[MSN] New Zealand Medal collector offers reward in effort to recover 'holy grail' of Victoria Crosses

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New Zealand Medal collector offers reward in effort to recover ‘holy grail’
of Victoria Crosses
December 5, 2007 – 1:35 pm 
December 5, 2007



Paul Larter in Brisbane 

Lord Ashcroft, who owns the world’s biggest collection of Victoria Crosses,
has offered a reward for the recovery of 100 medals that were stolen in an
audacious raid on a military museum in New Zealand. The deputy chairman of
the Conservative Party has put up about £75,000 for information about the
medals, including nine VCs estimated to be worth a total of £3.3 million. 

Lord Ashcroft said that he had been “horrified and outraged” by the break-in
and theft of 12 groups of medals from the army museum in Waiouru, on the
North Island.

Helen Clark, the New Zealand Prime Minister, described the raid as a crime
against the nation that had “revolted the whole country”.

The thieves smashed reinforced glass cabinets to grab the medals, which also
included two George Crosses and an Albert Medal, in a four-minute raid early
on Sunday.

“As a collector and someone who has a history with the Victoria Cross, I
wanted to do my bit to return these medals to the museum,” Lord Ashcroft
said.

He said that one medal awarded for two separate acts of valour – to Charles
Upham, a New Zealander – was the “holy grail” of VCs. The medal was acquired
along with the rest of Upham’s medals by the Imperial War Museum last year
with funding from the Garfield Weston Foundation. It is on permanent loan to
Waiouru.

Upham, who died aged 86 in 1994, was decorated for actions of “nerveless
competence”, first in Crete in 1941 and then in Egypt the following year
when leading his company attacking an enemy-held ridge overlooking the
battlefield of El Alamein.

“Only three Victoria Crosses with Bar were ever issued, and this is the only
fighting soldier VC and Bar. This is regarded as the No 1 Victoria Cross in
the world,” Lord Ashcroft told Radio New Zealand.

He added that the medals had no value to the thieves because no legitimate
collector would touch them, but feared that they may be destroyed instead of
being left to be found. Other suggested motives include ransom or a theft to
order.

Nick Fletcher, the senior curator at the Australian War Memorial museum in
Canberra, which holds 61 VCs in the biggest publicly accessible collection,
noted that the two Australian VCs had not been listed as stolen.

“It does make you wonder, was this done for a political reason? Is there a
point being made here?” he said.

“My fear is whoever has stolen them realises there is no market, rather than
hand them back or leave them to be found may do something so they are never
found again.”

Mr Fletcher said that only one of 15 VCs known to have been stolen worldwide
since the mid1800s had been recovered.

Michael Maxton, of the Michael Ashcroft Trust, which holds one tenth of the
1,355 VCs awarded since 1856, speculated that the medals may be held for
ransom.

Police, who confirmed earlier that a security camera had been in operation,
said last night that they had gathered enough evidence to identify the
thieves. Forty police have been drafted in to interview all the 1,600
residents of Waiouru, 185 miles (300km) north of Wellington.

It is not yet clear if the medals are covered by insurance.

Crosses to bear

–– The medal was to have borne the inscription “For the Brave” but Queen
Victoria had it changed to “For Valour” fearing it would imply that
recipients were the only brave soldiers on the battlefield

–– The first 62 men to win the medal were presented with it by Victoria
herself in a ceremony on June 26, 1857. The Queen distributed the medals on
horseback during a parade in Hyde Park

–– The award came with an annual pension of £10, equivalent to just over
£6,000 today. Now it is about £1,500

–– 1,355 crosses have been won to date and three bars awarded. Captain
Arthur Martin-Leake won a VC in the Anglo-Boer War in 1901 and a second in
the First World War; Captain Noel Chavasse won two in the First World War
and Captain Charles Upham won two in the Second World War.

–– The most recent recipient of a VC was Corporal Bryan Budd, who led
assaults on two Taleban positions in Afghanistan in 2006 and was killed in
the second attack. His body was found next to three dead insurgents

Sources: MoD; Royal Naval Museum; victoriacross.org.uk