peter monahan

At the risk of lowering the tone of this august forum, I was reminded of this possibly apocryphal anecdote by Mervyn's reference to little oldladies and white feathers. G.K. Chesterton - a rotund gentleman - was accosted on the street with the querulous query "Why aren't you out at the Front, sir?". To which he responded "If you'll step round before me, madam, you'll see that I am out at the front." ;)

My congratulations as well to all the 'listers' who receive this award. A nice looking medal - not like some we could mention - but I find myself agreeing with Robin: nice, but not a patch on the 2002 version!

Thanks for the link, JP. Not a bad looking gong, especially compared to some of the modern trash-glitz. One a soldier can wear without looking like a pimp, anyway!

Very well said, Phil. I do a little work with old leather from time to time and am forever saying what you've said here. Only, in my case, not nearly so succinctly! Especially good are your words on old leather: "It's too late." I often ask people if they think soaking a piece of wood in water will turn it from dry lumber back into green wood. They always answer 'no' but still want to try and 'rejuvenate' old leather by rubbing grease into it. Maddening! Thanks for youer words of wisdom! Peter

This is a great group, Mervyn! A man who got around and, obviously, 'saw the elephant' with a vengeance if he served on the Murmansk run. I hope when demobbed he took up something safer, like lion hunting or skydiving! Peter

I'll bet you always get a parking spot right by the door too, don't you? Some people must just live right! Good karma, even. [Nope, not a hint of envy here. Honest! ] Peter

1314 - Thanks for the new information! 'Never too old... etc, etc'. I wondered the same thing - what would a Basuto, even a literate one [no slight intended there] have been doing in the Pay Corps. Noqw I know that there was an African Pioneer Corps. I knew there was an Indian one but had never made the leap to Africa. Thanks again. One wonders what the gent would have made of Palestine too. Not exactly on of the jewels in the crown of the King Emperor!

Yes, it is, in a weird sort of way. I think this has been posted before and that is where/when I read that this ceremony has been stopped due to its inflamatory nature. Sadly, the Indian cheerleader at the beginning is leading the crowd in chants of "Maro dushman" ["Beat/kill the enemy"] and I suspect that the repeated shouts of "Hindostan" further on may be Indian-speak for "United India", including Pakistan. Lord knows those two great nations don't need any more excuses to take potshots, literal or figurative, at each other!

Yer. I think Craig makes the best point. If it looked like c**p but had all the ripstop/anti-ballistic/stay-clean/waterproof & breathable qualities of the very best of modern speciality fabrics I'd grit my teeth and sau 'Go ahead, s**t can the tradition.", but I'll bet it doesn't!

Just makes ya wanna run out and join the Royal Tank Corps, doesn't it? Intended to protect the wearer from shell fragments and ricocheting rivets knocked off the hull by small arms fire! No thanks!

This seems to me another example of the trend in the last couple decades to design "uniforms" which don't really look like uniforms in the traditional sense at all, but like slighty odd civvie gear! Look at airline stewardesses these days: unless you see two rogether it isn't obvious that they are uniformed, just conservatively dressed. And even in groups, there are so many mix and match items - 3 blouses, two skirts, etc. - that you can get 5 or 6 before any two are dressed exactly the same. The Girl Guides here in Canada went through this 20 years ago - hired a big name designer to do the new uniforms, of which there are several colours/ cuts for any given 'order of dress' and are only Gu"uniform" by virtue of using the same vblue & whiote colour scheme for all! two years ago or so they went even further and came out with uniforms based on what was 'in fashion' that years, meaning that they were wildly out of fashion before most girls had even purchased them! My last school had 5 kinds of shirts and sweaters and 4 kinds of pants/shorts as well as the kilt. Again, several dozen possible combos. So much for uniform. And police forces seem to be buying into the prevailing logic of making their members look 'more normal/less uniform'. Bobbies in beards comes to mind! Bah! Humbug! And other cranky old fart comments! :banger:

"Stashed away since the war" are the magic words collectors want to hear! "Provenance" is the technical term. As Pete pointed out, copies of anything Commando / Special Forces / 'elite unit' stuff are legion. So, rough texture - locally produced, a.k.a. 'bazaar made' - is good and so is the fact that you're dad brought them home and kept them. If you can persuade buyers of this, they may make you a few bucks when/if you decide to sell. Peter

A shame! I always knew I had no artistic bent at all - never tried the multui-layer stuff even on the few figures I did because I had neither patience nor talent but have always apprciated the skill and real artistry in those who do it right. It is no less an art than minature portraits or larger lanscapes, provided the skill level matches the interest level and I always want to smack people who refer to it as a 'craft', as in "arts and crafts", as if it were something you did to fill a wet afternoonwith a paint-by-numbers kit!

Ouch! And "Ouch" again! The musuem curator part of me cringes at the idea of varnishing steal and leather. Our bible's first commandment is "Thou shalt not do anything thou canst undo!" Wax, which can be polished off, is as permanent as musuems are permitted to get. Even oil is frowned on, as it draws dust and roots leather - even the 'leather preservative' kind, in time. "Ouch" again at "$1.50". I'm am slipping my toes gingerly into the vast sea of World War 1 living history, just ahead of the centenary of the great horror. $750.00 gets me a very nice made to measure uniform - and my $15.00 an hour post-retirement job will pay for it eventually. I too recall the days of the endless supply of cheap .303s, many over here turned into hunting rifles by butchering a few pounds of wood from the stock. Now, to get a pukka SMLE and bayonet in decent fireable condition may cost as much again as the uniform. In other words, I'll get it paid for just in time for August 2014. Thank goodness all the other kit is being 're-popped' for odd bods like myself. One can even buy reproduction 1914 era French postcards. And I don't mean shots of the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame Cathedral either! Peter

Aside from the obvious ones - all the SSRs with similar Gold Stars - there are two, not mutually exclusive, explanations. Jim has the first one spot on - reusing dies and other bits gives the 'same shirt, new tie' effect. Paart of this too, is almost certainly the deliberately similar designs. How many Latin American countries, for example, who have constitutions based on that of the United States, troops uniformed like those of the US and so on have also designed decorations and medals which recall American orders for similar things. The same true of many former British, French and Spanish colonies, oddly enough, as modern thinking seems to suggest that the former masters are universally loathed and so one might expect the new states to chose designs as far from the old ones as possible. Perhaps military men and civil servants everywhere are closer to each other than to their civilian compatriots? The other explanation is whatever one calls the artistic equivalent of plagarism! There are a finite number of variations on circles and stars after all, and artists with a contract to fill will start with some research into what's out there already and, probably without deliberate copying come up with designs that draw on what they have seen. At least part of the explanation for some of the truly ghastly medal ribbons out there these days, IMHO, is the difficulty in finding any combination of sane colours that someone isn't already using! The same must be true of the medals themselves: given the finite number of symbols - eagles, swords, crowns... - with which to adress martial themes one has a virtual recipe for design derivatives! I believe that most musical plagarism suits come down to the similarities in a bar or two which, given eight notes to work with, surprisingly rarely, again in my view, as I'm surprised how many distinctive tunes can be made with thise few variables. And, of course, there are lazy artists just as there are lazy writers and some work is apparently too good not to copy. Great thread! Peter

Verrry nice, Mervin! Looking forward to seeing more.

Hear! Hear!

I think the RCMP Jaguar is kinda neat too! BTW, the comment about the Michigan police 'ramming' people is not far off base. Many of the cars used by the OPP (Ontario [Canada] Provincial Police) have similar front 'bumpers'. One story is that they were once used to push start broken down vehicles, but I doubt that. Think of the potential for law suits against the cops for 'ruining' a civvy car! I suspect they are for ramming fleeing vehicles off the road in extreme situations but more usually just meant to make the front end of the cruiser stronger. Cops, for various reasons, have a lot of accidents, and anything that protects cars and drivers is going to be fitted. My two cents worth! Peter

Presumably, as a 'gift from the sovreign, the Jubilee Medal took precedence over almost anything else originally. However, I suspect the soldiers so honoured had a different view of the matter! I once owned a group to a senior Indian cavalry officer: a Punjabi Muslim who was a demon polo player and apparently a spy. He finished the war with the honourific "Al Haji", for having make the haj [pilgrimage] to Mecca, from Mesopotamia, with a British officer, at a time when Mecca would have been behind enemy lines. The official explnation was that the two were 'on a diplomatic mission'. Anyway, he was awarded the Royal Victorian Medal, which was pretty clearly an honour from the Queen Empress, but a 1920s photo shows him wearing it after his campaign and Jubilee medals, right at the end of a rack of ten! Again, presumably his estimation of its value and one which few people would have had the seniority, or perhaps inclination, to order changed.

I agree with Brian: a brave man indeed! I'd have trouble doing what he did if I were wearing armour and carrying a howitzer, but to gol out armed only with compassion and prayer beads, multiple times... contempt for damger indeed! Thanks for sharing. Peter

Great stuff indeed. Always helps to have the details of the man to go with the lovely group. I can almost see him in my mind, as an old campaigner, taking his coimmission to go out and [again] defend France. Thankd very much for sharing.

Fabulous! Somebody did very well indeed out of Father Christmas. [envious tone, slight drooling] thanks for sharing. Peter

As usual, Mervyn, both interesting and beautiful! Peter

For years, before the advent of computerized lists and books, one of the 'Bibles' for British medal collecting was Major L. L. Gordon's British Battles and Medals. I no longer collect, so have kept only a fourth edition [1971] but that contains a fascinating notation: "ten men of the P.O.W. Sappers and Miners" were awarded the Ahmed Khel bar. I'm sure the source you cite is more accurate - Gordon was notoriously careless of Indian units - but it suggestsan odd unit disposition. Presumably the 10 were specialists of some sort, possibly Europeans. Gordon goes on to say that: "This medal, sanctioned on 19th March, 1881, was apparently struck both in silver and bronze, although the later must be very rare indeed. No explanation whatever can be offered for the existence of the bronze medal." He goes on to say, as Paul did above, that extracts from General Order No. 723 dated 16th September, 1887 seem to imply that the Burma campaign of 1887 was the first time bronze medals had been generally issued "since the days of the Honourable East India Company". The implication is that the HEIC did issue bronze medals for some campaigns, though a quick flip through his book doesn't reveal any obvious examples. In which case, you may have a handful of rocking horse dung there! A doubly rare medal: to a European in a largely Indian force and a perivate issue by his unit or John Company. I hope you will let us know if you get further information on this fascinating medal. Peter