188 AWARDED FOR VALOUR
The other factor reflected the tightening of the regulations. Instigated in
part by Admiral Everett’s desire to make sure sentimentality did not induce
male officers to recommend ‘undeserving’ female candidates, tightening
the regulations meant that fewer borderline incidents got recommended.
Getting killed in the commission of an heroic act was certainly proof of
‘extreme devotion to duty,’ whereas survival might not be. Thus, a higher
proportion of those recommended would be the honored dead, for whom
a stronger case could be made under the tighter regulations.
The lethality rate is even more impressive when improvements in the
medical services are taken into consideration. The speed with which casu-
alties were transported to medical attention increased with advances in
mechanization. Once the wounded soldier arrived at the aid station advances
in techniques, equipment, and pharmacology resulted in a greater chance
of survival.^6 During the First World War 10 percent of the British Forces
mobilized were either killed in action or died of wounds.^7 During the
Second, this figure dropped to 4.5 percent.^8 During the First World War,
VC winners experienced a lethality rate at most three times greater than that
of the rest of the military establishment as a whole. In the Second World
War, the lethality rate among Cross winners was over ten times greater than
that of the armed forces as a whole. The cost of courage had risen indeed.
In some instances there was no need to make a stronger case. The actions
ranged beyond the heroic into the fantastic:
On 25 March 1945 near Meiktila, Burma, during an attack, Naik Fazal
Din’s section was held up by fire from enemy bunkers, whereupon he
personally attacked the nearest bunker and silenced it, then led his men
against the other. Suddenly six Japanese, led by two officers wielding
swords rushed out and Naik Fazal Din was run through the chest by one
of them. As the sword was withdrawn the naik wrested it from the hands
of its owner and killed him with it. Having killed another Japanese with
the sword he waved it aloft, continuing to encourage his men before
staggering back to make his report and collapsing.^9
Amazingly, Fazal Din was not the first man to perform such an act; just over
a year earlier Lieutenant George Albert Cairns of the Somerset Light Infantry
had an arm lopped off by a Japanese officer’s sword. He killed the officer,
took the sword, and used it to kill several more of the enemy before falling
due to blood loss and shock.^10
Tightening the regulations meant the figures for those wounded in action
also increased, although not with the same severity as the lethality rate.
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