Bravest of the Brave: The Story of the Victoria Cross, and: In the Face of the Enemy: The Complete History of the Victoria Cross and New Zealand (review)

These two books are very different. Bravest of the Brave is a brief, popular work, while In the Face of the Enemy is a longer, more scholarly book. The former is an overview, while the latter is focused on one country in the Commonwealth of Nations (formerly the British Empire). What unites them is their focus on what is arguably the most prestigious and most difficult to earn award for gallantry "in the face of the enemy"—the Victoria Cross. The proximity of their publication is clearly related to the fact that 2006 marks the 150th anniversary of the creation and first awards of the Cross, coupled with the fact that Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have all recently restructured their national awards systems to separate them from Great Britain. Interestingly enough, each country has chosen to retain the Victoria Cross as their highest award for bravery "in the face of the enemy."

Bravest of the Brave is a deceptive book. It appears to be just one more in a series of popular works on the Victoria Cross. That perception proves to be a mistaken one. Glanfield clearly knows his subject very thoroughly, even though he is neither a trained historian nor uses scholarly notation. He takes the reader through a thorough description of the origin of the medal, the development of its design, its various warrants (regulations for award), and, quite interestingly, how the British and Australian authorities (the second with the cooperation of New Zealand) have used the technique of X-ray fluorescence to determine where the metal used in the Crosses has come from since the first were issued in 1856.

Glanfield shrewdly narrates selected awards and nonawards of the Cross over the last 150 years to demonstrate the changing criteria for the VC and the sheer capriciousness involved in who did or did not receive one. He does this narration so well that the reader is actually caught off guard when he finally realizes the author's purpose.

Glanfield is a very effective writer and quite a good self-taught historian. Bravest of the Brave certainly belongs in all libraries as a quickly read, but very informative, introduction to this subject.

Sadly, one cannot say the same of In the Face of the Enemy. This book, by two military academics, fails to fulfill its aim to be the definitive work on the Victoria Cross and New Zealand. Harper and Richardson begin with a brief history of the creation of the medal, where they cover much the same ground as Glanfield. They neither write as well as he, nor are they as thorough and perceptive as he is.

They then proceed to plough through every campaign where New Zealanders earned the VC. The authors reasonably assume that they ought to explain the context in which these medals were awarded. Unfortunately, they do a very bad job with this background material. They provide no maps whatsoever, which means the reader is often completely lost.

Harper and Richardson also further damage their book by their incessant complaining that New Zealanders received consistently fewer VCs than they should have. While they make an excellent case that New Zealand officers serving in New Zealand units during the First World War were shut out of consideration for such awards by their own commanders, Andrew Russell and Alexander Godley, they then hammer away at the perceived unfairness to their fellow countrymen in all conflicts to the point where the reader becomes heartily tired of it. In fact, they themselves acknowledge the capriciousness of the award...