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Andrew Mynarski

Andrew Charles Mynarski, VC (14 October 1916 – 13 June 1944) was a Canadian airman and a recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest award for bravery in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces. Mynarski was 27 years old and flew with No. 419 "Moose" Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War when he died attempting to help rescue a trapped crew member. His Victoria Cross, which was awarded in 1946, was the last Victoria Cross received by any Canadian serviceman in the Second World War.

Early years
Mynarski was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on 14 October 1916, the son of Polish immigrants. Known as Andy to his close friends, he had five other siblings, two brothers and three sisters. Mynarski was educated at King Edward and Isaac Newton Elementary Schools, later graduating from St. John's Technical School. To help support his family after his father's death, at the age of 16, he worked as a chamois cutter.

Wartime service
In 1940, Mynarski joined the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, a militia unit, but only served a short time before enlisting in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF). In September 1941, he was posted to No. 3 Manning Depot in Edmonton. After basic training, he went to No. 2 Wireless School in Calgary but had trouble learning Morse Code. He was then posted to No. 3 Bomb and Gunnery School at RCAF Station MacDonald, MacDonald, Manitoba, graduating just before Christmas as an air-gunner, earning his "AG" brevet.

Mynarski was promoted to temporary sergeant in Halifax just prior to going overseas in January 1942. After a series of transfers through operational training units, as a warrant officer (second class), he joined Flying Officer Art de Breyne's crew as the mid-upper gunner in No. 419 "Moose" Squadron, based at RAF Middleton St. George, Darlington, County Durham.

The squadron first flew combat operations using Vickers Wellington bombers before converting to the Handley Page Halifax bombers. After a short introduction to this four-engine heavy bomber, 419 Squadron began to receive the Avro Lancaster bomber in 1944, including examples built in Canada by the Victory Aircraft Company in Malton, Ontario. In early June, de Bryne's crew received Canadian-built Avro Lancaster Mk X bomber, #KB726, coded "VR-A" (call sign A for Able).

Mynarski's last "op"
In the aftermath of D-Day attacks on 12 June 1944, Mynarski was aboard KB726, taking part in the crew's 12th operation, a raid on Cambrai in northern France. They reached their target at midnight, Tuesday 13 June. After encountering flak over the coastline and briefly being "coned" by searchlights, the Lancaster was attacked by a Junkers Ju 88 enemy night fighter. Raked by cannon fire with major strikes on the port engines and centre fuselage, a hydraulic fire engulfed the bomber. Losing both port engines, de Breyne ordered the crew to bail out. As Mynarski approached the rear escape door, he saw through the inferno in the rear, that tail gunner Pilot Officer Pat Brophy was trapped in his turret. The tail turret had been jammed part way through its rotation to the escape position.

Without hesitation, Mynarski made his way through the flames to Brophy's assistance. All his efforts were in vain, initially using a fire axe to try to pry open the doors before finally resorting to beating at the turret with his hands. With Mynarski's flight suit and parachute on fire, Brophy eventually waved him away. Mynarski crawled back through the hydraulic fire, returned to the rear door where he paused and saluted. He then reputedly said "Good night, sir," his familiar nightly sign-off to his friend, and jumped.

Except for Brophy, all crew members of the Lancaster managed to escape the burning bomber. Five left through the front escape hatch on the floor of the cockpit. When bomb aimer Jack Friday, tried to release the escape hatch cover in the aircraft's nose, the rushing wind ripped it from his hands. The hatch cover caught him above his left eye and knocked him out. He fell into the open hatch and jammed it closed until Flight engineer Roy Vigars reached him to quickly clip on Friday's parachute and toss him out the hatch while pulling the unconscious crewman's rip cord. Only Mynarski managed to leave via the rear escape door.

Mynarski's descent was rapid due to the burnt parachute and shroud lines, resulting in a heavy impact on landing. He landed alive though severely burned, with his clothes still on fire. French farmers who spotted the flaming bomber found him and took him to a German field hospital but he died shortly afterwards of severe burns. He was buried in a local cemetery. Brophy remained trapped in the bomber when it crashed in a farm field. As the bomber disintegrated, and began breaking apart, Brophy survived the crash and the subsequent detonation of the bomb load. Still lodged in his turret, the crash broke the turret open with him pitched out, striking a tree and being temporarily knocked out.

Four of the crew members: Brophy, navigator Robert Bodie, radio operator James Kelly and pilot de Breyne were hidden by the French and, except for Brophy, returned to England shortly after the crash. Vigars remained with the unconscious Friday and both were captured by the Germans, being interned until liberated by American troops. Brophy joined French Resistance fighters and, after joining a resistance unit to continue the fight on the ground behind enemy lines, returned to London in September 1944, where he learned of Mynarski's death. It was not until 1945 when Brophy was reunited with the rest of the crew that the details of his final moments on the aircraft were revealed. He related the story of the valiant efforts made by Mynarski to save him.

Mynarski lies buried in Grave 20 of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission plot in the Méharicourt Communal Cemetery, near Amiens, France.

Victoria Cross
In late 1945, de Breyne started the process of gaining recognition for Mynarski's extraordinary deed by recommending an award and enquiring about the location of his grave. Although facing some initial resistance, the recommendation worked its way up the command structure of the RCAF and RAF. On 11 October 1946, a Victoria Cross was posthumously awarded for "valour of the highest order" to Andrew Charles Mynarski, by then also awarded the rank of pilot officer.

Remembering Andrew Mynarski
Mynarski's Victoria Cross was loaned by his family to Air Command in 1989 and is on display in the entrance foyer at the Mynarski Memorial Room of the Headquarters, 1 Canadian Air Division, in Winnipeg (where a number of other family artifacts are on display). No. 419 Squadron in CFB Cold Lake also displays the original fire axe that Mynarski used to try to free the jammed Lancaster turret; the axe was recovered from the Lancaster bomber at the crash site in northern France.

Andrew Mynarski VC School in Winnipeg, the Mynarski municipal ward of Winnipeg, a park in Alberta, the Royal Canadian Legion "Andrew Mynarski" Branch 34, and 573 "Andrew Mynarski" Air Cadet squadron all bear his name. A chain of three lakes in Manitoba has been named after him by the Geographical Placenames of Canada and at CFB Penhold, one of the locations in which he trained, the married quarters area is known as Mynarski Park. Mynarski was also honoured in 1973 when he was inducted into Canada's Aviation Hall of Fame.

Avro Lancaster FM213 of the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton, Ontario, one of only two airworthy Lancasters in the world, is known as the Mynarski Memorial Lancaster in honour of Mynarski, and is painted in the markings of his aircraft.

Mynarski's bust has joined the other "Valiants" when the Valiants Memorial was unveiled in Ottawa, Ontario. This memorial site is a collection of nine busts and five statues and a large bronze wall inscription that commemorates 14 individuals celebrated for their personal contributions, but also representing critical moments in Canada's military history.

A larger-than-life bronze statue of Pilot Officer Mynarski, sculpted by Keith Maddison, was dedicated in 2005 outside the former Officers' Mess, now the St George Hotel, at RAF Middleton St. George, the bomber base in England where he served. The memorial depicts Mynarski at the rear of the stricken aircraft, his right arm raised in a salute. Andrew Mynarski is also remembered at the St George Hotel by the "Mynarski Bar", a bar dedicated to him where images of him and a replica VC are on display.

A local Polish organization from the community area near where Mynarski grew up has erected a memorial plaque in Winnipeg's Kildonan Park to honour Mynarski.

In January 2006, a group of local Winnipeggers prominent in business, government, heritage, military and community organizations embarked on a fund-raising project to cast and erect in Winnipeg, a new statue in a campaign known as "Bring Andrew home". The Mynarski Statue Project operated under the auspices of the Air Cadet League of Canada (Manitoba) Inc. including the parents' committee of 573 Andrew Mynarski VC Royal Canadian Air Cadets Squadron, with support from the Canadian Aviation Historical Society. The Mynarski Statue Project Committee coordinated fundraising and community support and received important media coverage through journalist Mr. Gordon Sinclair Jr. of the Winnipeg Free Press.

After learning that the original mould used to cast the statue at St. George was feasibly unavailable to use for a new statue in Winnipeg, the Committee decided to consider alternatives around 2008–2009. In December 2009, Mr. Charles Johnston, a Winnipeg sculptor/artist was selected to create a new statue.

Fundraising and communication efforts continued until 2010, when a Winnipeg business owner and philanthropist, Brian Frank Klaponski became involved. After learning that his uncle had grown up with Andrew Mynarski and had been Mynarski's best friend at Isaac Newton School in Winnipeg's North End in the 1930s, Klaponski offered a significant donation for the project. That donation catalyzed the final statue design and approval process.

The artist presented several concepts to the Committee as sketches and maquettes, with the final statue design chosen in 2013. Johnston created a full-size clay model and arranged to have it cast in bronze in early 2014. He brought it home to Winnipeg from the U.S. foundry that summer. It was unveiled to the public during a reception held 14 November 2014 at Winnipeg's Frame Arts Warehouse.

Winnipeg's Andrew Mynarski VC Memorial Statue will be dedicated in Winnipeg's Vimy Ridge Memorial Park during a public ceremony at 1:00 p.m. on 12 June 2015.

In the media
Mynarski's story has been dramatised in the Canadian Historica Foundation's series of Heritage Minutes. Mynarski was also profiled in the 2006 docudrama Victoria Cross Heroes which included archive footage and dramatisations of his Victoria Cross-winning action. His story was recently recounted in As Close as Brothers (2011) documentary, shot in Canada using the Mynarski Memorial Lancaster as well as an Avro Lancaster bomber and artifacts at the Bomber Command Museum in Nanton, Alberta.

The eight-minute film Mynarski Death Plummet (2014), directed by Matthew Rankin, looks expressionistically at the final moments in Mynarski's life. The film played at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival and was selected for the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.

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Frederick Charles Riggs

Frederick Charles Riggs (28 July 1888 – 1 October 1918) was an English recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.

Early life
He was born in Springbourne, Bournemouth, and was adopted by Mrs G. Burgum when he was about five years old. He grew up in the Malmesbury Park area of Bournemouth, and was one of two recipients of the Victoria Cross from Capstone Road; the other being Cecil Reginald Noble. A nearby neighbourhood of Bournemouth is named Charminster, and has led to the confused suggestion that Noble lived in the village of Charminster in Dorset. He lived at 39 Capstone Road and attended Malmesbury Park Primary School as it is known now. There is a memorial for him now inside the school.

Details
Riggs was 30 years old, and a Sergeant in the 6th Battalion, The York and Lancaster Regiment, British Army during the First World War at the battle of the Canal du Nord when the following deed took place for which he was awarded the VC.

On 1 October 1918 near Epinoy, France, Sergeant Riggs, having led his platoon through strong uncut wire under severe fire, continued straight on and although losing heavily from flanking fire, succeeded in reaching his objective, where he captured a machine-gun. Later he handled two captured guns with great effect and caused 50 of the enemy to surrender. Subsequently, when the enemy again advanced in force, Sergeant Riggs cheerfully encouraged his men exhorting them to resist to the last, and while doing so was killed.

The medal
His Victoria Cross is displayed at The York and Lancaster Regiment Museum contained within the Clifton Park Museum in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

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Matthew Rosamund

Matthew Rosamond VC (12 July 1823 – 14 July 1866) was an English recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.

The christening record for Matthew Rosamond in 1823 shows his parents as George Rosamond and his wife Elizabeth. Matthew Rosamond married Bridget Mahoney in Agra, West Bengal on 21 July 1851. The English 1861 census for Eaton Socon in Bedfordshire, shows Matthew Rosamond home from India five years before his death. Just prior to his death, he married Alice Wollen in 1865 in Serampore, Bengal, India.

Rosamond was born in the village of St. Neots, Huntingdonshire (some records say Swallow Cliffe, Wiltshire; other says Seaton Town, Bedfordshire), the son and grandson of soldiers.

Victoria Cross
Rosamund was 33 years old, and a sergeant-major in the 37th Bengal Native Infantry, Bengal Army during the Indian Mutiny when the following deed on 4 June 1857 at Benares led to the award of the Victoria Cross for Rosamund, Sergeant-Major Peter Gill and Private John Kirk: "This Non-Commissioned Officer volunteered to accompany Lieutenant-Colonel Spottiswoode, Commanding the 37th Regiment of Bengal Native Infantry, to the right of the Lines, in order to set them on fire, with the view of driving out the Sepoys,—on the occasion of the outbreak at Benares, on the evening of the 4th of June, 1857; and also volunteered, with Serjeant-Major Gill, of the Loodiana Regiment, to bring off Captain Brown, Pension Paymaster, his wife and infant, and also some others, from a detached Bungalow, into the Barracks. His conduct was highly meritorious, and he has been since promoted."

Rosamund later achieved the rank of lieutenant but died on board ship and was buried in the Red Sea at the age of 43. His VC medal was sold at auction in 1903 and has not been located since.

A blue plaque has been erected in the village of Eaton Socon in Bedfordshire with the correct spelling of his surname which reads "Matthew Rosamond VC – On 4th June 1857 Matthew Rosamond, a relative of the Rosamond bakers on this site, won the Victoria Cross during the Indian Mutiny. He died on the Red Sea on 14th July 1866 and was buried at sea. This building was built by Budd's Bakers as a new bakehouse around 1930, replacing a much older timber framed property."

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Richard Ridgeway

Colonel Richard Kirby Ridgeway (18 August 1848 – 11 October 1924) was an Irish recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.

Biography
Ridgeway was born on 18 August 1848 in Oldcastle, County Meath, Ireland. He was commissioned into the British Army on 8 January 1868, and promoted to lieutenant on 14 February 1870.

Victoria Cross
On 22 November 1879, he was 31 years old, and a captain in the Bengal Staff Corps, 44th Gurkha Rifles (later 1/8th Gurkha Rifles), British Indian Army, during the Naga Hills Expedition. On that date, during the final assault on Konoma, Eastern Frontier of India, under heavy fire from the enemy, Captain Ridgeway rushed up to a barricade and attempted to tear down the planking surrounding it to enable him to effect an entrance. While doing this he was wounded severely in the right shoulder.

Later career
He was appointed assistant adjutant-general of the Peshawar district, part of the Punjab Command, on 29 April 1895, and was promoted to the rank of colonel on 8 January 1898. After an extended furlough back home, he resigned in early 1900, and did not return to India.

He died at the age of 76 in Harrogate, Yorkshire on 11 October 1924.

Notes and references
Listed in order of publication year
 * The Register of the Victoria Cross (1981, 1988 and 1997)
 * Ireland's VCs ISBN 1-899243-00-3 (Dept of Economic Development, 1995)
 * Monuments to Courage (David Harvey, 1999)
 * Irish Winners of the Victoria Cross (Richard Doherty & David Truesdale, 2000)
 * Irish Winners of the Victoria Cross (Richard Doherty & David Truesdale, 2000)

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Charles Pope

Charles Pope, VC (5 March 1883 – 15 April 1917) was an Australian recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces. He received the Victoria Cross posthumously for his actions on 15 April 1917 on the Western Front at the Battle of Lagnicourt, which took place during the First World War.

Early life
Born in Mile End, London, on 5 March 1883, Charles Pope's parents were William, a Metropolitan Police constable, and Jane Pope (born Clark). He attended school in Navestock, Essex, before moving to Canada where he worked for Canadian Pacific Railways. He returned to England in 1906 and joined the Metropolitan Police. Later that year, at St Luke's Anglican Church in Chelsea, he married Edith Smith, with whom he later had two children, Edith Maude and Charles William. In 1910, Pope resigned from the police force and moved his family to Perth, Western Australia. He took up work as a furniture salesman and then took on a role in the insurance sector.

Military career
Amidst the backdrop of the First World War, Pope enlisted with the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) on 31 August 1915, volunteering to serve overseas as part of Australia's commitment to the First World War. Assigned as a reinforcement to 11th Battalion, which had been formed largely from Western Australians and was at the time fighting at Gallipoli, after training he was quickly made a sergeant. By February 1916, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant and four months later sailed for England, to join the battalion, which had been transferred to Europe following its evacuation from Gallipoli, along with a batch of reinforcements. Sailing on HMAT Ajana, he arrived at Plymouth on 1 September 1916.

On 9 December 1916, Pope arrived on the Western Front reporting to the 11th Battalion, which was camped around Bazentin le Grand for the winter having fought at Pozières and Mouquet Farm earlier in the year. Later that month he was promoted to lieutenant and in early 1917 he attended the divisional school. Pope subsequently fought in actions around Flers, Le Barque, and Ligny–Thilloy. On 15 April 1917 at Louverval, France, during the Battle of Lagnicourt, he was in command of a very important picquet post, with orders to hold it at all costs amidst a heavy German attack. The enemy, in greatly superior numbers, attacked and surrounded the post and ammunition was running short. Pope, in a desperate bid to save the position, was "seen to charge with his men into a superior enemy force, by which they were overpowered", although heavy losses were inflicted. He had "obeyed the order to hold out to the last" and his lifeless body, along with those of most of his men, was found amongst 80 enemy dead.

The 11th Battalion, despite suffering over 245 casualties, was subsequently able to hold their sector of the line. For his actions Pope was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross. The award was announced in the London Gazette on 8 June 1917. He is buried at Moeuvres Communal Cemetery Extension in France, while his Victoria Cross is displayed at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.

Legacy
The Charles Pope ward at the former Repatriation General Hospital, Hollywood is named in his honour.

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Talk:Pseudomonas flourescens

Note that this page was also misspelled, and we already have a Pseudomonas fluorescens article. Might be worth keeping a redirect here as it's an easy misspelling to make. Securiger 08:22, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I have created a stub at Pseudomonas flourescens/Temp - a merge may be called for here? Brianjd

 * Yes, good idea. Securiger 10:21, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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User:This name is reserved

This name is reserved for me.

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Hugh Rowlands

General Sir Hugh Rowlands (6 May 1828 – 1 August 1909) was a Welsh recipient of the Victoria Cross for courageous action that led to the rescue of Colonel William O'Grady Haly during the Crimean War.

Early life
Hugh Rowlands was born in the village of Plastirion, Llanrug. He was the second son of miner and Welsh landowner John Rowlands, heir to the Plastirion estate, and his wife Elizabeth (née Hartwell). His family claimed descent from Bleddyn ap Cynfyn, Prince of Powys, and Dafydd ap Llywelyn, Prince of Gwynedd and had resided in the area for almost 200 years. He was educated at Beaumaris Grammar School and Mr John Taylor's Cramming Academy, Woolwich.

Career
Rowlands entered the military at the age of 21, purchasing a commission as an Ensign in the 41st (Welch) Regiment of Foot, British Army. Rowlands served in Ireland, Malta and the Ionian Islands and was promoted to captain in the 41st in September 1954, during the Crimean War. He first saw action at the battle of the Alma in the same month and was present at Little Inkerman the following month.

On 5 November 1854 in the Crimea at Inkerman, Captain Rowlands and Private John McDermond rescued Colonel William O'Grady Haly of the 47th Regiment who had been wounded and surrounded by Russian soldiers. He also acted with great gallantry in holding the ground occupied by his advanced picquet against the enemy at the commencement of the Battle of Inkerman. For this action he became the first Welshman to be awarded the Victoria Cross.

He further distinguished himself during the siege of Sevastopol and was nominated for a Victoria Cross in recognition of his action during the second assault on the Redan in September 1855.

After service in the West Indies and India he was a Special Service officer in South Africa in 1878 and 1879. He was appointed Commandant of the Transvaal in 1878 and led an unsuccessful assault on the Pedi stronghold of Chief Sekukuni. He served as a brigadier-general during the later stages of the Zulu War.

His latter years of service were spent in India where he commanded the Bangalore Division of the Madras Army and, on two occasions, took temporary command of the Madras Army. Returning to Britain he was appointed Lieutenant of the Tower of London in 1893 and Commander-in-Chief, Scotland in 1894 before retiring in 1896.

In 1897 he was appointed Colonel of the Duke of Wellington's Regiment, which he retained until his death in 1909.

Further information
He later achieved the rank of General. He was born and died in Llanrug. His VC is on display at the Welch Regiment Museum in Cardiff Castle in Wales. He served as a deputy lieutenant of Caernarfonshire and was a justice of the peace in Caernarfonshire and in the Transvaal. His only son, Major Hugh Barrow Rowlands, Suffolk Regiment and King's African Rifles, died of wounds in Somaliland in 1903.

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Clitoromegaly

Clitoromegaly (or macroclitoris ) is an abnormal enlargement of the clitoris that is mostly congenital; it is otherwise acquired through deliberately induced clitoral enlargement e.g. body modification by use of anabolic steroids, including testosterone. It can happen as part of a gender transition. It is not the same as normal enlargement of the clitoris seen during sexual arousal.

Presentation
Degree of genital ambiguity is commonly measured by the Prader classification, which ranges, in ascending order of masculinisation, from 1: female external genitalia with clitoromegaly through 5: pseudo-phallus looking like normal male external genitalia.

Causes
Clitoromegaly is a rare condition and can be either present by birth or acquired later in life. If present at birth, congenital adrenal hyperplasia can be one of the causes, since in this condition the adrenal gland of the female fetus produces additional androgens and the newborn baby has ambiguous genitalia which are not clearly male or female. In pregnant women who received norethisterone during pregnancy, masculinization of the fetus occurs, resulting in hypertrophy of the clitoris; however, this is rarely seen nowadays due to use of safer progestogens. It can also be caused by the autosomal recessive congenital disorder known as Fraser syndrome.

In acquired clitoromegaly, the main cause is endocrine hormonal imbalance affecting the adult person, including polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) and hyperthecosis. Acquired clitoromegaly may also be caused by pathologies affecting the ovaries and other endocrine glands. These pathologies may include virulent (such as arrhenoblastoma) and neurofibromatosic tumors. Another cause is clitoral cysts. Sometimes there may be no obvious clinical or hormonal reason.

Female bodybuilders and athletes who use androgens, primarily to enhance muscular growth, strength and appearance, may also experience clearly evident enlargement of the clitoris and increases in libido. Women who use testosterone for therapeutic reasons (treating low libido, averting osteoporosis, as part of an anti-depressant regimen, etc.) may experience some enlargement of the clitoris, although the dosages warranted for these conditions are much lower.

Anatomy
In Atlas of Human Sex Anatomy (1949) by Robert Latou Dickinson, the typical clitoris is defined as having a crosswise measurement of 3 to 4 mm (0.12 - 0.16 inches) and a lengthwise measurement of 4 to 5 mm (0.16 - 0.20 inches). On the other hand, in obstetrics and gynecology medical literature, a frequent definition of clitoromegaly is when there is a clitoral index (product of lengthwise and crosswise measurements) of greater than 35 mm2 (0.05 inches2), which is almost twice the size given above for an average sized clitoris.

Human rights concerns
Early surgical reduction of clitoromegaly via full or partial clitoridectomy is controversial, and intersex people exposed to such treatment have spoken of their loss of physical sensation, and loss of autonomy. In recent years, human rights institutions have criticized early surgical management of such characteristics.

In 2013, it was disclosed in a medical journal that four unnamed elite female athletes from developing countries were required to receive gonadectomies and partial clitoridectomies if they wanted to continue competing after testosterone testing revealed that they had an intersex condition. In April 2016, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on health, Dainius Pūras, condemned this treatment as a form of female genital mutilation "in the absence of symptoms or health issues warranting those procedures."

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Benson John Lossing

Benson John Lossing (February 12, 1813 — June 3, 1891) was an American historian, known best for his illustrated books on the American Revolution and American Civil War and features in Harper's Magazine. He was a charter trustee of Vassar College.

Early life
Lossing was born February 12, 1813, in Beekman, New York. His father John was descended of old Dutch stock, originally surnamed Lassing or Lassingh, who had been among the earliest settlers of the Hudson Valley. His mother, Miriam Dorland Lossing was a Quaker. His formal education was curtailed when he was orphaned in 1824. Soon thereafter, he moved to Poughkeepsie to serve as apprentice to Adam Henderson, clock and watchmaker and silversmith. During his apprenticeship he read a number of history books, and over a period of several years pursued an independent study. He became interested in history after reading Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, John Marshall's The Life of George Washington, and the Bible. By 1833, Lossing and Henderson had formed a partnership.

Career
In 1835, Lossing became part owner and editor of the Poughkeepsie Telegraph. Out of that publication grew a semi-monthly literary paper, the Poughkeepsie Casket. Lossing began to learn the art of wood engraving from J. A. Adams, illustrator for the paper.

In 1838, Lossing moved to New York City seeking greater opportunity as a journalist and illustrator. He edited and illustrated J.S. Rothchild's weekly Family Magazine from 1839 to 1841 and launched his literary career with the publication of his Outline of the History of Fine Arts. In 1846, he joined William Barritt in a wood engraving business that became one of the largest of such firms in New York. His illustrations appeared in the New-York Mirror and several other periodicals. During this time, Lossing sat for a portrait by Thomas Seir Cummings (1804–1894), now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

Around 1848, Lossing conceived the idea of writing a narrative sketchbook on the American Revolution. The first installment was published in Harper's New Monthly Magazine in 1850; the completed Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution was published in 1853. To gather material for the work, Lossing traveled some 8,000 miles throughout the United States and Canada. As with his subsequent books, his pen and ink drawings served as the primary illustrations when turned into wood cuts. The book won him critical acclaim and general reputation. During and after the Civil War, Lossing toured the United States and the once Confederacy. On the basis of that research, he published a three-volume pictorial field book/history of the war, which is also presumed to have been Mathew Brady's first collaboration in the use of his Civil War photographs as book illustrations. In 1860 and 1861, the London Art Journal featured a series of Lossing's articles describing the history and scenery of the Hudson Valley; the illustrated articles were published in 1866 under the title The Hudson: From the Wilderness to the Sea. Lossing was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1872. He was awarded an LL.D. by the University of Michigan in 1873, adding to lesser degrees previously awarded him by Hamilton College and Columbia University. He also worked with engraver and book publisher George Edward Perine, most notably on his "History of New York City" (1884).

Historian
Lossing's significance as a historian derives from his diligence in seeking out primary records, his interviews with participants of events and intimates of his biographical subjects, and his care to weigh and contrast details of his various sources. Although such efforts are today a standard among historians, in Lossing's time they were not. Historiography was not yet a discipline. Washington Irving, with whom he corresponded, wrote, "I have been gratified at finding how scrupulously attentive you have been to accuracy to facts, which is so essential in writings of an historical nature." This made him an essential secondary source for contemporary and succeeding historians, such as Theodore Roosevelt in his The Naval War of 1812.

Personal life
On June 18, 1833, Lossing married his first wife, Alice Barrit, who died in 1855. On November 18, 1856, Lossing married his second wife, Helen Sweet. In 1868, the Lossings moved to a manor in Dover, New York, that Helen had inherited from her family; they called this The Ridge, but by later custom it has come to be known as Lossing Manor. There Benson had built a fireproof library to house his collection of over five thousand books and documents associated with the American Revolution and the framing of the Constitution. Lossing was actively involved in charitable, civic, literary, and historical societies, most notably serving as a charter trustee of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie. He died at home in Dover Plains, New York, on June 3, 1891. A written reminiscence of the Lossing family and life in 19th century New York was assembled by his son, Thomas Sweet Lossing; edited by his great-nephew, Peter Hannaford, it was published as My Heart Goes Home in 1997 (Purple Mountain Press, Fleischmanns, New York).

Works

Among the over 40 books Benson Lossing authored:
 * Outline of the History of the Fine Arts (1840)
 * Seventeen Hundred and Seventy-Six or the War of Independence; A History of the Anglo - Americans from the period of the Union of the Colonies against the French to the inauguration of Washington the First President of the United States of America (1847; 1852)
 * Biographical Sketches of the Signers of the Declaration of American Independence (1848)
 * Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution (1850–1852)
 * A Primary History of the United States for Schools and Families (1857, revised 1866)
 * Life of Washington: A Biography Personal, Military, Political (1860)
 * The Life and Times of Philip Schuyler (1860; revised, 1880)
 * The Hudson from the Wilderness to the Sea (1866)
 * Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War (1866–1869)
 * Vassar College and its Founder (1867)
 * History of The United States (1867)
 * Pictorial Field Book of the War of 1812 (1868)
 * Mount Vernon & Its Associations (1859) and other editions titled Mount Vernon, or the Home of Washington
 * Washington and the American Republic (1870)
 * Memoir of Lieut. Col. John T. Greble (1870) (private printing)
 * A History of England, Political, Military, And Social from the Earliest Times to the Present (1871)
 * Our Country: A Household History of the United States for all Readers, From the Discovery of America to the Present Time (1873)
 * The American Centenary (1876)
 * History of American Industries & Arts (1878)
 * Story of the United States Navy for Boys (1881)
 * Cyclopœdia of United States History (1881)
 * New history of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent to ... Inauguration of ... Chester A. Arthur: For all Readers (1881)
 * Biography of James Garfield (1882)
 * Lossing's School History of the United States (1883)
 * History of New York City (1884)
 * Mary and Martha: The Mother and Wife of George Washington (1886)
 * The Empire State, a Compendious History of the Commonwealth of New York (1888)
 * Reflections of Rebellion: Hours With the Living Men and Women of the Revolution; A Pilgrimage (1889)

He co-authored, edited or collaborated in the following works:
 * The Diary of George Washington, from 1789 to 1791 (1860)
 * with Anna Seward: The Two Spies: Nathan Hale & John Andre (1886)
 * with George Jotham Hagar, John Elliot Read and Alfred Hudson Guernsey: The Achievements of Four Centuries, or the Wonderful Story of Our Great Continent ... (1890)

Published posthumously were:
 * The Progress of Four Hundred Years in The Great Republic of the West (1890)
 * Lossing's Complete History of the United States (1896) Edition De Luxe. Limited to five Hundred copies of which this is No. (?) Lossing History Company, Nineteen Hundred and Five. Over seven Hundred Illustrations by Felix O.C. Darley and other well known Artists.
 * Special Notice: Any Person using any of the illustrations in this book without permission of the publishers will be prosecuted-L.P. Co.
 * with John Frederick Schroeder and E. C. Towne: The Life and Times of George Washington (1903)
 * Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History from 458 A.D to 1909. Based Upon the Plan of Benson John Lossing (1909). This 10-volume set included contributions from Woodrow Wilson and Alfred Thayer Mahan.

title: Benson John Lossing


text:
Robert Montresor Rogers

Major General Robert Montresor Rogers, (4 September 1834 – 5 February 1895) was a British Army officer and an Irish recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.

Details
He was 25 years old, and a lieutenant in the 44th Regiment of Foot, British Army during the Second Opium War when the following deed took place for which he was awarded the VC.

On 21 August 1860 at the Taku Forts, China, Lieutenant Rogers, together with a private (John McDougall) of his regiment and a lieutenant of the 67th Regiment (Edmund Henry Lenon) displayed great gallantry in swimming the ditches and entering the North Taku Fort by an embrasure during the assault.

His citation reads: "For distinguished gallantry in swimming the Ditches, and entering the North Taku Fort by an embrasure during the assault. They were the first of the English established on the walls of the Fort, which they entered in the order in which their names are here recorded, each one being assisted by the others to mount the embrasure."

Further information
He later achieved the rank of major general. He died in Maidenhead, Berkshire, 5 February 1895 and he is buried in the churchyard at All Saints church, Boyne Hill, Maidenhead.

His Medal is displayed at the "Du Monde Traigue" Museum in Brussels.

title: Robert Montresor Rogers


text: Category:Traffic signs

title: Category:Traffic signs


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Patrick Roddy

Colonel Patrick Roddy VC (17 March 1827 – 21 November 1895) was an Irish recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.

Details
He was 31 years old, and an ensign in the Bengal Army during the Indian Mutiny when the following deed took place for which he was awarded the VC. "Ensign (now Lieutenant) Patrick Roddy

Date of Act of Bravery, 27th September, 1858

Major-General Sir James Hope Grant, K.C.B., Commanding Oudh Force, bears testimony to the gallant conduct of Lieutenant Roddy, on several occasions. One instance is particularly mentioned.

On the return from Kuthirga of the Kuppurthulla Contingent, on the 27th of September, 1858, this officer, when engaged with the enemy, charged a Rebel (armed with a percussion musket), whom the Cavalry were afraid to approach, as each time they attempted to do so, the Rebel knelt and covered his assailant; this, however, did not deter Lieutenant Roddy, who went boldly in, and when within six yards, the Rebel fired, killing Lieutenant Roddy's horse, and before he could get disengaged from the horse, the Rebel attempted to cut him down. Lieutenant Roddy seized the Rebel until he could get at his sword, when he ran the man through the body. The Rebel turned out to be a subadar of the late 8th Native Infantry,—a powerful man, and a most determined character."

Further information
He served in the Abyssinian War and the Second Anglo-Afghan War. He later achieved the rank of colonel. He died at Jersey, Channel Islands on 21 November 1895.

title: Patrick Roddy


text:
File:VCWilliamNash.jpg

Photo of Victoria Cross recipient William Nash, migrated from the Victoria Cross Reference site with permission. Photo submitted by Neil Hutton.

title: File:VCWilliamNash.jpg


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William Nash (VC)

William Nash (23 April 1824 – 6 April 1875) born in Newcastle, County Limerick he was an Irish recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.

Details
He was a 33-year-old corporal in the 2nd Battalion, The Rifle Brigade (Prince Consort's Own), British Army during the Indian Mutiny when the following deed took place for which he was awarded the VC:

On 11 March 1858 at Lucknow, India, Corporal Nash's company was engaged with a large number of the enemy near the Iron Bridge. At one stage a captain (Henry Wilmot) found himself at the end of a street with only four of his men opposed to a considerable body of the enemy. One of the men was shot through both legs and Corporal Nash and a private (David Hawkes) (who was himself severely wounded) lifted the man up and they then carried him for a considerable distance, the captain covering the retreat of the party.

He later achieved the rank of sergeant. He died Hackney, Middlesex, 6 April 1875 and was buried at the Church of St John-at-Hackney.

title: William Nash (VC)


text:
Volaircraft

Volaircraft Inc was a US aircraft manufacturer established in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania in 1958 by Jack Gilberti to produce a light utility aircraft, known as the Volaire. The firm and the rights to its aircraft were purchased by North American Rockwell in 1965, operating as the Aliquppa Division of Aero Commander, itself a division of Rockwell Standard.

title: Volaircraft


text:
Michael John O'Leary

Major Michael John O'Leary VC (29 September 1890 – 2 August 1961) was an Irish soldier and police officer who was a recipient of the Victoria Cross, the most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth military personnel. O'Leary achieved his award for single-handedly charging and destroying two Imperial German Army barricades defended by machine gun positions near the French village of Cuinchy, in a localised operation on the Western Front during World War I.

At the time of his action, O'Leary was a nine-year veteran of the British Armed Forces and by the time he retired from the British Army in 1921, he had reached the rank of lieutenant. He served in the army again during World War II, although his later service was blighted by periods of ill-health. At his final retirement from the military in 1945, O'Leary was in command of a prisoner-of-war camp at the rank of Major. Between the wars, O'Leary spent many years employed as a police officer in Canada and is sometimes considered to be a Canadian recipient of the Victoria Cross. Following the end of the Second World War, he worked as a building contractor in London, where he died in 1961.

Early life
O'Leary was born in 1890, one of four children of Daniel and Margaret O'Leary, who owned a farm at Inchigeela, near Macroom in County Cork, Ireland. Daniel O'Leary was a fervent Irish nationalist and keen sportsman who participated in competitive weightlifting and football. Aged 16 and unwilling to continue to work on his parents' land, Michael O'Leary joined the Royal Navy, serving at the shore establishment HMS Vivid at Devonport for several years until rheumatism in his knees forced his departure from the service. Within a few months however, O'Leary had again tired of the farm and joined the Irish Guards regiment of the British Army.

O'Leary served three years with the Irish Guards, leaving in August 1913 to join the Royal North-West Mounted Police (RNWMP) in Saskatchewan, Canada. Operating from Regina, Constable O'Leary was soon commended for his bravery in capturing two criminals following a two-hour gunbattle, for which service he was presented with a gold ring. At the outbreak of the First World War in Europe during August 1914, O'Leary was given permission to leave the RNWMP and return to Britain in order to rejoin the army as an active reservist. On 22 October, O'Leary was mobilised and on 23 November he joined his regiment in France, then fighting with the British Expeditionary Force, entrenched in Flanders.

First World War service
During December 1914, O'Leary saw heavy fighting with the Irish Guards and was Mentioned in Despatches and subsequently promoted to lance corporal on 5 January 1915. Three weeks later, on 30 January, the Irish Guards were ordered to prepare for an attack on German positions near Cuinchy on the La Bassée Canal, a response to a successful German operation in the area five days before. The Germans attacked first however, and on the morning of 1 February seized a stretch of canal embankment on the western end of the 2nd Brigade line from a company of Coldstream Guards. This section, known as the Hollow, was tactically important as it defended a culvert that passed underneath a railway embankment. 4 Company of Irish Guards, originally in reserve, were tasked with joining the Coldstream Guards in retaking the position at 04:00, but the attack was met with heavy machine gun fire and most of the assault party, including all of the Irish Guards officers, were killed or wounded.

To replace these officers, Second Lieutenant Innes of 1 Company was ordered forward to gather the survivors and withdraw, forming up at a barricade on the edge of the Hollow. Innes regrouped the survivors and, following a heavy bombardment from supporting artillery and with his own company providing covering fire, assisted the Coldstream Guards in a second attack at 10:15. Weighed down with entrenching equipment, the attacking Coldstream Guardsmen faltered and began to suffer heavy casualties. Innes too came under heavy fire from a German barricade to their front equipped with a machine gun.

O'Leary had been serving as Innes's orderly, and had joined him in the operations earlier in the morning and again in the second attack. Charging past the rest of the assault party, O'Leary closed with the first German barricade at the top of the railway embankment and fired five shots, killing the gun's crew. Continuing forward, O'Leary confronted a second barricade, also armed with a machine gun 60 yd further on and again mounted the railway embankment, to avoid the marshy ground on either side. The Germans spotted his approach, but could not bring their gun to bear on him before he opened fire, killing three soldiers and capturing two others after he ran out of ammunition. Reportedly, O'Leary had made his advance on the second barricade "intent upon killing another German to whom he had taken a dislike".

Having disabled both guns and enabled the recapture of the British position, O'Leary then returned to his unit with his prisoners, apparently "as cool as if he had been for a walk in the park." For his actions, O'Leary received a battlefield promotion to sergeant on 4 February and was recommended for the Victoria Cross, which was gazetted on 16 February:

No. 3556 Lance-Corporal Michael O'Leary, 1st Battalion, Irish Guards For conspicuous bravery at Cuinchy on the 1st February, 1915. When forming one of the storming party which advanced against the enemy's barricades he rushed to the front and himself killed five Germans who were holding the first barricade, after which he attacked a second barricade, about 60 yards further on, which he captured, after killing three of the enemy and making prisoners of two more.

Lance-Corporal O'Leary thus practically captured the enemy's position by himself and prevented the attacking party from being fired upon.

The London Gazette, 16 February 1915

Later war service
Returning to Britain to receive his medal from King George V at Buckingham Palace on 22 June 1915, O'Leary was given a grand reception attended by thousands of Londoners in Hyde Park on 10 July. He was also the subject of much patriotic writing, including a poem in the Daily Mail and the short play O'Flaherty V.C. by George Bernard Shaw. Tributes came from numerous prominent figures of the day, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who said that "No writer in fiction would dare to fasten such an achievement on any of his characters, but the Irish have always had a reputation of being wonderful fighters, and Lance-Corporal Michael O’Leary is clearly one of them." and Thomas Scanlan who said: "I heard early this week of the great achievements of the Irish Guards. All Ireland is proud of O’Leary. He fully deserves the high honour that has been conferred upon him. Ireland is grateful to him." His reception was repeated in Macroom when he visited Ireland, with crowds turning out to applaud him. Daniel O'Leary was interviewed in a local newspaper regarding his son's exploit but was reportedly unimpressed, commenting: "I am surprised he didn't do more. I often laid out twenty men myself with a stick coming from Macroom Fair, and it is a bad trial of Mick that he could kill only eight, and he having a rifle and bayonet." According to one eyewitness account, Daniel caused public embarrassment when he confused his son's German opponents for the English.

O'Leary was further rewarded for his service, being advanced to a commissioned rank as a second lieutenant with the Connaught Rangers, and he was also presented with a Russian decoration, the Cross of St. George (third class). Despite his popularity with the crowds in London and Macroom, he was jeered by Ulster Volunteers at a recruitment drive in Ballaghaderreen during the autumn of 1915. This treatment caused such a scandal that it was raised in the Houses of Parliament in December.

In 1916, O'Leary travelled to Salonika with the 5th battalion of the Connaught Rangers to serve in the Balkans campaign, remaining in theatre until the end of the war, following which he was stationed in Dover with the 2nd battalion until demobilised in 1921. During his service in the Balkans, O'Leary contracted malaria, which was to have severe negative effects on his health for the rest of his life.

O'Leary was in the same regiment as the British actor Stanley Holloway and they served together in France. After the war ended, they remained close friends and Holloway often stayed in The May Fair Hotel where O'Leary worked as a concierge.

Later life
Leaving his wife Greta and their two children in Britain, O'Leary returned to Canada in March 1921 with the purported intention of rejoining the RNWMP, newly renamed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. For unknown reasons, this plan came to nothing and after some months giving lectures on his war service and working in a publishing house, O'Leary joined the Ontario Provincial Police, charged with enforcing the prohibition laws. In 1924, with his family recently arrived from England, O'Leary left the Ontario police force and became a police sergeant with the Michigan Central Railway in Bridgeburg, Ontario, receiving £33 a month.

In 1925, O'Leary was the subject of several scandals, being arrested for smuggling illegal immigrants and later for irregularities in his investigations. Although he was acquitted both times, he spent a week in prison following the second arrest and lost his job with the railway. Several months later, the municipal authorities in Hamilton, Ontario loaned him £70 to pay for him and his family to return to Ireland. Although his family sailed on the SS Leticia, O'Leary remained in Ontario, working with the attorney general's office.

With his health in serious decline, the British Legion arranged for O'Leary to return to Britain and work in their poppy factory. By 1932, O'Leary was living in Southborne Avenue in Colindale, had regained his health and found employment as a commissionaire at The May Fair Hotel in London, at which he was involved in charitable events for wounded servicemen. With the mobilisation of the British Army in 1939, O'Leary returned to military service as a captain in the Middlesex Regiment. O'Leary was sent to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force but had returned to Britain before the Battle of France due to a recurrence of his malaria. No longer fit for full active service, O'Leary was transferred to the Pioneer Corps and took command of a prisoner-of-war camp in Southern England. In 1945, he was discharged from the military as unfit for duty on medical grounds at the rank of major and found work as a building contractor, in which career he remained until his retirement in 1954. Two of O'Leary's sons had also served in the military during the war, with both receiving the Distinguished Flying Cross for their actions. As a Victoria Cross recipient, O'Leary joined the VE day parade in 1946, but at the 1956 Centenary VC review his place was taken by an imposter travelling in a bath chair. With his health again declining, O'Leary moved to Limesdale Gardens in Edgware shortly before his death in 1961 at the Whittington Hospital in Islington.

O'Leary was buried at Mill Hill Cemetery following a funeral service at the Roman Catholic Annunciation Church in Burnt Oak which was attended by an honour guard from the Irish Guards and six of his children. His medals were later presented to the Irish Guards, and are on display at the Regimental Headquarters. He is also remembered in his birthplace, the macroom-online website listing him as a prominent citizen and states that "while many might consider he was fighting with the wrong army, in the wrong war, he was nevertheless a very brave, resourceful and capable soldieer [sic] who deserved the honours bestowed upon him."

title: Michael John O'Leary


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Shelter (Lone Justice album)

Shelter is the second album by American country rock band Lone Justice, released in November 1986.

Critical reception
Jon Pareles, music critic for The New York Times, gave high praise to McKee's singing and the band's musicianship, but described the album as something of a disappointment in that "the band's songwriting has grown weaker": whereas the songs of the debut album were filled with "down-to-earth details that make country music hit home", those of Shelter "are much vaguer – they're about abstracted emotions rather than recognizable people".

Track listing
Writing credits adapted from the album's liner notes.

Personnel
Adapted from the album's liner notes.

Lone Justice
 * Maria McKee – vocals, guitar, piano
 * Ryan Hedgecock – guitar
 * Shane Fontayne – guitar
 * Gregg Sutton – bass guitar, vocals
 * Bruce Brody – keyboards
 * Rudy Richman – drums

Additional personnel
 * Tommy Mandel – keyboards
 * Benmont Tench – keyboards
 * Charles Judge – keyboards
 * Little Steven – acoustic guitar, rhythm guitar
 * Vesta Williams – background vocals [1]
 * Portia Griffin – background vocals [1]
 * Alexandra Brown – background vocals [1]
 * Audrey Wheeler – background vocals [4]
 * Brenda White-King – background vocals [4]
 * Kevin Dorsey – background vocals [5]
 * Debra Dobkin – percussion [7]

Production
 * Little Steven – producer
 * Jimmy Iovine – producer
 * Lone Justice – producer
 * Joe Chiccarelli – associate producer, engineer, mixing
 * Robert de la Garza – engineer
 * Don Smith – engineer
 * Steven Rinkoff – engineer
 * Niko Bolas – engineer
 * Bruce Lampcov – engineer
 * Joe Borja – engineer
 * Scott Litt – engineer
 * Greg Edward – engineer, mixing
 * Shelly Yakus – engineer, mixing
 * Rob Jacobs – assistant engineer
 * Michael Bowman – assistant engineer
 * Marc DeSisto – assistant engineer
 * Craig Engel – assistant engineer
 * Ross Stein – assistant engineer
 * Mike Shipley – mixing
 * Humberto Gatica – mixing
 * Stephen Marcussen – mastering
 * Janet Weber – production coordination
 * Paula Pavlik – production assistant
 * Cooper Edens – cover art
 * Melanie Nissen – photography
 * Kim Champagne – design

title: Shelter (Lone Justice album)


text: Talk:Shelter (Lone Justice album)

title: Talk:Shelter (Lone Justice album)


text:
File:VCJamesMcPhie.jpg

Photo of Victoria Cross recipient James McPhie, migrated from the Victoria Cross Reference site with permission. Photo submitted by Gerald Napier - (from the Royal Engineers Library with permission).

title: File:VCJamesMcPhie.jpg


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James McPhie

James McPhie VC (18 December 1894 – 14 October 1918) was a Scottish recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.

Details
McPhie was 23 years old, and a corporal in the 416th (Edinburgh) Field Company, Royal Engineers, British Army, during the First World War when the following deed took place for which he was awarded the VC.

On 14 October 1918 at the Canal de la Sensée near Aubencheul-au-Bac, Nord, France, Corporal McPhie was with a party of sappers maintaining a cork float bridge, which when our infantry started to cross it just before dawn began to break away and sink. Corporal McPhie jumped into the water and tried to hold the cork and timbers together but this proved impossible so he swam back and collected the materials for repair. Although it was daylight and the bridge was under close fire he then led the way to the bridge, axe in hand. He was severely wounded and died almost at once. However, the bridge was kept open and 1/2nd Battalion, London Regiment were able to maintain their bridgehead on the opposite bank until relieved.

His grave is at Naves, about 6 km east of Cambrai.

He was commemorated on the war memorial doorway in St George's Church, Charlotte Square, Edinburgh, and, when the church was closed and the memorial demolished, on a plaque in St Andrew's & St George's West Church. He is also commemorated by a bench in West Princes Street Gardens under the Royal Scots Grey statue, there is also a memorial stone at the corner of Brown St. Edinburgh].

The medal
His Victoria Cross is displayed at the Imperial War Museum, London, England.

title: James McPhie


text:
Talk:30th century

what movies and what television series and what books and what video games and what computer games will be in the 30th century?
what movies and what television series and what books and what video games and what computer games will be in the 30th century? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.121.245.99 (talk) 13:47, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

title: Talk:30th century


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Lewis McGee (soldier)

Lewis McGee, VC (13 May 1888 – 12 October 1917) was an Australian recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest decoration for gallantry "in the face of the enemy" that can be awarded to members of the British and Commonwealth armed forces. As a sergeant in the Australian Imperial Force, McGee was awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions in the Battle of Broodseinde—part of the Passchendaele offensive—on 4 October 1917. As his platoon came under heavy machine gun fire from a German pillbox, McGee rushed alone across open ground towards the emplacement. Armed solely with a revolver, he shot the gunners and captured the garrison. He then organised a bombing party, and led the group in the seizure of a second machine gun post.

Born in Tasmania, McGee gained employment as an engine driver with the Tasmanian Department of Railways. In March 1916, he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force for service in the First World War. He was posted to the 40th Battalion, and completed training in Tasmania and the United Kingdom, where he was promoted to lance corporal. Transferring to the Western Front in November 1916, McGee was rapidly promoted to corporal then sergeant, and took part in the Battle of Messines. He was killed in action on 12 October 1917 during the First Battle of Passchendaele, eight days after his Victoria Cross exploit.

Early life
McGee was born in Campbell Town, Tasmania, on 13 May 1888, the youngest of eleven children to John McGee, a labourer and farmer, and his wife Mary (née Green). Three of McGee's sisters had died in infancy prior to his birth, and—when Lewis was aged only seven—his mother succumbed to pleurisy. Following his wife's death, John relocated his remaining family to a new farming property near Avoca. Here, Lewis gained employment as an engine driver with the Tasmanian Department of Railways. He also achieved a reputation as a "powerful athlete", particularly as a cyclist with the Avoca Cycling Club. On 15 November 1914, McGee married Eileen Rose Bailey; the couple had daughter called Nada the following year.

First World War
On 1 March 1916, McGee enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force for service during the First World War. Allotted to the 40th Battalion as a private, he was initially posted for training at Claremont military camp with his unit for a period of three months. He was advanced to lance corporal on 22 May. On finalising its primary training, the 40th Battalion embarked for the United Kingdom on 1 July, with McGee aboard HMAT Berrima. Arriving seven weeks later, the battalion was dispatched to Salisbury Plain to complete an additional period of training in preparation of its deployment to the Western Front.

McGee proceeded to France, and the Western Front, with his battalion on 23 November 1916, arriving the next day. The unit was ultimately posted to Armentières, where McGee was raised to corporal on 4 December. Five days after his promotion, the 40th Battalion was moved into the frontline, occupying a set of trenches just south of Lys. Over subsequent engagements, McGee gained a reputation as a "natural soldier", which consequently led to his promotion to sergeant on 12 January 1917. The 40th Battalion undertook various small-scale operations and raids throughout this period until June, when it fought in the Battle of Messines. This was followed by a period in reserve behind the lines, before the battalion was shipped to Belgium in preparation for its service in the Passchendaele offensive.

Victoria Cross
As part of the third phase of the Passchendaele offensive, the 10th Australian Brigade—of which McGee's 40th Battalion was part—was detailed to execute an attack on Broodseinde Ridge. The brigade was allocated four primary objectives to seize during the assault, one for each battalion, with the 40th Battalion to take the final target located on the ridge itself. The advance commenced at the predetermined time of 06:00 on 4 October 1917, under the cover of an artillery barrage. The first three battalions were able to seize their objectives, though the fighting intensified with each stage. As the 40th Battalion set to advance towards the final objective, its progress became hampered by increasingly heavy machine-gun and rifle fire, as well as by barbed wire entanglements and sectors of impassable swamp.

With McGee's B Company heading the 40th Battalion's advance, the unit was able to progress to a point approximately 270 m in front of the crest, where it was confronted by a thick line of barbed wire and another bog, while simultaneously subject to the fire of ten machine guns in trenches and heavily defended pillboxes. The men of B Company struggled to within 90 m of the battalion's objective, when the severe fire of the German machine guns pinned them down in shellholes.

McGee's platoon was suffering heavy casualties from a particular machine gun 50 m in front of his position, which was set in a recess atop a concrete pillbox and firing directly at his men. Armed solely with a revolver, McGee dashed alone towards the post across the fire-swept ground. Shooting the gunners, he captured the remaining soldiers in the garrison as prisoners and seized control of the pillbox. On returning to his unit, he reorganised his men and led a bombing party in the capture of a second machine-gun post. McGee's actions reignited the 40th Battalion's advance, with McGee himself "foremost in the remainder" of the action. By 09:12 on 5 October, the 40th Battalion had seized its objective and held complete control of the Broodseinde Ridge, having captured 300 Germans as prisoners in the process.

As a result of his actions at Broodseinde, McGee was awarded the Victoria Cross, one of two Australians to be so decorated that day. However, he never saw the announcement of the award. On 12 October 1917—eight days after McGee's Victoria Cross action—the 40th Battalion returned to the frontline, in an attempt to exploit the success of the previous week. The battlefield was drenched in rain, turning the ground into a quagmire that was additionally dominated by several German pillboxes. McGee—who had been appointed acting company sergeant major of B Company that morning—led his unit into the attack. As the men of the company advanced forward, a machine gun began firing upon them from the front, before a second opened up on their flank. Men ran to take cover in shellholes as the German fire inflicted several casualties. McGee, however, made a rush towards the guns in an apparent effort to silence them. As he ran towards the pillbox, a bullet struck him in the head, killing him instantly. McGee was later buried in Tyne Cot Cemetery; he was one of 248 members of the 40th Battalion killed or wounded during the Battle of Passchendaele. McGee's fellow Australian Victoria Cross recipient from Broodseinde, Lance Corporal Walter Peeler, was also severely wounded on this day, receiving a bullet wound to his arm.

Legacy

The announcement and accompanying citation for McGee's Victoria Cross was promulgated in a supplement to The London Gazette on 26 November 1917, reading:

"War Office, 26th November, 1917.

His Majesty the KING has been graciously pleased to approve of the award of the Victoria Cross to the undermentioned Officer, Non-commissioned Officers and Men: —

No. 456 Sjt. Lewis McGee, late Aus. Imp. Force.

For most conspicuous bravery when in the advance to the final objective, Sjt. McGee led his platoon with great dash and bravery, though strongly opposed, and under heavy shell fire.

His platoon was suffering severely and the advance of the Company was stopped by machine gun fire from a 'Pill-box' post. Single-handed Sjt. McGee rushed the post armed only with a revolver. He shot some of the crew and captured the rest, and thus enabled the advance to proceed. He reorganised the remnants of his platoon and was foremost in the remainder of the advance, and during consolidation of the position he did splendid work.

This Non-commissioned Officer's coolness and bravery were conspicuous and contributed largely to the success of the Company's operations.

Sjt. McGee was subsequently killed in action."

McGee's wife, Eileen, was presented with her late husband's Victoria Cross by the Governor-General of Australia, Sir Ronald Munro Ferguson, at an investiture ceremony in Launceston's York Park during October 1918. Additionally, Eileen McGee was later gifted an Iron Cross that her husband had captured from a German officer at Broodseinde, which was enclosed in a letter of condolence written to her by an officer of the 40th Battalion.

Prior to his Victoria Cross action, McGee had been noted in the 40th Battalion for his leadership qualities, and had attained a "famous fighting record". In addition to his decoration, McGee had been recommended for a commission as a result of his actions at Broodseinde, with an officer in his battalion declaring "had he lived his commission would have been assured". His original company commander, Major Leslie Payne, noted McGee's "sterling qualities as a leader" and stated: "His ability in the carrying out of certain important tasks early in the year was most marked and ... there is in my opinion, and the opinion of many others, no more gallant and capable non-commissioned officer in the battalion."

McGee is commemorated on a war cenotaph located in Ross, Tasmania, and his name was given to the McGee Soldiers' Club at Anglesea Army Barracks, Tasmania, which was opened in 1956. During the 150th anniversary celebrations of the town of Avoca in March 1984, the Governor of Tasmania, Sir James Plimsoll, unveiled a memorial plaque on the Returned Serviceman's League cenotaph honouring McGee; his widow and their daughter attended the ceremony. McGee's Victoria Cross and other medals are held in the collections of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Tasmania.

title: Lewis McGee (soldier)


text:
William Henry Grimbaldeston

William Henry Grimbaldeston VC (19 September 1889 – 13 August 1959) was an English recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.

Grimbaldeston was 27 years old, and an Acting Company Quartermaster-Sergeant in the 1st Battalion, The King's Own Scottish Borderers, British Army at the Battle of Passchendaele during the First World War when he performed a deed for which he was awarded the Victoria Cross.

On 16 August 1917 at Wijdendrift, Belgium, Company Quartermaster-Sergeant Grimbaldeston noticed that the unit on his left was held up by enemy machine-gun fire from a blockhouse. Arming himself with a rifle and hand grenade he started to crawl towards his objective, and when he had advanced about 100 yards another soldier came forward to give covering support. Although wounded, he pushed on to the blockhouse, threatened the machine-gun teams inside with a hand grenade and forced them to surrender. This action resulted in the capture of 36 prisoners, six machine-guns and one trench mortar.

He was also awarded the French Croix de Guerre.

The medal
His Victoria Cross is displayed at the Regimental Museum of The Kings Own Scottish Borderers, Berwick upon Tweed, Northumberland, England.

title: William Henry Grimbaldeston


text:
Lost Battalion

Lost Battalion may refer to:

 * Lost Battalion (World War I), American units which were isolated by Germans in 1918
 * Lost Battalion (Europe, World War II), an American battalion which was surrounded by Germans in 1944
 * Lost Battalion (Pacific, World War II), an American battalion and survivors from a ship's crew taken prisoner early in the Pacific War
 * Lost Battalion (China), the Chinese Lost Battalion during the Defense of Sihang Warehouse in 1937
 * The Lost Battalion (1919 film), a 1919 film about the World War I event
 * Lost Battalion (1960 film) a 1960 Filipino World War II film
 * The Lost Battalion (2001 film), a remake of the 1919 film

title: Lost Battalion


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Francis Aylmer Maxwell

Brigadier-General Francis Aylmer Maxwell, (7 September 1871 – 21 September 1917) was a British Army officer in the Second Boer War and First World War. He was also a recipient of the Victoria Cross (VC), the highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.

Early life and military career
He was born on 7 September 1871 at "Westhill" in the Grange, Guildford in Surrey, the son of Surgeon Major Thomas Maxwell.

Maxwell was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Sussex Regiment on 7 November 1891 and promoted to lieutenant on 24 November 1893. He transferred to the Indian Staff Corps, Indian Army, and took part in the Chitral Expedition in 1895 with the Queen's Own Corps of Guides. In the following years he served on the North-West Frontier of India, and took part in the Tirah Campaign 1897-98 under Sir William Lockhart, to whom he was Aide-de-camp. He was appointed a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for his services.

Second Boer War
Maxwell was attached to Roberts's Light Horse during the Second Boer War 1899-1900. By early March 1900 the British had captured the two capital cities of the Boer republics, and the war entered a new phase with a Boer guerrilla campaign to hit the British supply and communication lines. The first engagement of this new form of warfare was at Sanna's Post on 31 March where 1,500 Boers under the command of Christiaan De Wet attacked Bloemfontein's waterworks about 23 mi east of the city, and ambushed a heavily escorted convoy, which caused 155 British casualties and the capture of seven guns, 117 wagons, and 428 British troops.

Victoria Cross
Maxwell was 28 years old, and a lieutenant attached to Roberts's Light Horse during the Second Boer War when the following deed took place for which he was awarded the VC:

On 31 March 1900 at Sanna's Post (aka Korn Spruit), South Africa, "Lieutenant Maxwell was one of three Officers not belonging to "Q" Battery, Royal Horse Artillery, specially mentioned by Lord Roberts as having shown the greatest gallantry, and disregard of danger, in carrying out the self-imposed duty of saving the guns of that Battery during the affair at Korn Spruit on 31st March, 1900. This Officer went out on five different occasions and assisted, to bring in two guns and three limbers, one of which he, Captain Humphreys, and some Gunners, dragged in by hand. He also went out with Captain Humphreys and Lieutenant Stirling to try to get the last gun in, and remained there till the attempt was abandoned.

During a previous Campaign (the Chitral Expedition of 1895) Lieutenant Maxwell displayed gallantry in the removal of the body of Lieutenant-Colonel F. D. Battye, Corps of Guides, under fire, for which, though recommended, he received no reward."

Major Edmund Phipps-Hornby, Sergeant Charles Parker, Gunner Isaac Lodge and Driver Horace Glasock also earned the Victoria Cross in this action.

Later service in South Africa
Maxwell was promoted to captain on 10 July 1901. He was appointed Aide-de-camp to Lord Kitchener, Commander-in-Chief of the Forces in South Africa. Following the end of hostilities in early June 1902, he left Cape Town on board the SS Orotava together with Lord Kitchener, and arrived at Southampton the next month. He received a brevet promotion to major on 22 August 1902.

India
When Kitchener went to India as commander-in-chief in November 1902, Maxwell joined him there as his aide-de-camp.

First World War
In the Great War, he commanded the 12th Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment from June to October 1916, and in November 1916, was awarded a Bar to his DSO. For his actions taking Thiepval, he was given command of the 18th King George's Own Lancers, Indian Army in October 1916.

As commander of the 12th Middlesex, and later of the 27th Brigade of the 9th (Scottish) Division, Maxwell came to be regarded as one of the finest combat commanders serving in the British Army on the Western Front. He was an aggressive commander who was also both an original thinker and popular with his men.

Despite his rank, Maxwell was frequently at the front line. He was killed in action, shot by a German sniper, during the Battle of the Menin Road Ridge on 21 September 1917. He is buried in Ypres Reservoir Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery. The gravestone inscription states: "An ideal soldier and a very perfect gentleman beloved by all his men."

His brother, Lieutenant Colonel Eustace Lockhart Maxwell of the 11th King Edward's Own Lancers (Probyn's Horse), was killed on 20 July 1916 during the Battle of the Somme, whilst commanding the 'bantams' of 23rd Manchester Regiment. He is commemorated on the Neuve-Chapelle Indian Memorial.

General Maxwell is commemorated with a plaque in St. Giles Cathedral on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, Scotland. Maxwell's medals are now held in the Imperial War Museum as part of the "Lord Ashcroft collection" having been bought at auction for £78,000. His wife, Charlotte Maxwell, published a volume of his edited letters in 1921.

title: Francis Aylmer Maxwell


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Argonne Forest

Argonne Forest may refer to:
 * Forest of Argonne, France
 * Argonne Forest, Atlanta, a neighborhood in the United States

title: Argonne Forest


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User talk:This name is reserved

This is the talk page for This name is reserved

title: User talk:This name is reserved


text: User talk:134.129.56.95

title: User talk:134.129.56.95


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Alfred Spencer Heathcote

Colonel Alfred Spencer Heathcote VC (29 March 1832 – 21 February 1912) was an English recipient of the Victoria Cross.

Biography
Heathcote was the son of Henry Spencer Heathcote and Anne Currie, and nephew of Sir Frederick Currie, 1st Baronet and Vice-Admiral Mark John Currie. He was educated at Winchester College.

He was awarded the VC for the following deed, which took place at the Siege of Delhi during the Indian Mutiny, when he was 25 years old and a lieutenant in the 60th Rifles (later The King's Royal Rifle Corps), British Army. "For highly gallant and daring conduct at Delhi throughout the Siege, from June to September, 1857, during which he was wounded. He volunteered for services of extreme danger, especially during the six days of severe fighting in the streets after the Assault. Elected by the Oflicers of his Regiment."

Further information
He later achieved the rank of colonel and emigrated to Australia. He was the first appointed infantry regiment commander in the Colony of New South Wales – appointed to command in August 1870 at Victoria Barracks, Sydney. He is buried, along with his wife Mary Harriet, at the Bowral Cemetery,(Kangaloon Road). His grave is 18 metres to the immediate left upon entering the cemetery gate. His grave is marked by a large grey granite cross. R.I.P.Bowral, New South Wales, Australia (Grave to left of entrance. Headstone). There is also a memorial for him at St. James' Anglican Church, Sydney, New South Wales.

The medal
His Victoria Cross is displayed at the Victoria Barracks in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

title: Alfred Spencer Heathcote


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Vitality curve

A vitality curve is a performance management practice that calls for individuals to be ranked or rated against their coworkers. It is also called stack ranking, forced ranking, and rank and yank. Pioneered by GE's Jack Welch in the 1980s, it has remained controversial. Numerous companies practice it, but mostly covertly to avoid direct criticism.

Overview
The vitality model of former General Electric chairman and CEO Jack Welch has been described as a "20-70-10" system. The "top 20" percent of the workforce is most productive, and 70% (the "vital 70") work adequately. The other 10% ("bottom 10") are nonproducers and should be fired.

The often cited "80-20 rule", also known as the "Pareto principle" or the "Law of the Vital Few", whereby 80% of crimes are committed by 20% of criminals, or 80% of useful research results are produced by 20% of the academics, is an example of such rankings observable in social behavior. In some cases such "80-20" tendencies do emerge, and a Pareto distribution curve is a fuller representation.

Ratings
In his 2001 book Jack: Straight from the Gut, Welch says that he asked "each of the GE's businesses to rank all of their top executives". Specifically, top executives were divided into "A", "B", and "C" players. Welch admitted that the judgments were "not always precise".

According to Welch, "A" players had the following characteristics:

 * Filled with passion
 * Committed to "making things happen"
 * Open to ideas from anywhere
 * Blessed with much "runway" ahead of them
 * Possess charisma, the ability to energize themselves and others
 * Can make business productive and enjoyable at the same time
 * Exhibit the "four Es" of leadership:
 * Very high Energy levels
 * Can Energize others around common goals
 * The "Edge" to make difficult decisions
 * The ability to consistently Execute

The vital "B" players may not be visionary or the most driven, but are "vital" because they make up the majority of the group. On the other hand, the "C" players are nonproducers. They are likely to "enervate" rather than "energize", according to Serge Hovnanian's model. Procrastination is a common trait of "C" players, as well as failure to deliver on promises.

Consequences
Welch advises firing "C" players, while encouraging "A" players with rewards such as promotions, bonuses, and stock options. However, if such rewards become a meaningful portion of “A” player's overall compensation, it can lead to perverse incentives, especially if the rewards of being an “A” player are predictable and recurring, such as a normal part of the annual review process. When broad-based stock compensation is the norm, avoiding perverse incentives can be difficult.

Prevalence
It's difficult to gauge how prevalent forced ranking is, particularly because companies have started using more anodyne terms like "talent assessment system" or "performance procedure". That said, research and anecdotal evidence seems to point to a downward trend. A 2006 article in Bloomberg Businessweek estimated that one-third of U.S. companies "evaluated employees based on systems that pit them against their colleagues". According to the Institute for Corporate Productivity, 42% of companies surveyed reported using a forced ranking in 2009. That, however, decreased to 14% in 2011.

That said, in 2013 one human resources consultant estimated that 30% of Fortune 500 companies still used some sort of ranking system but often under a different name. A 2013 survey by WorldatWork, however, showed that it was used by about 12% of U.S. companies, whereas another by CEB in the same year found that it was used by 29% of companies.

According to a 2015 CEB study, 6% of Fortune 500 companies had ditched the forced ranking system, though it did not provide an estimate of how many companies still practiced it.

Morale
Stack ranking pits employees against their coworkers in what has been described as a Darwinian "survival of the fittest", leading employees to "feel unmotivated and disengaged" as well as creating "unnecessary internal competition that can be destructive to synergy, creativity and innovation and pull focus from marketplace completion". Furthermore, people who belong to an exceptionally talented team may suffer attrition if they know a certain number of their team will be given lower grades than if they were part of a less talented team.

Cost
According to CEB, an average manager spends more than 200 hours a year on activities related to performance reviews, including training and filling out and delivering evaluations. Adding in the cost of the performance-management technology itself, CEB estimated that a company of about 10,000 employees spends roughly $35 million a year on reviews. Additionally, jettisoned employees provide the competition with fresh talent.

Discrimination
Forced ranking systems may lead to biased decision-making and discrimination. Employees at Microsoft, Ford, and Conoco have filed lawsuits against their employers, saying that forced ranking systems are inherently unfair "because they favor some groups of employees over others: white males over blacks and women, younger managers over older ones and foreign citizens over Americans". For example, around 2001, Ford used a forced ranking system with three grades, A, B, and C, with quotas preset to 10%, 80%, and 10%. After a class action lawsuit, which it settled for $10.5 million, it stopped using the system.

Lack of empirical evidence
Rob Enderle has argued that "No sane person could sustain the argument for forced ranking once it's applied to products instead of people. Apply it to automobiles and make 20 percent or even 10 percent of any run unsatisfactory by policy, regardless of actual quality, and you'd immediately see that you were institutionalizing bad quality. With people, though, folks remain blind to the fact that forced ranking is walking example of confirmation bias."

Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton have criticized the practice on the grounds that there is limited empirical evidence of its overall usefulness to organizations.

Unrealistic assumptions
The model assumes that the players do not change their rating. In practice even the fear of being selected as a "C" player may result in an employee working harder, reducing the number of "C" players.

Some critics believe that the 20-70-10 model fails to reflect actual human behavior. Among randomly selected people assigned to a task, such a model may be accurate. They contend, however, that at each iteration, the average quality of employees will increase, making for more "A" players and fewer "C" players. Eventually, the "C" players comprise less than 10% of the workforce.

The style may make it more difficult for employees to cross rate from one division to another. For example, a "C" employee in a company's Customer Service division would be at a disadvantage applying for a job in Marketing, even though they may have talents consistent with an "A" rating in the other division.

Management philosophy
This is a competitive model of organization. The criticisms of both the morality and actual effectiveness of such a dog-eat-dog method of social cohesion apply. Challenges to the model include: "C" player selection methods; the effect of office politics and lowered morale on productivity, communication, interoffice relations; and cheating. Rank-based performance evaluations (in education and employment) are said to foster cut-throat and unethical behavior. University of Virginia business professor Bruner wrote: "As Enron internally realized it was entering troubled times, rank-and-yank turned into a more political and crony-based system". Forced ranking systems are said to undermine employee morale by creating a zero-sum game that discourages cooperation and teamwork. They also tend to change norms of reciprocity that characterise the interactions among employees. In terms of Adam Grant's notion of "giver", "taker", and "matcher cultures", forced ranking systems are found to make it less likely for a "giver culture" to be present among employees, as individuals shift to "matcher" or "taker" behaviour.

Rank and yank contrasts with the management philosophies of W. Edwards Deming, whose broad influence in Japan has been credited with Japan's world leadership in many industries, particularly the automotive industry. "Evaluation by performance, merit rating, or annual review of performance" is listed among Deming's Seven Deadly Diseases. It may be said that rank-and-yank puts success or failure of the organization on the shoulders of the individual worker. Deming stresses the need to understand organizational performance as fundamentally a function of the corporate systems and processes created by management in which workers find themselves embedded. He sees so-called merit-based evaluation as misguided and destructive.

Specific examples
According to Qualtrics CEO Ryan Smith, stack-ranking and similar systems are suitable for ranking sales personnel among whom the management wishes to foster a spirit of competition, but less suitable for engineers, among whom management may want to encourage closer collaboration.

According to a 2006 MIT study cited by Bloomberg Businessweek, forced ranking can be particularly detrimental for a company undergoing layoffs: “As the company shrinks, the rigid distribution of the bell curve forces managers to label a high performer as a mediocre. A high performer, unmotivated by such artificial demotion, behaves like a mediocre.”

MIT Research Fellow Michael Schrage has argued that the forced ranking policy has perverse effects even in organizations that are successful: "Organizations intent on rigorous self-improvement and its measurement inevitably confront an evaluation paradox: The more successful they are in developing excellent employees, the more trivial and inconsequential the reasons become for rewarding one over the other. Perversely, truly effective objective employee-evaluation criteria ultimately lead to personnel decisions that are fundamentally rooted in arbitrary and subjective criteria. [...] The coup de grace occurs when the top employees are all told that they must collaborate better with one another even as they compete in this rigged game of managerial musical chairs."

IBM
IBM has used a vitality curve program called Personal Business Commitments (PBC) since before 2006. For IBM, the main thrust of the strategy is to reduce workforce and shift personnel to lower-cost geographies by using a pseudo-objective rationale. The PBC process starts with a corporate distribution target, which is applied at the lowest levels of the hierarchy and then iteratively applied through the higher levels. The process involves meetings where managers compete for a limited number of favorable rankings for their employees. An employee's rating is thus dependent not only on the manager's opinion but also on the ability of the manager at "selling" and how much influence the 1st line manager has on the second-line manager (for example, if the first-line manager is rated highly, that manager's employees are more likely to be ranked highly).

AIG
Under the leadership of Bob Benmosche, American International Group (AIG) implemented a five-point system in 2010, with a split of 10%/20%/50%/10%/10%. The top 10% are deemed "1s" and receive the largest bonuses; the next 20% are "2s" and receive somewhat smaller bonuses; the bulk consists of "3s", which get the smallest bonuses. The "4s" receive no bonuses, and the "5s" are fired unless they improve. According to Jeffrey Hurd, AIG's senior vice president of human resources and communications, "Prior to this, everyone was above-average...You never really knew where you stood."

Yahoo
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer instituted its "QPR" (quarterly performance review) system in 2012, using the rankings: Greatly Exceeds (10%) Exceeds (25%), Achieves (the largest pool at 50%), Occasionally Misses (10%) and Misses (5%).

In a new version for the fourth quarter 2013, sources said the percentages are changing, but only at the discretion of leadership within the units: Greatly Exceeds (10%), Exceeds (35%), Achieves (50%), Occasionally Misses (5%) and Misses (0%). This new evaluation system resulted in 600 layoffs in the fourth quarter of 2013.

Amazon
Excerpt from The New York Times Amazon holds a yearly Organization Level Review, where managers debate subordinates' rankings, assigning and reassigning names to boxes in a matrix projected on the wall. In recent years, other large companies, including Microsoft, General Electric and Accenture Consulting, have dropped the practice — often called stack ranking, or "rank and yank" — in part because it can force managers to get rid of valuable talent just to meet quotas.

The review meeting starts with a discussion of the lower-level employees, whose performance is debated in front of higher-level managers. As the hours pass, successive rounds of managers leave the room, knowing that those who remain will determine their fates.

Preparing is like getting ready for a court case, many supervisors say: To avoid losing good members of their teams — which could spell doom — they must come armed with paper trails to defend the wrongfully accused and incriminate members of competing groups. Or they adopt a strategy of choosing sacrificial lambs to protect more essential players. "You learn how to diplomatically throw people under the bus", said a marketer who spent six years in the retail division. "It's a horrible feeling." [...]

Many women at Amazon attribute its gender gap — unlike Facebook, Google, or Walmart, it does not currently have a single woman on its top leadership team — to its competition-and-elimination system. [...]

The employees who stream from the Amazon exits are highly desirable because of their work ethic, local recruiters say. In recent years, companies like Facebook have opened large Seattle offices, and they benefit from the Amazon outflow.

Recruiters, though, also say that other businesses are sometimes cautious about bringing in Amazon workers, because they have been trained to be so combative. The derisive local nickname for Amazon employees is "Amholes" — pugnacious and work-obsessed.

Other companies
Other companies that use the system include Dell, Cisco Systems, Walmart eCommerce, Hewlett-Packard, L3Harris Technologies, Lucent, Lonza, Goodyear Tire, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., American Express, Sun Microsystems, Nordstrom, Honeywell, Yandex, Conoco, Teradata Corporation, U.S. Bank, Johnson & Johnson, and Bank of New York Mellon.

Microsoft
Since the 2000s, Microsoft used a stack ranking system similar to the vitality curve. Many Microsoft executives noted that company "superstars did everything they could to avoid working alongside other top-notch developers, out of fear that they would be hurt in the rankings", and that ranking stifled innovation, as employees were more concerned about making sure that their peers or rival projects failed than of proposing new inventions, turning the company into a "collection of non-cooperating fiefdoms, unable to catch on to many technology trends". The stack ranking system was relatively secretive for a long time at Microsoft; non-manager employees were supposed to pretend they did not know about it.

Microsoft was involved in lawsuits regarding its forced ranking system as early as 2001. Detractors argued that the use of the system in small groups was inherently unfair and favored the employees who socialized more heavily over actual technical merit. At the time, Microsoft officially claimed through Deborah Willingham, Microsoft's senior vice president for human resources, that it had no such "stack rank" system.

In 2006, Microsoft began to use a vitality curve, despite intense internal criticism. Posts on "the curve" by Who da'Punk, an anonymous blogger internal to the company, on his blog Mini-Microsoft became a hot topic of commentary by other presumed employees.

According to one source, by 1996 Microsoft had already adopted a stack ranking system which led managers to deliberately retain subpar staff in order to keep their higher performers: Microsoft managers are generally supposed to allocate reviews according to the following ratios: 25 percent get 3.0 or lower; 40 percent get 3.5; and 35 percent get 4.0 or better. Employees with too many successive 3.0 reviews are given six months to find another position in the company or face termination. A manager who is top-heavy with valuable or talented people doesn't want to be forced to give them 3.0 reviews. So these managers kept a few extra slabs of deadwood around so as to save the higher reviews for the employees they want to keep.

In a memo to all Microsoft employees dated April 21, 2011, chief executive Steve Ballmer announced the company would make the vitality curve model of performance evaluation explicit: "We are making this change so all employees see a clear, simple, and predictable link between their performance, their rating, and their compensation". The new model had 5 buckets, each of a predefined size (20%, 20%, 40%, 13%, and 7%), which management used to rank their reports. All compensation adjustments were predefined based on the bucket, and employees in the bottom bucket were ineligible to change positions since they would have the understanding that they might soon be yanked.

Following Ballmer's announced departure, on November 12, 2013, Microsoft's HR chief Lisa Brummel announced they were abandoning the practice.

The practice at Microsoft became a topic of significant media attention following Kurt Eichenwald's 2012 Vanity Fair article called "Microsoft’s Lost Decade". According to a subsequent article by Nick Wingfield in The New York Times Bits blog, "While that story overstated the harmful effects of stack ranking in the view of many Microsoft employees, it clearly represented the views of many others...The negative publicity around Microsoft's old employee review system reverberated loudly around the company, according to people who work there...The executive who spoke [to Wingfield] on condition of anonymity recalled Ms. Brummel saying: "I hope I never have to read another article about our review system ever again."

General Electric
General Electric, by far, was the most famous company to use the form of corporate management. However, since Welch's departure from the company, less emphasis has been placed on eliminating the bottom 10%, with more emphasis placed on team-building. During Welch's leadership, the system was dubbed "rank and yank". The New York Times reported in 2015 that the company dropped the evaluation method.

Other companies
Companies that previously used the system but have abandoned it include Ford (2001), Adobe Systems (2012), Medtronic, Kelly Services, New York Life, Juniper Networks, Accenture (2016), Goldman Sachs (2016) and Gap Inc.

Articles

 * Shyamal Majumdar: The rank-and-yank appraisal system, April 2003
 * Sam Pizzigati: "Jack Welch: How He Really 'Won'" archived from the original in April 2005
 * "Human Resource Management", Steve Gall – examines stack ranking at Microsoft, 2005
 * "The Management Approach Guaranteed To Wreck Your Best People" by Erika Anderson in Forbes, July 2012

title: Vitality curve


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Tc-1

TC-1 might refer to:

 * Minolta TC-1, a 35 mm camera
 * TC-1, the equatorial satellite used in the Double Star mission
 * TC-1, Tien Chien 1, a Taiwanese anti-aircraft missile Sky Sword

title: Tc-1