VICTORIA CROSS
and the
FORGOTTEN HEROES

The highest British decoration for “conspicuous bravery or devotion to the country in the presence of the enemy”, which was instituted by Queen Victoria towards the end of the Crimean War in 1856, and is known as the Victoria Cross, has been awarded to many Irishmen, including three who were born in this county. Cast in bronze, from Russian guns taken at Sevastopol, the decoration is in the form of a Maltese cross, bearing in the centre the royal crown surmounted by a lion, and the words “For Valour”. The recipient’s name is engraved on the back of an attached bar, decorated with a laurel.

Lance Corporal Abraham Boulger, the first Kildare man to receive the decoration, was born at Kilcullen about 1827, During his service with the 84th Regiment in India he was said to have been “critically engaged daily with the enemy, either in pitched battle with his regiment or as scout and skirmisher. Twelve actions were fought, and in all of these he took part. At Lucknow he stormed a bridge, and was the first man to dash into a masked battery”. For these actions Boulger won his reward, and following further distinguished service as a Sergeant-Major, including participation in the storming of Tel-el-Kebir, he was given the honorary rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. After he retired in 1887 he returned home, where he died thirteen years later.

Bishopscourt, near Kill, was the birthplace of Brigadier-General Charles Fitzclarence in 1865. It was the home of his mother, Lady Maria Henriette Scott, eldest daughter of the 3rd Earl of Clonmell, who had purchased the mansion in the year that he married the Hon. Anne de Burgh, daughter of General Sir Ulysses de Burgh, of Bert, Athy; another daughter of Clonmell’s was married to John la Touche of Harristown. Lady Maria Henriette married Capt. George Fitzclarence R.N., Knight of the Medjidie in 1864, whose grandfather was the eldest illegitimate son of King William IV.
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The most recent issue of metal, exactly fifty ounces and sufficient to make twelve medals, occurred on 23 October 1959, to Messrs Hancocks & Co (Jewellers) Ltd, the royal jewellers who have been responsible for individually making each medal since the inception of the VC in 1857. Given that fifty ounces are required to make twelve Victoria Cross medals, the remaining 358 ounces contain enough for a further eighty five.
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 All four sons of the Fitzclarence’s joined the Services; the youngest died in the Crimea, another was killed in action with the Egyptian Army, and his twin brother rose to the rank of Brigadier-General. The hero of the family, Charles Fitzclarence, went from the militia into the Royal Fusiliers, and he accompanied Kitchener on the Khartoum campaign. He was said to have been “grievously disappointed” when his unit was not allowed to go up the Nile. When the regiment of the Irish Guards was formed in 1900 he transferred to it, bringing with him the sobriquet The Demon, and a V.C., from his service in South Africa in the previous year. He had been given no less than three recommendations for the decoration, based on such gallantry as that displayed at Mafeking. There, surrounded by superior numbers of enemy “his personal coolness and courage inspired the greatest confidence in his men”; a heavy defeat was inflicted on the Boers, who lost fifty, to only two of Fitzclarence’s men. On another occasion, in a hand-to-hand encounter, he killed four of the enemy with his sword. Later he served as battalion, and then regimental commander, of the Guards, and for a time he was stationed at the Curragh. As a Brigadier-General he led the 1st Guards Brigade with the Expeditionary Force in France and there, on November 11th, 1914, moving along a country road, in darkness, at the head of his men, he was killed.
 

By Con Costello