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Today I wandered off to Antigua & Barbuda, for the simple reason that Dixon Noonan Webb (DNW) have some beautiful orders from there in an auction at the end of the month… and they are amongst that kind group of auction houses that allow us to use their images in our Database!
Today I received by e-mail some splendid images of the Antigua and Barbuda Order of Merit from Cleave & Co.Ltd., the company which designed and made it for the Antiguan government! I’d spotted some pictures in a brochure on their website and wrote to ask… and boy, did they come through! Thank you very much, and they are now in the Antigua & Barbuda section for you all to enjoy.
I have been neglecting UK medals of late, so today went and added the Indian Army Long Service and Good Conduct Medal.
Today the Colonial Auxiliary Forces Long Service Medal, which between 1899 and 1930 was awarded for part-time service in the ranks throughout the British Empire.
Not much time today as I spent yesterday teaching distance learners – who come in for ‘on-campus days’ occasionally, so am now cramming a weekend into one afternoon (seeing as I attended church as normal this morning)!
However, I have added a new(ish) British Campaign Medal, the Operational Service Medal (Iraq and Syria), known as the Operation Shader Medal. It was authorised in 2017 but eligibility criteria are still being thrashed out. You see it ha been decided that it can be awarded (without the IRAQ-SYRIA clasp) to individuals who have made significant contributions to the operation without actually setting foot in area! Notable amongst those are drone operators, a sign of the changing face of warfare. (It’s on page 20 of the Campaign Medals section under United Kingdom in the Images Database if you want to take a look.)
Back to the vast array of long service medals, and the Colonial Long Service and Good Conduct Medal, which had a range of different ones depending on which Colony’s forces the recipient served in. They are quite hard to find – if anyone has images to fill the gaps in our collection, I’d be very grateful.
Off now, it’s my 35th wedding anniversary today. Must find my husband and celebrate!
Apologies for the hiatus – I’ve not been very well. I am now recovered, and have added the Permanent Forces of the Empire Beyond the Seas Long Service and Good Conduct Medal – a short-lived attempt to consolidate the plethora of Colonial Long Service and Good Conduct Medals, which was in turn replaced by the Long Service and Good Conduct Medal (Military) with common design and ribbon, and the name of the colony in which service was undertaken on the suspension (#0229A in the Long Service section of the database).
Today a couple more obscure ‘single unit’ long service and good conduct medals – for the Royal West African Frontier Force and the King’s African Rifles. There’s one for the Trans-Jordan Frontier Force as well, but I have yet to find a picture of it – only 112 were awarded during the 10 years the unit existed (1938-1948) so I may be looking for quite some time 🙂
OK, well I found a not-very-good image of the Trans-Jordan Frontier Force Long Service and Good Conduct Medal in Wikipedia Commons… and have also added a couple of South African variants on UK long service medals, notable because they are bilingual in English and Afrikaans. These are the South Africa Permanent Force Long Service and Good Conduct Medal, for full-time soliders, and the Efficiency Medal (South Africa) for volunteer part-timers. Neither lasted very long, being established in 1939 and discontinued in 1952 when South Africa set up their own honours system.
Today I added the Royal Hong Kong Regiment Disbandbent Medal (mostly ‘cos it’s listed in the Medals Year Book, although recipients had to purchase them for themselves…), the Canadian Forces Decoration (again MYB lists it ampngst UK Long Service medals but also in its appropriate place in Canada’s honours system!) and the Victoria Volunteer Long and Efficient Service Medal.
Three medals for New Zealand today, issued by the UK before New Zealand had its own honours system, so belonging in the UK section. They are the New Zealand Long and Efficient Service Medal, the New Zealand Volunteer Service Medal and the New Zealand Territorial Medal. All three are distinctive in that they don’t have the usual obverse of a monarch’s head with the relevant titles inscribed around them, but none of them lasted very long either!
“…so belonging in the UK section.”….No…….they belong to the independent, sovereign nation of NEW ZEALAND……..I dunno…….you Europeans don’t get much right these days……………but come the revolution………..
G.
No, I’m following the logic of who awarded the medals – the British Crown. When I move on to New Zealand Medals I’ll be using the current order of precedence as laid out by the New Zealand Government.
Anyway, to return to today’s pictures: two for local part-time service in Northern Ireland, the Ulster Defence Regiment Medal and its replacement the Northern Ireland Home Service Medal; and then the Cadet Forces Medal (which, for gmcleod’s information, is also awarded to New Zealand Adult Instructors in the cadets!).
Today some unusual medals related to civil defence. Firstly, the Royal Observer Corps Medal. The Royal Observer Corps was a civil defence organisation intended for the visual detection, identification, tracking and reporting of aircraft over Great Britain. In 1955 it was allocated the additional task of detecting and reporting nuclear explosions and associated fall-out. It operated in the United Kingdom between 29 October 1925 and 31 December 1995, when the Corps’ civilian volunteers were stood down.
The other medal is the Civil Defence Long Service Medal, which gathers members of several organisations whose role is to aid the civilian population in the event of some kind of incident – warfare or natural disaster. Most of these organisations no longer exist, so the medal is dormant, but could be revived if the need arose. It has 3 different reverses, with one for mainland Britian and for Northern Ireland (because the initials of the organisations involved differed) then a third ‘general’ reverse brought in when people in Gibraltar, Hong Kong and Malta were made eligible. This last reverse was used for all awards after 1968. Unfortunately, every image I can find is the ‘Britain’ reverse, so I shall have to keep hunting for the other two reverses.
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