98 AWARDED FOR VALOUR
and fought fiercely – on foot after he and his horse had been ridden down.
He was about to be killed with his own sword which one of the enemy had
wrested from him, when his senior officer saw what was happening and
twice in a short space of time came to the rescue of his subaltern.^6
In Hills’s case it seems to be the thought that counted, as his commanding
officer probably had more important things to do than protect a subaltern
who could not hang on to his own weapon.
Good form could also be recognized in the rank and file. Lieutenant Luke
O’Connor started out in the ranks and in the Crimea, where he:
was one of the centre sergeants at the battle of the Alma, and advanced
between the officers, carrying the colours. When near the redoubt,
Lieutenant Anstruther who was carrying a colour, was mortally wounded,
and he [O’Connor] was shot into the breast at the same time, and fell; but
recovering himself, snatched of the colour from the ground, and continued
to carry it to the end of the action, although urged by Captain Granville to
relinquish it, and go to the rear, on account of his wound; was recommended
for, and received his commission for his services at the Alma.^7
During the 1850s and 1860s this flavor of valour accounted for over 20
percent of the VCs awarded. The numbers decline in subsequent decades,
due partially to the discontinuation of ‘first in’ Crosses by the author-
ities in London. Technological changes also had an impact; had Sergeant
O’Connor been struck in the chest by a 7.62 x 54R Moisin-Nagant round
(the standard Russian rifle ammunition of the First World War) instead of
a Cossack’s musket ball, he would not have got back up and continued to
carry the colors.^8
Field officers served as the first filter of heroism. As shown in previous
chapters it was very difficult for an individual to nominate himself for an
award. The recommendation of an officer was vital, and the preconceptions
of the officer corps determined what acts were forwarded for consider-
ation by higher authorities. The high number of symbolic war-winning
awards at mid-century are a direct manifestation of the preindustrial army
of Wellington. Many of the recommending officers clearly valued style
over substance.
Although many of these traditions and attitudes carried over into the late
Victorian officer corps, this aspect did not. During the 1870s and 1880s
symbolic war-winning acts dropped to less than 10 percent as officers who
had started their careers under the Iron Duke were replaced by the children of
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