178 AWARDED FOR VALOUR
A hero does not save the wounded; he kills the enemy. Nurses do not kill
the enemy. Therefore, nurses could not be heroes.
Morgan asked who had raised the question of female eligibility. Nobody
came forward with an author of the idea, and Ponsonby simply replied
by calling it a logical necessity. The ensuing debate spoke much as to the
attitude of established authority toward the new role of women in society
and serves as further evidence of the hardening of the heart of heroism. It
was a logical necessity that women had entered the war effort, but their
inclusion was something to be endured rather than cherished.
Both the chair and the India Office agreed that the Victoria Cross was
exclusively a combat award: ‘The V.C. means that you have to do a bit
of fighting – you have to shoot somebody.’^47 Colonel More pointed out
that active offensive conduct was not necessary to win a VC; chaplains and
doctors won it for noncombat operations. Everett acridly pointed out that
it was the business of doctors and chaplains ‘to go into the firing line and
be in the fighting,’ supporting the chair’s assertion that they became in
essence ‘combatants for the moment.’ It was not the business of women
to do so. When Colonel Gordon suggested they might be there helping,
Everett sniped back that ‘they ought to clear out.’^48
At the heart of the issue was the fact that modern weapons extended the
danger zone of war far beyond the traditional bounds of the battlefield.
While no VC had yet been won during the course of an enemy air raid, the
possibility did exist, and while women were not taking official part in active
frontline operations, that they served on the staff of rear area establishments
placed them in harm’s way. As Colonel Graham pointed out:
It is hard to say what the proper definition is for the V.C.; it is arrived
at by a comparison of acts in the field which are well known to the
individuals who have the power to recommend, but when you come to
the case of the nurse, recently, who received the Military Medal, it was
sailing very close to the wind. She was wounded three times, and in spite
of that she carried on right through the bombing, and went across the
bombed area to look after the other nurses, and having got them under
shelter, she went back to her ward, and if she had not fainted they would
not have found out that she was hit at all.^49
Despite the admiral’s curt suggestion that they should not be there, they
werethere, and subject to the discipline of the King’s Regulations. It was
necessary to bring them under the provisions of the warrant, no matter how
unseemly or unlikely it was that a woman would ever win a Victoria Cross.
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