Talk:George Cross

Questionable recipient
I have moved a questionable recipient of the GC from the article, here to the talk page. I can find no reliable source for this trooper's award. Its not in the London Gazette and it does not show up in Google.


 * Trooper Adam Justin of the Special Air Service also won the GC for carrying his injured colleague approximately 5.6 km after he had received non fatal wounds during the conflict in Afghanistan

Collective awards
Are the Maltese, RUC and NHS recipients permitted to wear the medal? 104.153.40.58 (talk) 00:51, 15 August 2022 (UTC)


 * The three recipients are not individuals but a country and two institutions. In the case of Malta and the former RUC the awards were not gazetted. First World awards, the VC to the US unknown soldier, the DSC to Dunkirk and MCs to Ypres and Verdun were not gazetted since the general practice for foreign recipients was not to gazette awards. However, the 2006 CGC to the Royal Irish Regiment/Ulster Defence Regiment was gazetted and I was pleased that the NHS GC was also gazetted. What was different was there were four additional copies, one each for the Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England. The focus seemed to be on the individuals who received the copies and I am still unsure if one GC and three copies or one GC and four copies were issued. The NHS award was the 2nd collective award in the last 25 years but the GC, once called the 'civilian VC', was awarded to a civilian for gallantry overseas in 2017 but has not been awarded to a civilian for gallantry within the UK in 46 years. Thankfully the Army and Royal Marines are keeping the award alive. Anthony Staunton (talk) 09:15, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

Number of George Cross awards
The number of George Cross awards has been out of date in the Wikipedia article for some time. The major problem is that there has never been an official list of recipients. While all original awards except the first two collective awards have been gazetted, the 251 exchange awards have never been officially verified. The VC & GC Association, and their 2013 volumes, have been most helpful. There are 416 awards listed in Marian Hebblethwaite's, George Cross Encyclopedia, (2021) ISBN 978-1-9997057-3-2 and the readily assessable Victoria Cross Online. I have updated the totals using both references. I changed the subtitle 'Awards to Commonwealth citizens' to 'Awards to the Commonwealth' since there was no British or Commonwealth citizens until Canada started the ball rolling in 1946. Anthony Staunton (talk) 12:14, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Citation required for number of AM and EM insignia exchanges.
Moved reference to the AM and EM cancellations to the previous sentence as verification that exchange of insignia was optional. As noted in my post above there is no official information from government on exchanges or numbers of awards. Anthony Staunton (talk) 05:35, 16 December 2023 (UTC)