Rudyard Kipling

Land and Sea Tales for Boys and Girls Rudyard Kipling

Any officer of the English Army, Navy, Reserve or Volunteer forces, from a duke to a negro, canwear on his left breast the little ugly bronze Maltese cross with the crowned lion atop and theinscription "For Valour" below, if he has only "performed some signal act of valour" or devotion tohis country "in the presence of the enemy." Nothing else makes any difference; for it is explicitly laiddown in the warrant that "neither rank, nor long service, nor wounds, nor any other circumstancewhatsoever, save the merit of conspicuous bravery, shall be held to establish a sufficient claim to thisOrder."There are many kinds of bravery, and if one looks through the records of the four hundred andeleven men, living and dead, that have held the Victoria Cross before the Great War, one findsinstances of every imaginable variety of heroism. There is bravery in the early morning, when it takes great courage even to leave warm blankets, letalone walk into dirt, cold and death; on foot and on horse; empty or fed; sick or well; coolness ofbrain, that thinks out a plan at dawn and holds to it all through the long, murderous day; bravery ofthe mind that makes the jerking nerves hold still and do nothing except show a good example; sheerreckless strength that hacks through a crowd of amazed men and comes out grinning on the otherside; enduring spirit that wears through a long siege, never losing heart or manners or temper; quick, flashing bravery that heaves a lighted shell overboard or rushes the stockade while others are gapingat it, and the calculated craftsmanship that camps alone before the angry rifle-pit or shell-hole, andcleanly and methodically wipes out every soul in it