Long-Past Actions

[David Cochrane]

My talk about S/L Pattle began to veer onto this subject, so I thought I'd move the conversation elsewhere as it doesn't really belong in the earlier thread.

The last two weeks of S/L Pattle's life (as I wrote about on the old chapter-one site) I've always felt merited a VC: not so much for his great run of successes in the air (25.33 victories in 15 days), but for his leadership of a shrinking force against very bad odds, and finally for his death in flying through a large formation of Bf-110s in attempting to save F/L Woods. Unfortunately, as a lot of records were lost and not too many pilots survived the fighting in Greece & Crete, he wasn't recognized for those last days in Greece. His two DFCs were awarded for combats before he arrived in Greece, the second one crediting him with 23 victories.

The USA has often been willing to look back at actions from many years past (sometimes even 150+ years, as a recent Medal of Honor was), but Britain has been unwilling. There was a relatively recent campaign to award Lt-Col Mayne the VC (for which he, like W/C Tait, was recommended, but instead received a fourth DSO), but it did not come about as too much time had passed. Even Lt Cairns' VC, awarded in 1949, took a lot of effort and lobbying. (As far as I know, there hasn't ever been such a campaign to recognize S/L Pattle - perhaps indicating how unknown he still is.)

When the Australian VC was instituted, many felt that this practice should end and that men from wars long-past who hadn't been recognized (Pte Simpson being the most prominent example) could now be, but no such awards have been made - it was ultimately decided not to go back and rectify long-past rejections.

In more recent years, the time criterion for Canada's CV was slightly altered after Cst Garrett was originally ruled ineligible. After receiving a fatal knife wound in 2004, he pursued his attacker and succeeded in shooting him (not fatally) before dying. No recommendation was made until after his killer's trial was over in 2007, and by the time it was over the 2-year time limit had passed! Under the new rules, extensions to the time limit can be made if a legal action passes the 2-year mark. Ultimately he received a posthumous SC instead (the next highest decoration). I sometimes wonder if the original time criterion is why Kristen French never received anything; I don't wish to disgust any readers so I won't go into too much detail on her actions, but as her killers' trial didn't conclude until the fall of 1995 - almost three-and-a-half years after her death (and the evidence of her behavior wasn't known to the public until the trial anyway) - she wouldn't have been eligible. However, as Canada seems a little less imaginative than other countries - especially Australia, who gave GCs to Tony Taylor and Jack Emanuel for actions that, while deserving, might easily slip by unrecognized - perhaps it wouldn't have mattered anyway.

I realize this is a bit of a ramble, but talking about unrecognized acts and long-past acts is a pretty big subject - I just decided to single out some that have always meant something to me.

[anthony]

It has been a USA tradition to support late awards, and late late awards and very late late awards. While all the awards have been worthy I think that they create more anomalies than they solve. I have more sympathy for the very late awards since the recipients had never received any gallantry awards unlike the many late awards where the Medal of Honor was an upgrade.

I would not belittle the effort to get the Cairns' VC awarded but it was unique circumstances where a VC recommendation had been lost in an air crash, it was a high-profile MP pushing the case and when awarded it did not become the longest delayed Second World War VC. Despite the official line that the last Second World War awards had been gazetted three months earlier in February 1949, an MM was later gazetted in October 1950 for an action in Libya in 1941. Both the February 1949 awards and the October 1950 were to the Australian Army. In September 1950, two GCs had been gazetted, also Australian Army, for 1944.

I am a long-time admirer of Simpson the man who would like many who did not get the VC would have been worthy of the VC if recommended at the time. There was no anomaly or injustice to support the award when the Honours and Awards Tribunal examined the case in detail. Although Simpson was one of eleven cases considered for the VC and rejected a few years ago the stable doors have been wide open for more than twenty year and there have been hundreds of late awards and commendations for the Second World War and Vietnam.

You make a very valid point about the GCs to Tony Taylor and Jack Emanuel for actions that, while deserving, might easily slip by unrecognized. Michael Pratt is the last living civilian GC recipient for an act of gallantry in his own country – 41 years ago! The living civilian award in the UK was in 1974, 43 years ago. The ‘Civilian VC’ may be dead in the UK but lives as the CV in Canada and Australia.

[David Cochrane]

Well, as there haven't been any CVs/NZCs of any kind awarded in more than a decade (Canada, while very generous with the CV in its first ten years, is no longer so), I'm not so sure.

I remember hearing about a possible CV for Kevin Vickers (Parliament's Sergeant-at-Arms at the time of the 2014 shootings), and it may still be in the works for all I know, but I can't help feeling (without denigrating the act) that such an award would be motivated more by the heavy media attention given to the incident, which I feel (perhaps wrongly) cheapens the award whatever the man's deed. The fastest-ever award of the Canadian CV (about two months) was for a similar act, when Rene-Marc Jalbert, the Sergeant-at-Arms of the Quebec legislature and a veteran of the Second World War and Korea, successfully talked a rampaging gunman into surrendering back in 1984.

The recent award to Mr. Troulan seems to straddle the civilian/not line - he had previously been in the armed forces and was working as a 'security consultant' who carried a weapon at the time of the act. Not exactly a civilian off the street like Michael Munnelly. James Kennedy, from 1973, who was a security guard (though not armed), is a bit fuzzy too: not official law enforcement, but someone who could be expected to face danger. I hesitate to focus too much on such things, but there you go. This goes back a bit to the earlier discussion on different standards for civilians, police and military GCs (going up for each).

One factor that might, but doesn't seem to, enter into things is the person's age - there was one SC recipient (our equivalent of the GM), Jocelyn McDonald, who at age seven followed a man who had abducted her five-year-old friend, went into his house and led her friend out while the man was in the bathroom. (She later claimed that testifying in court frightened her more than her acts that day.) Another SC was awarded to someone even younger - six-year-old Jennifer Koval’s’kyj, who in 1996 unsuccessfully tried to stop her schizophrenic father from attacking his mother by stepping in front of him and trying to calm him down. Unfortunately she was also stabbed to death. I'd say that these two acts would have been recognized no matter what the person's age.
A couple of MBs (Canada's QGM) have been awarded to people as young as five, but these are the youngest SCs. Canada's youngest CV, Tom Hynes, was nineteen, and so doesn't really fit here.
There have been a few AMs to very young people too - I think the youngest was ten-year-old David Western in 1948 - but no GCs/CVs apart from Jack Bamford in 1952. Obviously people of that age seldom encounter such dangerous situations that see GC-caliber acts, which is just as well!
The GCs awarded to prisoners of the Japanese (and the Chinese, and the IRA) are what spring to mind for me when it comes to Kristen French, however, rather than the other awards to children (even the two SCs I mentioned, or Jack Bamford, who was of a very similar age): in 1992, after three days of captivity and sadistic treatment (much of it recorded), and probably realizing that her captors would soon kill her, she defied them in spite of beatings, threats and even being shown a video recording of a previous (dead) captive. "Some things are worth dying for," was her reply, and she was killed soon afterwards after a further round of brutality.

[David Cochrane]

Another man I forgot to mention, but have often thought of in this context, is F/L John Hopgood of the Dams Raid - his aircraft was damaged, and he himself wounded, en route to the Mohne, and his forward gunner may have been wounded or killed (though nobody is quite sure). His own attack run was right after W/C Gibson's, by which time the German gunners knew from which direction and at what altitude he would be coming (and without a forward gunner now to fire back). Once damaged, he remained at the controls of the Lancaster in an attempt to gain altitude and allow some of his crew to escape safely, of whom two did.

The fact that there were two survivors is of course the only reason why anybody knows the other details of his flight - there are, of course, other instances of VCs being awarded where the surviving witnesses were captured and details learned only after the War, so why was one not bestowed here? My own idea is that it was because W/C Gibson had already gotten one right after the raid. If, perhaps, the details of AJ-M were known right away, then maybe both men would have received it in the same Gazette, but when the aircraft's survivors told their story post-War, maybe there was less impetus to do it: a VC had already been awarded for this attack 2-3 years ago, so why give out another now?