857-Jan 1858 and 10 Jan-1 Feb 1874 respectively), while in the case of these five WWII recipients I expanded the dates more than one usually finds.