194 AWARDED FOR VALOUR
organization develops a certain amount of bureaucratic inertia that must be
overcome before anything gets accomplished. Military formations are no
exception. The speed with which any single task moves through a bureau-
cratic process is an indicator of that task’s relative importance. If it happens
abnormally fast, it is a safe bet that the high command is interested in its
rapid processing. The RAF offers six cases in point that bear examination.
There were 182 VCs awarded in the Second World War. For each one a
certain amount of time passed between the commission of the act and the
official gazetting of the award. This ‘lag-time’ between act and gazette date
varied from as low as eight days to as high as 2084 days. The median average
of lag-time was 90 days.^29 Eighty-six (47.7 percent) had a lag-time between
60 and 120 days. One hundred and thirty of the awards (72 percent) were
gazetted between 30 and 150 days after the act. Of the medals that fall
outside this majority, only 13 Crosses (7.2 percent) were published in less
than 30 days. Thirty-seven VCs (20.5 percent) were granted following a
lag-time of more than 150 days.
These long lag-times for the latter category can be explained in a variety
of ways. In some cases the individual was either killed or taken prisoner, as
were the witnesses to the act. In such cases the recommendation could not
be made until the release of the eyewitnesses at the end of the war. Thus
the heroism of Honorary Captain John Weir Foote, Canadian Chaplain’s
Service during the raid on Dieppe, 19 August 1942, was not gazetted until
14 February 1946:
Captain Foote coolly and calmly during the eight hours of the battle
walked about collecting the wounded, saving many lives by his gallant
efforts and inspiring those around him by his example. At the end of this
gruelling time he climbed from the landing craft that was to have taken
him to safety and deliberately walked into the German position in order
to be taken prisoner so that he could be a help to those men who would
be held in captivity until the end of the war.^30
Not until the release of POWs at the end of the war could the true intentions
of his actions be determined from the accounts of the men he accompanied
into captivity.
In some instances the recommendation might be held up by circumstances
beyond anyone’s control. Such was the situation for Lieutenant Cairns, the
officer who had disarmed a sword-wielding Japanese officer in March 1944.
His recommendation was in the dispatch pouch accompanying General Orde
Wingate when he died in an air crash. Consequently, the particulars of the
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