Levelling up READER Anthony Staunton wrote to us recently regarding the award, or rather lack of, of a George Cross in the UK in recent years (sorry Mr Staunton, no letters page this month). He notes that MPs have called for Samir Zitouni, a catering crew member on the Doncaster to London King’s Cross service, to be awarded the George Cross for confronting a man carrying out a mass stabbing on the train on November 1, and further notes that it is eight years since a British civilian was awarded the George Cross; in that case it was for an extraordinary act of gallantry four years earlier during a terrorist attack at the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi, Kenya in 2013. Dominic Troulon, GC, KGM, survived to receive the award from the Queen but he, although officially a civilian, was an ex-serviceman having served as both a Royal Marine with 42 Commando in The Falklands and in the Parachute Regiment. There have been a number of recent awards to service personnel, of course, for service in Afghanistan (Matthew Croucher, Kevin Haberfield, Kim Hughes, Olaf Schmid, and Mark Wright) in Iraq (Christopher Finney and Major Peter Norton) and one to Captain Sam Shephard, RM, for his efforts in trying to save a fellow officer during a diving exercise in Egypt. The last award to a British civilian with no service experience at all was to schoolmaster John Clements. It was a posthumous award for an incident in a ski resort in Italy in April 1976, nearly 50 years ago. Every single one of these more recent awards has been for an incident outside of the UK (as was the award to New Zealand Police Sergeant Stewart Guthrie, who received a George Cross for his role in the police response to the Aramoana massacre in 1990, during which he lost his life). The last time an award was made for an incident “at home” (we will ignore the collective awards for the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the NHS for now) was to WOII Barry Johnson of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps for gallantry in defusing a mortar bomb in Derry, Northern Ireland, that was in October 1989. Mr Staunton makes these comments because he points out that the equivalent Australian decoration, the Cross of Valour, has not been awarded for an incident within Australia in nearly 30 years, with the only civilian awards this century for overseas incidents—two Cross of Valour awards for Bali 2002. His thoughts were echoed by other correspondents commenting on the award of a George Medal to Grace O’Malley-Kumar (“News & Views”, MEDAL NEWS November) who, they say, really should have been awarded a George Cross, after all, she lost her life trying to save somebody, what more does one have to do to get the higher award these days? We well remember similar protestations when nursery teacher Lisa Potts (now Lisa Webb) was severely injured in 1996 whilst protecting the children in her care from machete-wielding Horrett Campbell, who broke into the school playground in Blakenhall, Wolverhampton and attacked the children. There is little doubt that Campbell, who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, would have killed any children he could have had Miss Potts not stood her ground and placed herself between him and her charges. She was subsequently also awarded a George Medal, but again why not a level 1 award? The Criteria for the award of the George Cross stipulates that it shall be awarded for “acts of the greatest heroism or of the most conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger”, one fails to see how the bravery of Miss O’Malley-Kumar or Miss Potts did not meet that standard. Surely, confronting a mentally ill man (Valdo Calocane, the man who murdered Miss O’Malley-Kumar, her friend Barnaby Webber—who she died trying to save—and a third individual, Ian Coates, in Nottingham in 2024, had a history of mental illness) who is wielding a very large knife and clearly intent on killing is the epitome of courage in circumstances of extreme danger, no? Here at MEDAL NEWS we are not privy to the discussion of those who make the decisions on gallantry awards, but it would, perhaps, be nice to know why those decisions are being made as they are. What, for example, does one have to do these days to receive a level 1 gallantry award as a civilian? Is the George Cross now only to be awarded as a collective award as above? I certainly don’t want to take away anything from either the RUC or the NHS and there is no doubt that many members of those organisations have exhibited great bravery over the years, but was that bravery really worthy of a higher award than that afforded to Grace or Lisa? I am not advocating for a watering down of the George Cross criteria, not at all, a level 1 gallantry award must be reserved for the bravest of the brave, but I am, I think, suggesting, as Mr Staunton did in his original letter, that the time for monitoring non-combat awards is perhaps overdue, or if there is to be no such review then, perhaps, it is time for us to be told why the decisions are made as they are. Successive governments have been keen on transparency and accountability, perhaps this is one area they can look at in more detail.