The Book of the V.C. A record of the deeds of heroism for which the Victoria Cross has been bestowed, from its institution in 1857 to the present time

Within the last four years we have seen three campaigns of some importance which have added several V.C.’s to the roll. In 1902-3 was the punitive expedition against the Mad Mul...

The late war in South Africa, when--for the last time, it is to be hoped--Briton and Boer strove for supremacy, is too recent to need even an outline of its history being given...

The record of our Bluejackets afloat and ashore in the Crimean War is one of which the senior service has good reason to be proud. While the siege of Sebastopol was in its early...

The full tale of the Crosses of the Mutiny (do they not number one hundred and eighty-two in all?) is a long one, and cannot be told here. But before bringing this chapter of V....

The war which broke out in Afghanistan in 1878 and lasted two years was of a far more serious nature than the campaign in Ashanti which I have just dealt with. It was at bottom...

The story of Rorke’s Drift is the story of one of the most heroic defences in our military annals. At this small post on the Buffalo River one hundred and thirty-nine men of the...

It is not remembered as it should be that there were two brilliant charges made at Balaclava, on that grey day of October 25th, 1854. Tennyson’s stirring lines in honour of the...

The battle of Inkerman was the last great battle of the Crimean campaign fought round Sebastopol. The rest of the story of the long siege is one that deals with the heroic if un...

On the 8th of July 1859 an interesting announcement appeared in the _London Gazette_ to the effect that her Majesty the Queen had been pleased to declare that Non-Military Perso...

In the preceding chapters I have told of many heroes who have won imperishable glory at the cannon’s mouth, “i’ the imminent deadly breach”; at the head of charging squadrons; o...

One hundred and forty miles south of Chitral, as the crow flies, is the border city of Peshawar, standing like a sentinel on the north-western frontier of India. It is, indeed,...

Arabi Pasha’s rebellion in Egypt in 1882, which was quelled by the British army under Sir Garnet (afterwards Lord) Wolseley, was notable chiefly for the bombardment of Alexandri...

The siege of Delhi, which was begun a month after the rebellion had broken out, ranks with the most historic sieges of modern times. In its course it yielded many notable Crosses.

At the same time that the war in Afghanistan was being carried to a successful issue serious trouble was brewing in South Africa. The Zulus under Cetewayo, who had long been res...

The first Boer War of 1881 reflected little credit on the British arms, with its disastrous reverses at Laing’s Nek and Majuba; but it added some names to the roll of V.C. heroe...

The years 1860 to 1865 witnessed a very stubborn war in New Zealand between the British and the Maoris, the original natives of the country. Many causes combined to make this wa...

The principal war in which we were engaged in the sixties was that waged against the Maoris in New Zealand, but that demands a chapter to itself. For the present I will confine...

The progress of the Zulu campaign was marked by many ups and downs before reinforcements arrived to strengthen Lord Chelmsford’s force and a crushing defeat could be inflicted u...

The early part of the year 1857 saw the outburst of the Indian Mutiny which was to startle the world by its unparalleled horrors and shake to its foundations our rule in India....

It is a big leap from Maoriland to West Africa, but it is there, to Ashanti, that we must go to see how the next Crosses on the roll were won.

The scene of the incident which I am about to narrate was Kolapore (or Kolhapur, as the modern spelling has it), an important town in the Bombay Presidency. Even before the Muti...

Every nation loves to honour the brave deeds of her sons. We know how in olden times this was done, how the Romans conferred a “Civic Crown” upon the hero who saved a citizen’s...

The one disaster of the Afghan campaign of 1878-80 was the defeat of General Burrows’ force at Maiwand by an army of 25,000 men under the leadership of Ayoub Khan himself. It ha...

The closing years of the eighties and the opening years of the nineties saw a good deal of fighting at different places on our Indian frontier. Through internal dissensions or t...

It was in the Crimean War, as noted in the preceding chapter, that the first Victoria Crosses were won. I do not purpose giving a history of the war here, for space does not per...

The fierce battle on the plateau of Inkerman, in the early morning of November 5th, 1854, was the most desperate engagement of the whole war. It has, indeed, been described as “...

There was some consternation in the quaint-looking, five-towered fort at Chitral on the evening of the 3rd of March 1895. Sher Afzul, the usurping chief of the little mountainou...

The final assault of Delhi, the leap of a little army of five thousand British and native soldiers upon a strongly fortified city held by fifty thousand rebels, forms one of the...

Among our little wars of the last century that with Persia must not be passed over here, inasmuch as it was the means of three distinguished British officers winning the V.C. Th...