CONCLUSION: THE NEW HERO IN ACTION, 1940–2006 205
Conduct Medal under Lord Howick in 1837. In this instance, however, the
desired behavior was not showing good form or self-sacrificing compassion.
The desired behavior was that of a homicidal maniac, eager to kill until
killed himself. The hero also developed significance as a tool of politics and
doctrine; the VC may have been used to validate Haig’s strategic vision and
protect his control of military affairs.
These changes in practice became the institutional standard in the wake
of the war. In their effort to exclude women from the Victoria Cross the
committee members tightened the standards for the award, intrinsically
linking it with aggressive combat operations. This new institutional standard,
combined with the official endorsement of posthumous awards had two
powerful effects. Fewer Crosses were granted during the Second World War
because of the tighter regulations. The cost of VC-caliber heroism increased
dramatically; whereas Cross winners in the First World War experienced a
casualty rate three times greater than the military establishment as a whole,
those of the Second World War suffered a casualty rate ten times greater
than the rest of the military at a time when overall casualties had dropped
to a rate less than half that of the Great War.
The Cross has been quietly divorced from its formal Crown connection,
with the royal ‘Us’ dropped from the current warrant governing the award.
It has been transformed into a political tool rather than a romantic supra-
political and institutional ideal. Bomber Command used the VC to promote
the doctrine of strategic bombing. The Churchill government probably used
the VC to deflect criticism over the Channel dash of the German cruisers.
The use of the Cross for political purposes continued into the 1980s: when
Margaret Thatcher took her seat on the platform at the 1983 Conservative
Party Congress it was beside Sara Jones, the widow of Lieutenant-Colonel
Herbert Jones, VC, the Falklands War hero of Goose Green.^76 At the same
time, there is little evidence at the time of this writing that the most recent
winners of the VC have been used for political purposes; British operations
in Afghanistan and Iraq are exceptionally divisive and controversial, yet little
controversy has been attached in the popular press and in less formal arenas
to the heroism of Beharry and Budd.
The Victoria Cross has endured many environmental changes since its
inception. The political arena that spawned it has long since passed away;
the popular matrix that demanded it no longer exists; the very nature of
warfare in which its standards were set has changed, leaving no place for
private Tommy Atkins to seize the enemy’s colors or young Lord William
Publicschool to rally the broken square armed with nothing more than a
swagger-stick. The usefulness of the Cross itself has changed from connecting
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