THE IMPERIAL VISION OF HEROISM 87
The VC warrant was vague concerning the nuances of eligibility. Clause V
stated that the award was open to any officer or man who had served in the
presence of the enemy and had performed some signal act of valour. Clause
VI specified that neither rank, nor long service, nor wounds were to enter
into the determination of fitness for the award, that it should rest solely
on the merit of the action.^57 It did not specifically bar the VC to soldiers
killed in the process of serving the Queen. That decision originated in the
bureaucracy at the War Office.
The precedent for refusing to consider posthumous recommendations
came from Lord Panmure’s desk almost before the ink on the original
warrant had dried. Queried as to the possibility of granting a VC to the
father of a soldier who died in action in the Crimea, he replied that the
Cross ‘is anorderfor the living.’^58 From the outset it was made clear that
submitting the names of dead men for the honor would not be tolerated.
In only six cases before the Boer War had this precedent even been
questioned. Private Edward Spence was mortally wounded in an attempt to
retrieve the body of a dead lieutenant 15 April 1858. He died two days
later. Ensign Everard Aloysius Lisle Phillipps was cited for cumulative bravery
during the siege of Delhi, 30 May to 18 September 1857, including the
capture of Water Bastion during the assault on the city. He was killed in
street fighting 18 September. Two lieutenants of the South Wales Borderers,
Teignmouth Melvill and Nevill J. A. Coghill, died together at Isandhlwana,
22 January 1879, trying to spirit away the Queen’s Colours from the hands
of the Zulus after the day (and the battalion) was lost.
More recently Trooper Frank William Baxter lost his life in the
Matabele Rebellion on 22 April 1896, when he gave his horse to a
wounded comrade and tried to escape the pursuing Matabele on foot.
At the village of Nawa Kili, during the Tirah Campaign in 1897, Lieu-
tenant Hector L. S. MacLean was mortally wounded in an attempt to
recover a wounded officer. These six were each gazetted as ‘would
have been recommended to Her Majesty for the Distinction of the
Victoria Cross had he survived,’ but no medals were issued.^59 The
War Office was careful even of extending recognition to the dead in
this fashion:
I am directed by Secretary Major General Peel to acknowledge the receipt
of your letter of the nineteenth ultimo regarding that, in consideration
of the deed of gallantry performed by your late brother Captain Howard
Douglas Campbell of the 78th Highlanders in India, a notice be published
in the London Gazette to the effect that the distinction of the Victoria
lily
(lily)
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