I decided that it might be interesting to profile some of the people who have been awarded the highest medal for bravery their country gives. \u00a0 I will start with Sgt. Luke O’Connor of the British Army who was the first man to be awarded the Victoria Cross (VC), Britain’s Highest Award for Bravery.<\/p>\n
Sergeant O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Connor was a Color Sergeant in the 23rd<\/sup> Regiment of Foot (Later renamed to the Royal Welsh Fusiliers) when he performed the actions that would earn him the Victoria Cross during the Crimean War. \u00a0 The Victoria Cross did not exist when he performed his action during the Crimean War but he was one of a group of soldiers from the war who were awarded it retroactively after its creation.<\/p>\n \u00c2\u00a0SGT O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Connor was awarded the VC for actions during the Battle of the Alma on September 20, 1855 when he was advancing with his regiment and he retrieved the regimental colors after they were dropped because the officer carrying them was killed. \u00a0 He was shot in the chest at the same time but despite his wounds, he retrieved the colors and carried them to the enemy position with his regiment following him. \u00a0 His partial citation reads:<\/p>\n \u00c2\u00a0In the Crimea, at the Battle of the Alma, Sergeant O’Connor was advancing between two officers, carrying the Colour, when one of them was mortally wounded. Sergeant O’Connor was also shot at the same time, but recovering himself, he snatched up the Colour from the ground and continued to carry it until the end of the action, although urged to retire to the rear on account of his wounds. He also acted with great gallantry at the assault on the Redan (8 September 1855) where he was shot through both thighs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u00c2\u00a0SGT O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Connor survived the war and stayed in the Royal Army retiring at the Rank of Major General. \u00a0 He died in February, 1915 and is buried in London at St. Mary\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Cemetery<\/p>\n \u00c2\u00a0A short biography of him can be found here:\u00c2\u00a0 <\/em>Irish Identity<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I decided that it might be interesting to profile some of the people who have been awarded the highest medal for bravery their country gives. \u00a0 I will start with Sgt. Luke O’Connor of the British Army who was the… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112,1224],"tags":[1014,115,114],"class_list":["post-808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-heroes-portraits","category-modern-warfare","tag-crimean-war","tag-heroism","tag-victoria-cross"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}