Glyn Harper and Colin Richardson: In the Face of the Enemy

In war, it seems, there are those bastards, our bastards and just plain bastards.

The first are the people who shoot at you, the second are the people for whom you make allowances because they wear the same uniform, and the latter are the people who deny heroes their due.

Every war produces its unsung heroes, those men and women whose courageous actions go unseen in the heat of battle or in clandestine exploits and for whom recognition is seldom forthcoming. It also produces those elevated to the elite legion of those who win a country's highest award for valour.

Between the two are those whose acts of outstanding bravery are observed but who are denied the supreme accolade because someone in authority acts like the judge who never imposes a maximum penalty because something more worthy of it might come along.

There is a certain sense of justice in a book that places those who did not receive the recommended honour for valour alongside the band of New Zealanders who have been awarded the Victoria Cross.

Military historians Glyn Harper and Colin Richardson - the former an associate professor at Massey University and the latter still a serving Army officer - have gone some way to right wrongs by letting readers measure the exploits of men who received downgraded awards against those who received the VC. All the Victoria Cross holders, they say, deserved their awards. There simply should have been more of them.

In World War I, for example, there were two impediments to the awarding of a Victoria Cross. There was a reluctance to make the award to officers and the commander of the New Zealand force, Major General Sir Andrew Russell, had a disdain for personal honours (including his own knighthood) and rigidly applied suggested quotas for medals.

As a result, the ultimate award was denied to richly deserving men such as Army doctor Captain Patrick Augustine Ardagh, who attended the wounded in open ground as shells fell around him, killing two men awaiting treatment. The recommendation for a VC stated that "even when portions of a man blown to pieces were scattered upon this officer, outwardly calm, he continued his work".

Russell downgraded the award to a DSO. Little wonder that the troops tended to put Russell into the third category.

World War II produced its own injustices. The men who fought a secret war were particularly hard done by. Donald John Stott, a member of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), parachuted into Greece and displayed extraordinary courage in the destruction of a key viaduct. His recommended VC was downgraded "because no shot was fired".

In the Face of the Enemy is not devoted just to those who did not win the VC. It chronicles the deeds of VC winners from the New Zealand Wars to World War II. In so doing it does not break much new ground but provides a concise, if somewhat undramatic, record of valour.

It is surprising therefore that the book has been thrust into the limelight over the VC awarded to Sergeant Clive Hulme on Crete. One paragraph in the book suggests - but does not state explicitly - that Hulme was wrong to have worn a German camouflage smock while stalking the 33 snipers that he killed. At no point, however, do they suggest his award was undeserved.

Their description of his "ruse" was no revelation. It was covered in detail in the Official War History of the Battle of Crete.

Clearly snipers were regarded as "those bastards" and Hulme one of "our bastards".

* Published by HarperCollins $35.99

* Gavin Ellis is a former editor-in-chief of the Herald. He attended the 50th anniversary commemoration of the Battle of Crete in 1991.