Mike Smith

This is a genuine medal.  Even though it was stated that all awards were to be named to the recipient, a large percentage are found unnamed.  Some can be identified to a person from another 'named' medal in a group, but on their own .......... 

I currently have 24 LSEMs in my collection and have found about four unnamed.   Todays awards of the LSEM are unnamed due to cost with jewellers charging anywhere from 10 to 20 dollars PER LETTER.

Per chance is there a recipients name on the medal at all

Would love to get any info on past members for my files

The 25th Battalion (Frontiersmen) Royal Fusiliers was a British unit made up entirely of Frontiersmen, saw action as a unit in East Africa in 1916

Photo of the 210th cap badge

Way back about WW1 era the Legion had representatives in very part of the world, and as time went on these people migrated or died off and so things got drastically smaller.

It is thought that as there was a large group of NZer at Gallipoli in 1915, so much so that they were said to have held meetings under the guns, to the curiosity of the Turks.

New Zealand put some 8500 soldiers into the Gallipoli campaign.  So far I have found, and am still adding to, the 500 Legion members in my rolls that served there in those eight months of 1915.  In fact one of those in the battlefield was the Commandant for New Zealand at the time.  He later DOW and is buried at Ramleh War Cem, Israel and Palestine.  He earned the MC and MiD on the peninsula.

That one's design is that used in the UK since pre WWII, as I understand it the early ones were gilt and had a tiny ring suspension.  This one looks bronze and has a slightly larger ring, making it after WWII.  I have never heard of any of this design being named.  The ribbon is as below

This example is of a bronze strike from the mid 1990's

I am hoping to fairly soon put together a self published book regarding the medals of the Legion to try and give people a way of identifying these

Current shoulder title

Old New Zealand 'Fern' collar badge.  Beware of this as there are good copies about the market

Canadian member badge & Associate  member badge

New Zealand members badge

New Zealand Woman's Auxiliary Legion of Frontiersmen  large domed badge from WWII.  Rarely seen today as there were very few manufactured and only three have been found in today's era

An early set of buttons, no longer used

Early, probably 1920sish Imperial Frontiersman button

Another large early button in gilt

Disused Imperial button with matching shoulder title of the era

Another early cap badge

Still to be identified

Still to be identified 

Thank you for the image of the badges.  Over the years there have been many badges designed for the legion and which I will soonest try and upload some images of as many as I can locate.  I have several in my collection.  The badge set shown is quite an old set, not sure of the inclusive years but they are brass and probably pre WW2ish, some time later they started making sets in guilt, and then later again up until the present  the badges, identical in design being made in Staybrite.  This design is still the  same as those we wear here in New Zealand today.

Starting the images with a set of fairly resent cap & collars issued from Canada

The very rare Vancouver BC cap badge.

Canadian Legion War Service Overseas.

210th Battalion, Western Canada.

210th Western Canada shoulder title

Just an updater on my earlier post from '12 about the files I am building up of past members, it is currently up to over 15000 names worldwide and over half are New Zealanders, with details of the persons birth and death and military [or not] military service with copies of service files being acquired as well many photos of members and their headstones, and as time goes more information can be acquired.  I am also trying to purchase medal groups for members from NZ that includes as a minimum their Legion Long Service medal

Image of the 25th (Frontiersman) Battalion of the Royal Fusliers from WW1

In the New Year Honours list from three days ago (31 Dec 2014) there was this listing for the award of the NZ Distinguished service Decoration (NZDSD)

The New Zealand Distinguished Service Decoration

The Queen has been pleased, on the celebration of the New Year, to make the following awards of The New Zealand Distinguished Service Decoration:

New Zealand Defence Force

Serviceman B. For services to the New Zealand Defence Force. (Name withheld for security reasons)

In recent times there have been several Gallantry awards to SAS members in NZ, and they are always refered to as "solder A, Captain B, Corporal C, &c, &c just as is doen in other realms

I agree, it all depends on how deep our pockets are, mine are very shallow these days.......

As I understand it the Africa Star RIBBON was awarded at about that time, probably about 1942 or so. I have seen several cases of veterans having a ribbon bar of only an Africa Star in their box of bits from the era. Often the single ribbon bar had a numeral '8' for NZ Eighth Army or a '1' for Brit First Army.

The general rule is that the medals and awards of WW2 were not issued until about 1949-50 ish and were done upon application from the recipient

These awards are issued free to those who apply, their eligibility is checked before the award is issued.

I have noted that there are sellers of cheap knock-offs on the market today and selling these awards and others for just a few dollars, the genuine ones fetch hundreds of dollars each let alone if they are part of a group

Regarding the naming of these medals, the Operational Medal is NOT awarded named at all. I have seen some that have been privately named in groups. The other two medals are most definately awarded named with Service number, Initials, last name and service.

Another good image

Hopefully I can manage to add an image in here as an example of one of the groups. This one does not have the Defence Service Medal as it was taken some time ago.

The NZ Operational Service Medal came into existance, along with the NZ General Service Medal (Warlike) about ten years ago..

The Defence Service Medal is a rather recent addition and started being issued and back issued only in the past three years.

All of these three were made retrospective to the end of the Second World War, and is the reason that so many of the groups from Vietnam come on the market without these three additional medals

Just to add to this conversation regarding NZ medal groups for Vietnam. As well as the two medals [Queens Vietnam, and Star] a New Zealander is also entitled to the NZ Operational Service Medal and the NZ General Service Medal (Warlike) and if the person did more than three years of service they would also get the NZ Defence Service Medal. So in all a Vietnam Vet can get from four to five medals. The missing ones can be acquired by collectors as well but they tend to take a wee bit longer to be issued and involve more paperwork to Defence

Australian Fire Service Medal with its unusual flame centred ribbon

Here is an example of the New Zealand Fire Service Long Service Medal and the bar of the second award

Some time ago I had a pair of Malawi medals but sold them to a dealer in the UK as they were at odds with the rest of what I had.

Myself I live in New Zealand.

I cannot speek for all of the membership in this country but personally I am collating the history and membership of the country with the aim of identifying the final resting places of as many of our past members as I can. So far I have about 3000 NZ names and rising.

One of our other units has done a splendid job in restoring completely the local cemetery, cleaning and restoring headstones of early settlers and in the process adding bronze plaques with some biographical information on the person buried, and adding cemetery walkways. They won a recent national award for their work. Others are now taking the same line and Scotland are now starting in recording the local cemeteries of the past. For them a big project as there are headstones centuries old.

More to come

At present I am spending time building up an excel file of all of the New Zealanders in WW1 about 110,000 in all with many actually not having been issued a number at all. So far I am 10% through the file