The Vietnam Navy Gallantry Cross was a military decoration of South Vietnam which was issued during the years of the Vietnam War. The Navy Gallantry Cross was awarded to any member of the military who displayed meritorious or heroic combat while engaged in naval operations to benefit South Vietnam. The medal was awarded both for combat and non-combat service and was the equivalent of the United States Legion of Merit.
The Navy Gallantry Cross was also awarded to members of foreign military forces, provided that such service members were engaged in direct operational support of Vietnam and that such naval actions benefitted the Vietnamese military. Officers of the United States Navy were frequently awarded the Navy Gallantry Cross.
Similar decorations existed for general service and air service, and were known as the Vietnam Gallantry Cross and Vietnam Air Gallantry Cross. These were separate decorations from the Vietnam Navy Gallantry Cross which came in four different grades: with gold anchor, silver anchor, bronze anchor, and no anchor.
Famous quotes containing the words navy, gallantry and/or cross:
“I call to mind the navy great
That the Greeks brought to Troye town,
And how the boistous winds did beat
Their ships, and rent their sails adown;
Till Agamemnon’s daughter’s blood
Appeased the gods that them withstood.”
—Henry Howard, Earl Of Surrey (1517?–1547)
“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)
“Passion is here a soilure of the wits,
We’re told, and Love a cross for them to bear;
Joy shivers in the corner where she knits
And Conscience always has the rocking-chair,
Cheerful as when she tortured into fits
The first cat that was ever killed by Care.”
—Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935)