The Victoria Cross
One area of life where standards certainly aren't slipping
ON MARCH 18th, Pte Johnson Beharry, an armoured-vehicle driver in the British army, who was wounded last year in Iraq, became the first soldier to win the Victoria Cross (VC), the nation's top gong for gallantry, in 23 years. As an advertisement for equal opportunities, it was a masterstroke. Mr Beharry is black and grew up poor on the Caribbean island of Grenada. As a morale-booster, moreover, to an army bruised by recent scandals, including abuses against detainees in Iraq and recruits at home, the award seemed conspicuously timely. No doubt the government, struggling to shake off its critics over Iraq, was also pleased. Yet conspiracy theories are out of place.
As evidence that politics played no part in Mr Beharry's decoration, consider first his valour. As insurgency raged across southern Iraq last May, Mr Beharry's patrol was ambushed, and several of its members wounded. With his vehicle aflame, Mr Beharry drove through a barricade, then carried the wounded to safety. Less obviously, consider the history of the medal, which suggests it has become both increasingly apolitical and difficult to win.
Soldiers have always been cynical about medals, and rightly so. After the Crimean war, when the first VCs were struck, Queen Victoria herself handed out 62. In another bloody and politically-damaging fight, the Indian Mutiny, 24 were won in a single day. In the last century, the VC was the only medal for gallantry that could be given posthumously. This was partly a legacy of the first world war, when living heroes were often hard to find. Unusually, the VC has always been available to all ranks and hues—to Germans, to Gambians and, in the second world war, to Malta.
Since then, the VC has seldom been given. Mr Beharry is the first living recipient since two Australians who fought in Vietnam won it. The award's criteria have been rigidly observed. The recipient must have shown near-insane bravery when to do otherwise would have earned no rebuke. His daring must have been witnessed by three comrades—which counted against a member of the Special Air Service put up for the VC after the Falklands war by the Argentinians who killed him.
British top brass reckon that for every VC given, 25 deserving cases are overlooked. “If you're still alive, you don't deserve it,” soldiers say of the medal. Not that Mr Beharry should expect cruel jibes from a grateful army. When he has recovered from headwounds received in a second ambush in Iraq, Mr Beharry says he wants to be sent to Afghanistan. That can probably be arranged.