At the end of the movie Zulu (probably hugely problematic; has only a faint resemblance to the battle of Roarke’s Drift; was on tv a lot when I was a kid, I still love it) there’s this blurb about how 11 men in that action won the VC out of 1000+ VC Awards in the prior century (this in 1964ish).
So… averages out to 10+ VC winners annually. Even assuming some years (1914, 1940, etc) are going to be unusually heavy, that’s a LOT of wars Britain’s been in over that time period.