Posts tagged gallantry

Little more than 150 years after being commissioned by Queen Victoria, the Commonwealth’s highest award for valour has been remade in a Canadian version. The Victoria Cross is for the most conspicuous acts of valour by those in Her Majesty’s service of all ranks.

Queen Victoria is reported to have insisted on the term ‘valour’ rather than bravery when setting the criteria as she believed that all men who went into combat were brave. She was as right then as her sentiments are today, only it is men and women who go into combat today.

Commissioned in 1856, the first Canadian born recipient, Lieutenant Alexander Roberts Dunn, received the Victoria Cross (VC) for his actions which took place two years before during the Crimean War. Dunn was part of the ill fated Charge of the Light Brigade immortalized in Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem. The original VC was cast using metal from a Crimean War cannon. More >