I’m just thinking that in combat soldiers don’t go out thinking they’ll try to get an MOH or VC. Of the many stories I’ve read about our military it’s always been a spur of the moment thing, seeing a situation developing then doing something about it. Matter of seconds or a bit of planning. But to go out intentionally thinking “Today I’m gonna get me an MOH” don’t think so ...
Winston Churchill gives a hint of the mindset I am talking about:
In the closing decade of the Victorian era the Empire had enjoyed so long a spell of almost unbroken peace, that medals and all they represented in experience and adventure were becoming extremely scarce in the British Army. The veterans of the Crimea and the Indian Mutiny were gone from the active list. The Afghan and Egyptian warriors of the early eighties had reached the senior ranks. Scarcely a shot had been fired in anger since then, and when I joined the 4th Hussars in January, 1895, scarcely a captain, hardly ever a subaltern, could be found throughout Her Majesty's forces who had seen even the smallest kind of war. Rarity in a desirable commodity is usually the cause of enhanced value and there has never been a time when war service was held in so much esteem by the military authorities or more ardently sought by officers of every rank. It was the swift road to promotion and advancement in every arm. It was the glittering gateway to distinction. It cast a glamour upon the fortunate possessor alike in the eyes of elderly gentlemen and young ladies. How we young officers envied the senior Major for his adventures at Abu Klea! How we admired the Colonel with his long row of decorations! We listened with almost insatiable interest to the accounts which they were good enough to give us on more than one occasion of stirring deeds and episodes already melting into the mist of time. How we longed to have a similar store of memories to unpack and display, if necessary repeatedly, to a sympathetic audience! How we wondered whether our chance would ever come whether we too in our turn would have battles to fight over again and again in the agreeable atmosphere of the after-dinner mess table? Prowess at polo, in the hunting-field, or between the flags, might count for something. But the young soldier who had been on active service and 'under fire' had an aura about him to which the Generals he served under, the troopers he led, and the girls he courted, accorded a unanimous, sincere, and spontaneous recognition.
The want of a sufficient supply of active service was therefore acutely felt by my contemporaries in the circles in which I was now called upon to live my life. This complaint was destined to be cured, and all our requirements were to be met to the fullest extent. The danger as the subaltern regarded it which in those days seemed so real of Liberal and democratic governments making war impossible was soon to be proved illusory. The age of Peace had ended. There was to be no lack of war. There was to be enough for all. Aye, enough and to spare. Few indeed of the keen, aspiring generations of Sandhurst cadets and youthful officers who entered the Royal Service so light-heartedly in these and later years were to survive the ghastly surfeit which fate had in store. The little tidbits of fighting which the Indian frontier and the Soudan were soon to offer, distributed by luck or favour, were fiercely scrambled for throughout the British Army. But the South African War was to attain dimensions which fully satisfied the needs of our small army. And after that the deluge was still to come!
from 'My Early Life: A Roving Commission' by Winston Churchill. 1930.