FIFTY YEARS ON: A HALF-CENTURY OF HEROISM 101
returned from the shore, and at the height of the action a live shell landed
on theHecla’supper deck, with its fuse still hissing. All hands were ordered
to fling themselves flat on the deck, but Mr Lucas with great presence of
mind ran forward and hurled the shell into the sea, where it exploded
with a tremendous roar before it hit the water. Thanks to Mr Lucas’s
action no one was killed or seriously wounded.^13
Only 11 ‘Dispose Ordnance’ Crosses were granted in the nineteenth
century. Ten of these were earned in combat during the 1850s, with the
final noncombat one won in Canada in connection with extinguishing a
fire in the ammunition car of a military train. The demise of this category
in the later decades of the century is a direct result of technological change.
Better fusing methods eliminated the ‘hissing fuse’ encountered by Mate
Lucas and others. There simply was no time to pick up a shell and toss it
aside. Not until the reappearance of hand grenades in the First World War
did this type of heroism resurface.
Some aspects of heroism were purely symbolic. Unlike the acts noted
above under the heading ‘War-Winning, Symbolic’ these acts are entirely
in the abstract realm, acts that do not make a concrete contribution in a
material sense. Only 4.2 percent of the Victorian era VCs went to purely
symbolic acts, for example, retrieving the body of a dead officer:
On 7 September 1863 near Cameron Town, New Zealand, Lance-Corporal
[John] Ryan, with two privates, removed the body of a captain from the
field of action after he had been mortally wounded and remained with it
all night in the bush, surrounded by the enemy.^14
The recovery of the officer’s body did not, at least according to the citation,
materially affect the outcome of the engagement. Such an act by itself holds
only an abstract value. Likewise the capturing of the enemy’s flag, when the
act itself is isolated and not the precursor of subsequent events:
On 21 September 1857 at Mungalwar, India, Sergeant [Patrick] Mahoney,
whilst doing duty with the Volunteer Cavalry, helped in the capture of
the Regimental Colour of the 1st Regiment Native Infantry.^15
Given that the 1st Regiment Native Infantry was in rebellion against the
government that had given them that set of Colors, the flag probably had
more significance to the men who captured it than it did to the native
infantrymen.
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