The Victoria Cross Medal, the highest medal awarded. It is awarded for gallantry "in the face of the enemy", to date there have been 1,358 awarded. In the next series of blogs I would like to write about those men who have association with Swansea. There are 4 men.
To begin with I will look at the the medal itself.
The medal was established on 29th January 1856. At the time Britain was fighting against the Russians during the Crimean War. This was the major war which Britain saw itself in 39 years since the end of Napoleonic War ending at the Battle of Waterloo 1815.
A Russian cannon was captured from the Siege of Sebastopol (October 1854 - September 1855). Sebastopol is one of the road in St. Thomas. It is from this cannon, that all off the medal have been cast from.
The appearance of the medal is 41 mm high, 36 mm wide, bearing the crown of Saint Edward, with a lion. Under the crown it has the inscription of FOR VALOUR. The ribbon is of crimson colour 38 mm wide Red for Army and Blue for Navy. This changed in 1918 with them all having the red ribbon
I will look at all the four men and how they were awarded their VC