[1] Announcing the new awards, the King said In order that they should be worthily and promptly recognised, I have decided to create, at once, a new mark of honour for men and women in all walks of civilian life.

[16] The first recipient chronologically was Coxswain Robert Cross, commander of the RNLI lifeboat City of Bradford, based at Spurn Point, whose award was gazetted on 7 February 1941.

It was awarded for an incident on 2 February 1940 when Cross took the lifeboat out in gale force winds, snow squalls, and very rough seas to rescue the crew of a steam trawler.

[18][14] The youngest recipient was Charity Anne Bick, who lied about her age to join the ARP service at 14 years old, and who delivered several messages by bicycle during a heavy air raid in West Bromwich in late 1940.

[19] The youngest male was 14 year old schoolboy Brian Gibbons who saved his infant nephew when his house caught fire following the 1958 Independent Air Travel Vickers Viking crash in Southall in 1959.

[20] The first person to receive a second award was George Samuel Sewell, an engineer working for Shell-Mex and BP Ltd., based at the oil terminal at Salt End, near Hull, for his actions during an air raid.