The Vietnam Air Gallantry Cross was a military decoration of South Vietnam which was issued during the years of the Vietnam War. The Air Gallantry Cross was awarded for meritorious or heroic conduct while engaged in aerial combat. The decoration was comparable to the United States decoration of the Air Medal.
The Air Gallantry Cross was occasionally awarded to members of foreign militaries, but only if an air combat action was performed which directly benefitted Vietnamese war efforts. Pilots of the United States Air Force were often awarded the Air Gallantry Cross.
Separate decorations, known as the Vietnam Gallantry Cross and Vietnam Navy Gallantry Cross, were also issued for general service and naval achievement. These were separate awards from the Vietnam Air Gallantry Cross which came in four different grades: with gold wings, silver wings, bronze wings and no wings.
Famous quotes containing the words air, gallantry and/or cross:
“... anybody is as their land and air is. Anybody is as the sky is low or high, the air heavy or clear and anybody is as there is wind or no wind there. It is that which makes them and the arts they make and the work they do and the way they eat and the way they drink and the way they learn and everything.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Age wins and one must learn to grow old.... I must learn to walk this long unlovely wintry way, looking for spectacles, shunning the cruel looking-glass, laughing at my clumsiness before others mistakenly condole, not expecting gallantry yet disappointed to receive none, apprehending every ache of shaft of pain, alive to blinding flashes of mortality, unarmed, totally vulnerable.”
—Diana Cooper (1892–1986)
“There is a mountain in the distant West
That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
Displays a cross of snow upon its side.
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
And seasons, changeless since the day she died.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)