Awarded for Valour_ A History of the Victoria Cross and the Evolution of the British Concept of Heroism

1914: THE LAST STAND OF THE THIN RED LINE 131
Such an act would have been impossible on the Western Front, and indeed
even on the fringes of the war they had developed a high cost, as the
ressaidar discovered.
The Victorian ideal of heroism could not survive in the new environment
of warfare. Machine guns, barbed wire, and massive troop formations killed
the concept quickly on the Western Front. It did manage to survive a bit
longer in the more traditional environments of Africa and the Middle East,
and remained relatively intact in aerial and naval operations. Even in these
arenas the war took its toll, however, and the standards of heroism changed
as the war progressed. These changes were not the product of the sideshow
campaigns. The war would not be won or lost in Africa, Palestine, or
Mesopotamia, in the air or on the sea, but on the Western Front. It is there
we must look for the dynamics that shaped the modifications of the heroic
ideal and drove the post-war rewriting of the regulations controlling the
Victoria Cross.