136 AWARDED FOR VALOUR
For Hunter-Weston to forward a total of six VCs was excessive. That
he had not submitted one officer, one NCO and two privates violated
the elective formula. Hamilton queried Hunter-Weston, who replied by
selecting Captain Willis, Sergeant Richards and Private Keneally of those
nominated in the original recommendation. He ran into a problem with
the naming of a second private; the surviving privates of the battalion still
wanted to put forward Corporal Grimshaw instead of a second private. He
thus proposed that the War Office accept their evaluation that Grimshaw’s
‘gallantry is more deserving of the V.C. than that of any private.’^16
In his decision on the matter, Robb in a sense violated Clause XIII himself.
He refused to accept the nomination of Corporal Grimshaw and recom-
mended only Willis, Roberts and Keneally to His Majesty for the award,
thus depriving the Lancashire Fusiliers of one elective VC to which they
were entitled. Grimshaw eventually got the Distinguished Conduct Medal
instead of the VC.^17 There the matter sat until administrative changes altered
the environment.
In 1916 O. C. Wolley-Dod was promoted to Brigadier and named
Inspector of the Infantry in England. F. S. Robb was replaced as Military
Secretary by Lieutenant-General Francis Davies, who had succeeded Hunter-
Weston in command of the 29th Division at Gallipoli when the latter
collapsed from exhaustion in July 1915. In late 1916 Wolley-Dod
approached Davies as to the possibility of reopening the case.^18
Davies examined the circumstances and advanced the possibility that the
wrong clause had come into play in the decision handed down by his
predecessor. He pointed out that the phrase ‘Their deeds of heroism took
place under my very eyes’ may have indicated Hunter-Weston’s intent to
confer the VCs on the spot, as provided in Clause VII of the Warrant –
in which case there was no statutory limit to the number of provisional
bestowals by the theatre commander, Ian Hamilton. That Hamilton had
forwarded the recommendations through formal channels complicated the
matter, but it appeared to Davies that there was a case for giving Crosses to
Captain Bromley – who had drowned in theRoyal Edwardin August 1915 –
and Corporal Grimshaw – who had gotten a DCM in place of the VC.^19
He ran his idea past the Deputy Chief of the Imperial General Staff,
General Sir Robert Dundas Whigham, the Assistant Military Secretary,
Colonel Malcolm Graham, and the Permanent Secretary at the War Office,
Sir Reginald Brade. All replied in affirmative, with Brade suggesting that
since there was more than one company involved, logically there could be
more awards. The Military Secretary pointed out that there was an addi-
tional soldier, Sergeant Stubbs, in the original recommendation; the Deputy
lily
(lily)
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