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:
“We all know the Navy is never wrong, but in this case it was a little weak on being right.”
—Wendell Mayes, U.S. screenwriter. Otto Preminger. CINCPAC II (Henry Fonda)
“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 the grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes. For all men who say yes, lie; and all men who say no,—why, they are in the happy condition of judicious, unincumbered travellers in Europe; they cross the frontiers into Eternity with nothing but a carpet-bag,—that is to say, the Ego. Whereas those yes-gentry, they travel with heaps of baggage, and, damn them! they will never get through the Custom House.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)