Talk:List of George Cross recipients

Sort criteria

I believe that the date sort be done by year as opposed to month. Is there an easy way to convert the date record to allow a sort by year? --HJKeats 23:34, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I've been working on it in userspace, and its partly completed along with a bit of a list revamp. Will finish this weekend. RHB ^{Talk - Edits} 20:49, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Isn’t Wikipedia wonderful, collaboration at its finest! Just mention a thought and someone is already working on the solution. Excellent work. --HJKeats 00:05, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Is this list comprehensive? We found a George Cross among my Grandfather's belongings when he died, but we don't know what it was given for, he never mentioned it. He's not on this list. Lusule (talk) 21:52, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

It covers only those who were awarded the GC directly, 3 awards were superseded by the GC and holders were required to swap their original medal for the GC. This http://www.gc-database.co.uk/alpha.htm should be a fully comprehensive list. David Underdown (talk) 18:55, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Origin

The driving force behind the instigation of the George Cross was Churchill's wish to honour the men involved in Bomb Disposal and similar during The Blitz. It was meant as an acknowledgement of the strain that BD personnel were under, people who may well have defuzed a considerable number of bombs knowing that any one might contain a new fuze development that could kill them.

The first BD people were Ministry of Supply (MoS) scientists who had the unenviable task of attempting to make safe bombs that had never been encountered before, and to devise techniques for defuzing them, and so that is why it was necessary for the medal to be awardable to civilians as well as military personnel.

An example of an MoS civilian who did this was Charles Howard, 20th Earl of Suffolk.

Missing members

Henry Blogg is missing from this list. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.251.244.177 (talk) 06:05, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Henry Blogg was awarded the Empire Gallantry Medal, which he would have had to voluntarily substituted for the GC is he wanted. This list only includes those that were directly awarded, not those substituted from earlier awards. Hope that helps, iComputerSaysNo 01:35, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

EGM recipients like the surviving AM and EM recipients were all deemed to be GC recipients. The EGM recipients, unlike the living AM and EM recipients did not have the option of retaining their EGM insignia. Like it or not all EGM, AM and EM recipients were deemed to be GC recipients although the AM and EM recipients had the option of retaining their original insignia. Officially they were not supposed to use the post nominals EGM, AM and EM but I am sure some did. In answer to the original question this is only a partial list of persons awarded the GC. At some stage the EGM, AM and EM recipients may be added. Anthony Staunton (talk) 05:41, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Where is the entry for Geoffrey Oliver Hartley ? ( https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/39210/supplement/2318 ). He was the brother of Norman Cyril Jackson VC, Hartley`s GC is mentioned in his brother`s Wiki page. --JustinSmith (talk) 13:39, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Hartley has a GM, not a GC. 71.233.90.196 (talk) 23:58, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

"Deeds" column

I think there ought to be a sortable "Deeds" column in the chart which will list what the person did to receive the Cross. I'd do this myself, but I'm not sure of the code. --Zero ^Talk_Contribs 04:47, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

I think that adding a deeds column may be too unwieldy. The table provides a link to every recipient, so that a great depth of information can be uncovered with one click. iComputerSaysNo 01:32, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Redirects

A lot of the entries on this list link to redirect pages. Is there any reason why they should not link to the target pages, avoiding the redirects, as is standard practice?--ukexpat (talk) 21:46, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I hope that, with my overhaul of the table today, all of these redirects have been solved. If you notice that I have missed one (as I have corrected almost every single one personally!) then please correct it. Thanks, iComputerSaysNo 01:32, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Sorting by rank

I have overhauled the table and feel that an explanation on how the sorting of the ranks is necessary, for future inclusion of recipients. Preceding any military or police rank, there is a piece of HTML that creates a hidden piece of text which is sortable. The code is:

<span style="display: none;">...</span>

Within the ..., you can place the code that is relevant to the rank. It is a code made up of a group, rank, and force. For example, OR04.2 (Sergeant in the Army) OR denotes the group, 04 denotes the rank and 2 denotes the force. The groups are OF for officer ranks and OR for warrant officer and other ranks. 1 denotes the Navy, 2 denoted the Army, 3 denotes the RAF, and 4 denotes any non-Commonwealth force. To decide the rank number, start with the highest rank attainable for each group as 01 and work down (e.g. Marshal of the Royal Air Force is 01, Major is 08, Sergeant is 04 and Corporal is 06). iComputerSaysNo 01:32, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Nationality

Needless to say nobody ever bothers to define what the mean by nationality. CPO Jonathan Rogers GC DSM was a member of the Royal Australian Navy but was he an Australian citizen? It is a good question and I will try and find out the answer. However, Noor Inayat Khan may have been born in Russia but she was never a Russian citizen or for that matter a Soviet citizen. Violette Szabo was born in Paris of an English father so was she French or British or a dual citizen? Captain Lionel Matthews GC MC was Australian born and a member of the Australian Military Forces but was officially a British subject since there was no Australian citizenship until 1949, more than four years after his execution. I applaud the Commonwealth War Graves Commission who attribute nationally to the force rather than to the serviceperson. Anthony Staunton (talk) 06:06, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi, I have merely been collating the information that was already present on the page into a more accessible and useful version. If you believe that the nationality is wrong then I would openly invite you to change it to the correct nationality. Do you think that we should nationality on the force, rather then the person? In which case, it may make more sense to remove the nationality column as the nationality of the force can usually be discerned easily from the organisation column. iComputerSaysNo 20:25, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your considered reply. Take for example Arthur Bagot GC DSC who was born in Australia, was a British subject living in Canada before joining the Royal Navy in the First World War. After the war he went back to Canada before returning to Australia, served in the Australian forces in the Second World War, lived the rest of his life in Australia and was an Australian citizen when presented with the George Cross by the Governor of Western Australia. There does not seem a consensus at present as to the meaning of nationality which mitigates against collating the information. I agree that it makes more sense to remove the nationality column as the nationality of the force can usually be discerned from the organisation column. Anthony Staunton (talk) 12:31, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Missing names

I see that some names on the page List of living George Cross recipients are not on this list. Is there a reason for this or can I simply copy them over? Gbawden (talk) 07:42, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

The reason for this is because the List of George Cross recipients only includes those that have been awarded the George Cross originally, and not those that were awarded the Empire Gallantry Medal, the Albert Medal or the Edward Medal. The list of living recipients includes the people that received these other medals which were converted into George Crosses. I am not sure that these recipients should be included in this page but should instead have their own page (i.e. List of Empire Gallantry Medal recipients, List of Albert Medal recipients, and List of Edward Medal recipients. If you feel otherwise, I would be interested to hear your suggestion. iComputerSaysNo 20:25, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

All recipients including exchange awards should be included in this list. Although some recipients originally received AM, EM and EGM awards all are now equally regarded as GC recipients including the former AM and EM recipients who decided not to exchange insignia. EGM recipients were not given the choice of exchanging insignia and while some AM and EM recipients did accept the option of retaining their insignia they were still officially recipients of the GC. Anthony Staunton (talk) 23:13, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

I am not considering undervaluing the recipients of previous medals, but I am considering making the list easier to read. If we include all other recipients into this list, will it not be excessively long? Instead of breaking it up by surname (as is done with the Lists of Victoria Cross recipients), I am suggesting breaking it up based on the route they have reached having a GC. Is this something you think, if expressed clearly and correctly on each individual list, could work? iComputerSaysNo 21:59, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

I commend the work that has gone into preparing the list and I assumed that it was a work in progress. Since the issue has been raised, one list in alphabetical order is easier to read than multiple lists particularly if the reader is unfamiliar whether an award was an original award or an exchange award. The Victoria Cross alphabetical list has been divided into three with an average of 439 names each. Since the total number of George Cross recipients is 406 perhaps only one alphabetical list is required. I have taken the opportunity to update the stats in the article. Anthony Staunton (talk) 09:17, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi Anthony. I am currently working towards A-class status (review here) and I would appreciate any insight you have. If you have a complete list of EGM, AM and EM recipients then I invite you to add them to the table. I would suggest that we add another column that makes it explicit which decoration they received in the first instance. iComputerSaysNo 15:52, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

I have a listing except for nationality which is undefined in Wikipedia and sometimes means place of birth, sometimes citizenship and sometimes residency which for some recipients are all different places. Perhaps we could drop nationality and replace the column with original award which is needed. There would be a note at the end of the list to state that the date of gazette is the date for the original award which I have on my database. I need advice on how to construct a table in Wikipedia and perhaps we can sandbox it. Anthony Staunton (talk) 04:05, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

If you can import the list into Excel you can manipulate the colums and add in the wiki markup - it saves a lot of time! Gbawden (talk) 09:11, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

I will have a go at adding wiki markup. Anthony Staunton (talk) 00:30, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I think this would be a great way of solving two problems with one solution. How is it going at getting this ready, Anthony? iComputerSaysNo 23:10, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

The data is in place and I have had a look at the template and will be doing some sandboxing in the next day or so. Need to do disambiguation. Anthony Staunton (talk) 02:50, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Patrick Gordon Taylor entry

G'day, the list currently states "This list solely contains direct George Cross recipients and not recipients of the Empire Gallantry Medal, the Albert Medal or the Edward Medal who have since substituted their earlier award for the George Cross"; however, Patrick Gordon Taylor, an Empire Gallantry Medal recipient, appears in the list of personal awards. I'm not sure whether it makes sense to include those who substituted their award with the GC or not, but currently the list of names doesn't seem consistent by its own definition. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 01:25, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

George Henderson

Hi. This persons entry links to Explosion of the RFA Bedenham. At some stage someone must have redirected the page but I feel we should try create a page for him, even if it is a stub. Your thoughts? Gbawden (talk) 06:28, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Albert Medal

Hi. I think we should split off the AM list and add it to the AM page. We can always refer back to it and vice versa. That way the GC list can be for GC recipients only. Gbawden (talk) 07:09, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I should have reversed this move and apologise for not doing so. I deleted the names from the Albert Medal list since they are not Albert Medal recipients but George Cross recipients. See below where I ask if there should be one list with all 406 recipients or two lists, one for direct awards and one for exchange awards. Anthony Staunton (talk) 06:22, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

GC's Awarded

I found this on http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20090106051558/http://collections.iwm.org.uk/server/show/ConWebDoc.940

How many GCs have been awarded? The total number of awards to date is 400

By direct award - 156 Eligible Empire Gallantry Medallists (EGM) - 112 Eligible Albert Medallists (AM) - 64 Eligible Edward Medallists (EM) - 68

Might be useful to include on the page - the info was part of a GC exhibition Gbawden (talk) 10:55, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Excellent but dated secondary source. The total number of awards to date is 406 and the 2009 snapshot should have been either 403 or 404. I am not sure if it was known in 2009 that Ernest Wooding, a 1945 AM recipient, was still living which accounts for the additional AM exchange. The last two awards were gazetted in March 2010 which accounts for two of missing five direct awards.

By direct award – 161 which is five more than the 156 listed.

Eligible Empire Gallantry Medallists (EGM) - 112

Eligible Albert Medallists (AM) – 65 not 64

Eligible Edward Medallists (EM) – 68

Kevin Brazier’s The complete George Cross lists all 406 awards. Anthony Staunton (talk) 15:02, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

The total number of GC recipients to date is probably 415 but since there is no public government figures they still need to be confirmed.

By direct award - 164 including two special awards to Malta and the RUC (I prefer special to 'collective' which makes me think of Stalin.)

Empire Gallantry Medallists (EGM) - 112

Living Albert Medallists (AM) - 69

Living Edward Medallists (EM) - 70

London Gazette for 2017 GC to the first British civilian in 41 years & Marion Hebblethwaite. One Step Further: those whose gallantry was rewarded with the George Cross, Supplement 6, ISBN 978-0-99565-40-0-6, pp. 9-24 Anthony Staunton (talk) 22:59, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

Rename List of George Cross recipients to List of direct George Cross recipients

There have been 406 awards of the George Cross including 161 direct awards and 245 exchange awards. It does not matter how an individual obtained the award, they are all equally George Cross recipients. At the moment the List of George Cross recipients has one exchange award listed and I propose to add the remaining 244 awards. I had previously added the 65 exchange awards and they were deleted. If there is consensus that the List of George Cross recipients be restricted to direct George Cross recipients then let’s change the title to List of direct George Cross recipients and I will create a new page List of exchange George Cross recipients. It would seem strange at a time when the three lists of Victoria Cross recipients, a total of 1357 awards, are being considered for amalgamation to have two lists of George Cross recipients whose total is less than a third of the total of Victoria Cross recipients. Anthony Staunton (talk) 04:41, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi Anthony, great to hear from you again! My initial thought was that because some of the exchange recipients died before the GC came into existence, they did not actually get the automatic exchange (as can be seen as part 11 of the warrant establishing the GC)[1]. Due to this, I would suggest we create List of Albert Medal recipients, List of Empire Gallantry Medal recipients and List of Edward Medal recipients (which is actually in my to-do list after my university exams!). A new section can be created in this page that links to the three propose pages and explains the relevance of the three medals in relation to their exchange for the GC. Although there has been an exchange, I think it is more encyclopaedic to consider them in their original state as recipients of their respective award, and recognise that they exchanged the award at a later date. Perhaps we should consider renaming this page after the other three pages are created, as it allows us to re-evaluate if any ambiguity remains. iComputerSaysNo 15:19, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

No exchange recipients died before the GC came into existence. Only surviving recipients were deemed to be GC recipients with the exception of the four posthumous EGM awards after the start of the Second World War. If you want to compile lists of EGM, AM and EM awards do not bother about the deemed to be GC awards since there does not seem to be any objection to them being added to the List of GC recipients. I am still waiting a little while before adding the deemed names but I cannot think of any logical argument against adding the names. Anthony Staunton (talk) 06:41, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Margaret Vaughan

She is mislinked and, as a very significant holder, we should have a page on her. I have her on Simple English as Margaret Purves. [2] Macdonald-ross (talk) 20:10, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Sort by date doesn't work

In the table, if you choose to sort them in date order it doesn't work, it just lists them in a random order. Can someone please fix this. Richard75 (talk) 16:30, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

It looks like some of the fields use Template:Hidden sort key to help sort it, but not all of them. You can help by filling the rest of them out following year-month-day format. Jolly Ω Janner 17:47, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

July 2016 update

Noting here what I said over at Talk:Empire Gallantry Medal. I added three more EGM recipients who now have articles: Dorothy Louise Thomas, Cecil Kelly and Abdus Samad Abdul Wahid Golandaz. Noting here so others can help work on those articles and/or assess for notability (some recipients are mentioned in other articles, rather than as stand-alone articles). Some articles may be better merged to one or other of the award articles as footnotes. Noting also that the EGM and GC list should probably be clearer on who exchanged EGM for GC and who didn't (see the section at the EGM talk page). One example is Guy Branch who is (correctly) not listed here as he died before any exchange could take place. Carcharoth (talk) 07:33, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

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Totals conflict with each other and with the table

The last sentence of the opening paragraph states ‘407 George Cross awards including two special awards’ conflicts with the total at the end of the table; 410 awards to 408 individuals and two special awards. The table lists 415 names excluding the two special awards. The three totals are 407, 410 and 417. All totals are guesstimates since there is no official public record of the total number of GC recipients. Published material from researchers suggest the total is probably 415. Adrian Trapman EGM who was killed in September 1938, two years before the GC was instituted was ineligible. If Nicholas Rath was living on 21 October 1971, he would be the first Albert Medal in Gold recipient who survived to become a GC recipient. In 2002, Allan Stainstreet in Heroes of the Albert Medal stated that Rath's date of death was not known. Allan Stainstreet followed in 2015 with More heroes of the Albert Medal which revealed three recipients listed in the 2002 book had been living in 1971 but Nicholas Rath was not one of the three. Anthony Staunton (talk) 15:19, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Mve - consistency

We have List of recipients of the George Medal and List of George Cross recipients

should we move one — Preceding unsigned comment added by Camquin (talk • contribs) 20:15, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

The George Cross and George Medal are different awards. Lists of recipients for each award should remain separate. Anthony Staunton (talk) 11:14, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Proposed merge of List of living recipients of the George Cross into List of George Cross recipients

This cross-categorization of living people and GC recipients isn't notable by WP:LISTN so a standalone list isn't justified. If it's really important to record which recipients are living, we could add it to the tables on this page, instead. (But anyone who needs to know can simply go straight to the primary source: https://vcgca.org/our-people.) I believe this should either be merged or the list of living recipients should be deleted. pburka (talk) 19:50, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

With respect I disagree that the 'List GC living recipients' isn't notable by WP:LISTN. It is probably one of the most notable groups within the UK and its biannual reunions and other events usually attract media attention and photographs. Furthermore, there are problems with the 'List of George recipients' since for years it has been been inaccurate in regard to the number of recipients and this will probably continue since there seems no prospect of an official list of recipients being published. Sadly the George Cross which was once called the 'Civilian VC' is a defunct award in respect of honoring individual civilian gallantry within the boundaries with the UK; the last such award being in 1976, 45 years ago. Thankfully, the award is kept alive by the military. Anthony Staunton (talk) 00:36, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm not convinced, but even if it is a notable subset, is there a good reason to copy these 15 people into a separate list? Almost all of the prose in that list is copied verbatim from this one, and it doesn't attempt to explain why the living members are special. Instead, we could simply enhance this parent list with the recipients' birth and death dates. pburka (talk) 16:19, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

I strongly support a separate list but first let us look at ‘prose’. ‘Almost all of the prose in that list is copied verbatim from this one’ is a good thing if you support, which every such list seems to do, is to do a precis of the main article. I am against prose in a list except to explain the importance of the list and not to iterate the main article. Start attacking prose in a list and you will have my full support. ‘why living members are special’ is because they are not dead, are public figures and as an ODM content expert it is a gap that Wikipedia fills brilliantly. Anthony Staunton (talk) 00:24, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Are they public figures? I picked one of the most recent recipients, Kevin Haberfield, and couldn't find any news stories about him except for one about him receiving the award. He's notable, certainly, but a public figure? There's also no gap to be filled: this list is already available at https://vcgca.org/our-people. We needn't mirror it. pburka (talk) 19:01, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

The main list now denotes those who are still living and may attend reunions. I see no basis to maintain this on a separate page as well. Reywas92^Talk 20:27, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Support The main list could include denotations like color and asterisk for those still alive. Reywas92^Talk 17:20, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose for the good reasons given by Anthony Staunton. Andrew🐉(talk) 18:02, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

AM and EM recipients

Is there a list somewhere of the AM and EM recipients who elected to keep their original medals and not exchange them for the GC? 104.153.40.58 (talk) 04:54, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

The simple answer is no. You may be able to deduce it from the four volume George Cross Encyclopaedia or from the Victoria Cross Online website. There has never been an official list of George Cross recipients. On this talk page in 2018, I commented: "All totals are guesstimates since there is no official public record of the total number of GC recipients. Published material from researchers suggest the total is probably 415." With the NHS award the total number of awards would now seem to be 416. It is nearly fifty years since a civilian was awarded the George Cross for an incident within the British Isles. Anthony Staunton (talk) 09:46, 22 September 2023 (UTC)