The Victoria Cross, Australia's supreme award for military gallantry, is dead. Yet despite the high regard in which it is universally held, its demise occurred with barely a whimper.
As I researched my new book on some of Australia's most outstanding VC winners, I became aware that beneath the surface in military circles there is a rumbling of discontent but no one is prepared to confront the issue publicly. The director of the Australian War Memorial, General Steve Gower, expressed his unease with the wholesale changes to our military decorations when we separated from the imperial system in 1991, but his concerns are more about notions of tradition.
Australia's leading authority on the VC, Anthony Staunton, is slightly more assertive. He says the top honour for gallantry now available to Australians is regarded by many servicemen as the "pup" VC. But no one is prepared to break ranks to mourn the loss of something very special in our military history.
Australia can claim 96 Victoria Cross winners from the 1353 recipients since the medal's inception 150 years ago. They have all added lustre to the award, which in turn has immortalised their memories. The medal itself has become ever more prized, its story ever more gloriously arrayed in myth and legend. Today at auction medals can fetch up to $1 million from private and institutional collectors. Australia's first VC winner, Neville Howse, won his award in the Boer War when he rescued a trumpeter under fire who had been shot from his mount in open country. Howse, a medico with the unit, leapt on a horse and dashed out to the fallen soldier and had his own mount cut from beneath him.
Reaching the wounded man, Howse staunched the flow of blood and lifted him on to his shoulders. Then in a series of short rushes he brought the young man back to the lines, where he discovered he had a perforated bladder. He operated immediately and the patient survived.
In World Wars I and II, a parade of true heroes like Albert Jacka, Harry Murray, Joe Maxwell, Tom "Diver" Derrick, Hugh Edwards, Roden Cutler and Charles Anderson brought great distinction to the reputation of the Australian fighting man.
No VCs were awarded to Australians in Korea but Vietnam saw four VCs awarded, including that to the only living winner, Keith Payne.
Yet very quietly in 1991 the whole system changed. On January 15 of that year the Queen and then Prime Minister Bob Hawke signed a document that ended an era. The VC ceased to be an imperial honour. Even the title was changed. It became "The Victoria Cross for Australia" and its new warrant differed starkly from those for the previous 135 years.
The new arrangement provided no particular process for recommendation and review up the chain of command, but made the Defence Minister the final arbiter. The minister would almost certainly take the recommendation to Cabinet, and it would be signed off by the Prime Minister of the day.
The decoration would only be awarded for "the most conspicuous gallantry of a daring or pre-eminent act of valour or self-sacrifice or extreme devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy".
But those eligible would not only include members of the defence force but "other persons determined by the Minister for the purposes of this regulation". This marks a reversion to the only other time when civilians were permitted to receive the VC: that is, during the Indian Mutiny. But even then they needed to be operating under the command of a military officer. Today not even that condition applies.
There may well be a case for non-military bravery to be rewarded with the VC, not least because the George Cross has been abandoned. Nevertheless, by widening the field of eligibility and separating the VC from its traditional roots, the Hawke government can be accused with some justice of devaluing the honour, at least until the new regime develops its own tradition.
Some important elements of the VC remain. Hancocks, the London jeweller, will continue to cast and engrave the medals for the Australian authorities; the source of the bronze will probably remain the Chinese canons not the Russian guns, as legend asserts that have provided the metal since the award's inception.
But the changes to the VC are part of a larger process which includes the other imperial service awards now abandoned: the DSO, DCM, MC, MM and M-I-D in the Army and their equivalents in the other services: the Distinguished Service Cross in the Navy and the Air Force's Distinguished Flying Cross.
In their place, for all branches of the service, have been substituted (in descending order) the Star of Gallantry, the Medal of Gallantry and the Commendation for Gallantry; the new unit awards are the Unit Citation for Gallantry and the Meritorious Unit Citation.
War Memorial Director Steve Gower questions the change of designation. "I find them very hard to correlate to the former Imperial Awards," he says. "I think it's important to have our own. But I really don't know why they were not designated the Australian DSO, the Australian MC and MM."
Whatever the merits or otherwise of the change, some universal and immutable truths remain: the best VC is the one that is never awarded, because war is the last and the worst resort. Its greatest heroes will always be those who hate it most and wish to end it quickest. And their stories will forever be a treasured part of our national heritage.
Robert Macklin's book Bravest How Some of Australia's Greatest War Heroes Won Their Medals is published by Allen & Unwin. RRP $29.95