Lieutenant General Harry Lyster VC CB - Staff, Central India Field Force ( ex - 72nd Bengal Native Infantry )


HONOURABLE EAST INDIA COMPANY & INDIAN ARMY
HOLDERS OF THE VICTORIA CROSS


The award of the Victoria Cross was introduced by Royal Warrant signed by Queen Victoria on the 29th January 1856, and the first investiture was made on the 26th June 1857 in Hyde Park, London, where 62 recipients received their VCs personally from the Queen.

Awards of the Victoria Cross made during the Indian Mutiny and for other small wars and conflicts during the 19th Century, were issued only to British officers and servicemen in the employ of the East India Company and later the Indian Army.

It wasn't until a Royal Warrant was signed by King George V on the 21st October 1911 that eligibility for the Victoria Cross was extended to the native officers, non-commissioned officers and men of the Indian Army. The first recipient, Sepoy Khudadad Khan, earned his VC several thousand miles from India in the battlefields of Belgium in 1914.


Awards of the Victoria Cross made to the Honourable East India Company & Indian Army

The Indian Mutiny ( 1857-59 )

Small wars & conflicts during the 19th Century ( 1859-1904 )

The First World War ( 1914-18 )

Conflicts in India / North West Frontier between 1915 and 1935

The Second World War ( 1939-45 )

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12 September 2022