The Royal Red Cross is a military decoration awarded in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth for exceptional services in military nursing.
The award was established on 27 April 1883 by Queen Victoria, with a single class of Member. A second and lower class, Associate, was added during World War I in 1917.
The award is made to a fully trained nurse of an officially recognised nursing service who has shown exceptional devotion and competency in the performance of actual nursing duties, over a continuous and long period, or who has performed some very exceptional act of bravery and devotion at his or her post of duty. This decoration had the distinction of being conferred exclusively to females until 1976. It is conferred on members of the nursing services regardless of rank. Holders of the second class are promoted to the first class on second awards.
Recipients of the Royal Red Cross are entitled to use the post-nominal letters "RRC" or "ARRC" for Members and Associates respectively.
Read more about Royal Red Cross: Description
Famous quotes containing the words royal, red and/or cross:
“These are not the artificial forests of an English king,—a royal preserve merely. Here prevail no forest laws but those of nature. The aborigines have never been dispossessed, nor nature disforested.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We work harder than ever, and I cannot see the advantages in cooperative living.”
—Lydia Arnold, U.S. commune supervisor (of the North American Phalanx, Red Bank, New Jersey, 1843- 1855)
“Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!
Clouds of the west—sun there half an hour
high—I see you also face to face.
Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me!
On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning
home, are more curious to me than you suppose,
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)