BY RUDYARD KIPLING
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936): An English author. He was born in India and spent his childhood and early manhood there. He has written, "Plain Tales from the Hills," "Soldiers Three," "Barrack-Room Ballads," "The Seven Seas," "The Day"s Work," and other volumes of stories and poems, many of them deive of native and army life in India. His one novel, "The Light that Failed," is less popular than his short stories. He is the author of several books for young people, "Captains Courageous," "Stalky & Co.," and the two delightful "Jungle Books."Rudyard KiplingThe history of the Victoria Cross has been told so often that it is only necessary to say that the order was created by royal warrant on January 29, 1856.
Any officer or man of the army or navy, from a duke to a negro, can wear on his left breast the little bronze Maltese cross with the crowned lion atop and the inion "For Valor" below, if he has only "performed some signal1 act of valor" or devotion to his country "in the presence of the enemy."1 Signal: remarkable; notable.
Nothing else makes any difference; for it is explicitly1 laid down in the warrant that "neither rank nor long service nor wounds nor any other circumstance2 whatsoever, save the merit of conspicuous bravery, shall be held to establish a sufficient claim to the order."There are many kinds of bravery, and if you look through the records of the four hundred and eleven men, living and dead, that have held the cross, out of the seven hundred thousand or so who can compete for it, you will find instances of every kind of heroism.
There is bravery in the early morning when it takes great courage merely to leave the warm blankets; on foot and on horse; empty or fed; sick or well; coolness of brain that thinks out a plan at dawn and holds to it all through the long, murderous day; bravery of mind that forces the crazy body to sit still and do nothing except show a good example; enduring spirit that wears through a long siege, never losing heart or temper; quick, flashing bravery that heaves the lighted shell overboard or rushes the stockade while others are gaping, and the calculating craftsmanship that camps alone before the sputtering rifle pit, and wipes out every living soul in it.
Within the last forty years England has dealt with many different peoples, and-excepting some foolish hill folk in a place called Sikkim3, who were misled into declaring1Explicitly: clearly; plainly.
2Craftsmanship: skill in one"s work; knowledge of a trade. 3 Sikkim: a state in Bengal, India.
war-they all, Zulu, Malay, Maori1, Burman, Boer2, the little hillsman of the northeast Indian frontier, the Arab of east Africa, and the Sudanese of the north country, and the rest, played a thoroughly good game.
It is in these rough-and-tumble affairs that many of the later crosses have been won; though two hundred and ninety-three of the total were given for acts of bravery in the Crimea3 and the Indian Mutiny4. That last was the worst.
In the mutiny of 1857 the Indian empire seemed to be crumbling like a sand bank in flood, and wherever there were three or four Englishmen, they had to kill or be killed till help came.
There was a lance corporal who afterward rose to be lieutenant colonel. He was an enduring kind of man, for he won the cross for taking a hand in every fight that came along through nearly seventy consecutive days.
Then there were two brothers who earned the cross about six times between them for leading forlorn hopes and such.
Then there was a little man of the Sutherland Highlanders-a private, who rose to be major general. In one attack near1Maori: the inhabitants of New Zealand.
2Boer: a farmer people of Dutch descent in South Africa, recently at war with the British.
3Crimea: in the Crimean War in 1854 France and England united against Russia, to repel Russian advances in Turkey.
4Indian Mutiny: in 1857 the native troops in India rose against the British soldiers, whom they outnumbered eight to one, and for a time threatened the overthrow of British power in India.
Lucknow he killed eleven men with his claymore1; and they all fought.
Another V. C. of my acquaintance once saved a trooper whose horse had been killed. His argument was rather original. The man was on foot, and the enemy-Zulus this time, and they are beautiful fighters-was coming down at a run, and he said very decently that he did not see his way to periling his officer"s life by double-weighting the only horse there was.