Me holding the VC medal group of Keith Payne VC in 2016
The website Victoria Cross Online began as a hobby late in 2014 when my technologically skilled wife Victoria set it up on my behalf. Within 5 years the site had had over 7 million visitors and thanks to a large amount of contributions had a completed Victoria Cross and George Cross Section. I have recently finished the “From Lucas to Leakey” series which updated the biographies of the 1,360 individual recipients of the VC. I have also completed the same process for the 415 recipients of the George Cross called “From McCormack to Troulan”. The site’s aim is to highlight the lives of the men and women who have been awarded the highest recognition for their incredible gallantry. I hope my site does these amazing people justice, and it is constantly evolving with new material and research. In 2o20 I completed the US Medal of Honor, and the Dickin Medal covering the “Animal VC” sections. Over the course of the latter part of 2020 into 2021, I switched my focus to the recipients of the Albert and Edward Medals (precursors of the George Cross). This research saw me uncover possible “missing GCs” and publish an article in “Medal News” which was exciting and I hope to have more news on this soon. By the end of 2021, I had completed the Albert Medal, Edward Medal and Empire Gallantry Medal Sections. I then decided to add a section on the recipients of the George Medal, but early into this project, my website ran into difficulties, as my previous web host decided to transfer to another provider. To cut a long techno-geek babble story short, my previous website was unable to be edited and updated so I had to look for alternatives. At the beginning of 2022, I transferred my old site onto WordPress allowing access to the material, whilst I began the daunting task of creating this new look website. My aim is to try and get the new website to where the old website was in terms of content by the end of 2023.