George Cross

Not you, Rowena.

[laughs] The George Cross, Britain's highest civilian award for courage, went to Jim Beaton, rightly so.

Police Constable Michael Hills and Ronald Russell both received the George Medal, which is the second highest.

Police Constable Edmonds, John Brian McConnell, and Alexander Callender all got the third highest honor of Queen's Gallantry Medals.

So don't fuck with Princess Anne is what we've learned.

Don't, don't do it.

And if you get a George Medal, they're fobbing you off because George Cross is better.

Yeah, and you should throw it.

And by the middle of the war, Whenever George appeared in the newsreels, people would stand up and applaud.

Another thing that George did during the war, he created the George Cross and the George Medal, which were to be given to civilians who had heroically helped the war effort, which worked pretty well, although choosing which civilians to give it to could sometimes be controversial.

And actually, in the end, the medals did go to quite a lot of servicemen.

George was only able to visit soldiers on the battlefield, as it were, on two occasions.

And on the way back from that visit, he was very glad to put in at Malta, this strategic island in the middle of the Mediterranean, which had been part of the British Empire since 1814.

And throughout the war, Malta had stood up for itself and defended itself in great hardship against repeated German air force and naval attacks.

So it had been crucial for the in great hardship against repeated German air force and naval attacks and had been of a strategic position for the British in the Mediterranean and George awarded the whole island the George Cross.

So George and Elizabeth and the two royal princesses Elizabeth and Margaret had been there as a reassuring presence during the war sharing the hardships with the nation.

A street in Manchester was renamed Stephen Oake Close in his honor, and there was a stone memorial placed by the Police Memorial Trust in memory of his bravery and sacrifice.

And in the years following his murder, there was debate over whether DC Oake should be formally recognized for his bravery in Borgas' arrest, including a call from his chief constable for him to receive the highest civil decoration in the United Kingdom, the George Cross.

Now, sadly, he wasn't given this.

However, he was posthumously awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal.

So that's the third-level civil decoration after the George Cross and the George Medal.

And in that, he was posthumously given that in 2009.

At that point, he was only the ninth such posthumous awarded for a police officer since the creation of the medal in 1974.

Yeah.

It is, of course.

Sam Shepard, one unique, well, not unique gentleman, but virtually unique in that one of only 12 people alive in the world today who has a George Cross medal.

for bravery.

We'll get to that later, but I want to talk about the fact that if you're watching this on YouTube, you could be listening on Spotify and you'll not see this, but I have about four different drinks in front of me.

I'm

going to be very brave and take a drink of it.

Am I going to get a George Cross for this?

Right, try that.