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:
“Conservatism, ever more timorous and narrow, disgusts the children, and drives them for a mouthful of fresh air into radicalism.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“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)
“He is asleep. He knows no longer the fatigue of the work of deciding, the work to finish. He sleeps, he has no longer to strain, to force himself, to require of himself that which he cannot do. He no longer bears the cross of that interior life which proscribes rest, distraction, weaknesshe sleeps and thinks no longer, he has no more duties or chores, no, no, and I, old and tired, oh! I envy that he sleeps and will soon die.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)