peter monahan

My intial reaction is '1920s jewellery' but I confess to knowing nothing about the Berks Yeomanry. The lack of any fastening, or any obvious evidence that there was a fastener, now gone, is very puzzling indeed.

Missing Mervyn already! he would undoubtedly have had something useful to say about this lovely piece.

Well done!

You may well be right, Odulf. I had forgotten the colour difference.

Yes, I understand. The only enamelled order I ever owned was a Roumanian Order of the Crown awarded to an offcier of Indian cavalry for WWI service. Or, according to his brother officers, trotted round by the embassy and given him as a consolation prize for not getting an MC. Nveretheless, I became very fond of the shiny, gaudy trinket and wept immodestly when forced to let it go. :)

I recently met a fellow here in Canada who was a boy soldier in the post WWII Canadian Army - 15 or 16 when he enlisted and trainjed as a signaller, then went into regular service at the age of 18. I believe it was also done in the Royal Navy until fairly recently, which as an apprenciteship programme for technical branches makes a deal of sense. Earlier, of course, it was a way of shifting the cost of maintaining orphans and other wards of the state from social services to the armed services, where presumably they were returning potential value for the money spent.

As to the uniforms, I know that British servicemen in hospitals in the UK for long periods - convalescents or rehabilitation - were issued a blue uniform to wear. This marked them as patients but I wonder wether these were also a war time economy measure - good enough for training, hospital and POWs but not necessarily for the rigours of active service. Just a thought.

It means these men agreed to and were eligible for foreign service, as opposed to home service or limited service with the territorials. This was a hang over from the Napoleonic period when Volunteers and Fencible units were recruited who only agreed to serve withing they United Kingdom. Those units then became a source of recruits for the regualr army but the new recruits had to agree to 'general' service. I suspect it became the cutom to include the phrase as a legal safe guard, even when the recruiots were clearly regulars and hence expected to go where sent.

Quite possibly a connection indeed. Any info. on the wings? And, do you know or can you speculate, is the name on the back a recipeint, a maker or something else?

Some what embarassed by my initial post on the Summit of the Americas medal, I've looked it up and from what fragmentary information I've found I believe it was awarded to members of the Trinidad and Tobaggo Defence Force who were actively deployed during the 2009 Summit. As I suspect that many members of the Force are territorial/militia, I'd guess that this would represent their only active deployment for some. The then commander of the T&TFF, elected a member of Parliament in September this year, was awarded it "for exemplary service during the hosting of the Summit". Peter

That's a wonderful group, Saad! As my knowledge of 'Indian' medlas is confiend exclusively to the British issued gongs, I'm left wondering whether one can tell the length of service it repesents, either from the campaigns and other events commemorated or from other information on the recipient.

I agree: an amateur effort, made up as costume jewellery or for the theatre.

Fifty years old when he rejoined the colours and 51 years old when he died. Was he a regular in SA or hostilities only?

Nasty flashy thing, Hugh. You probably want to re-gift it to some deserving type. Right? Lovely. Thank you for sharing it. Peter

That would be a war to tell the grandkids about! Completely different from the mess on the Western Front for the most aprt but probably just as nasty in its way, as I suspect the casualties due to sicknes outweighed those actually shot or shelled. Interesting group.

It would be nice to think so.

"5th Summit of the Americas medal"? Sounds positively... Waltish. Awarded for exemplary car park security or...? Seriously, though, how would one qualify and how many may have been issued? Enquiring minds wish to know.

Jonsey, can you post a picture of the 'P' marking and any others? Not clear to me from your post what exactly we're meant to be looking at. Off the top of my head I'd be more likely to guess that 'PFG' stood for 'Protective Flying Gear' than 'Polish...', but I'm no expert.

Odulf points out an important phenomenon: there are probably as many present and former pipe band members and 'clan' members in North America as the aggregate total of all the militia types, if not regulars, who served in Canadian and British Highland units between and since the two great wars. And all of them wore some type of Scottish headgear. OTOH, almost every piece of gear including head dress I've ever seen which was issued to or purchased by soldiers was labelled - stamped, with sewn in labels or at the very least with inked in names or initials. So, while this may very well be military, I suggest that absent evidence such as that just mentioned, we're thrown back on the Scottish legal verdict of 'not proven'.

Absolutley different! No one NEEDS that many shoes. It borders on obsessive. No my collection...

Wow, what a story! Any chance that Johnston left a diary, letters or even a biography behing? Just touching on the exotic bits: Egypt, Russia, India and Palestine - quite the grab bag of postings and experiences. I wonder if he carried the sword with him to all those places and units though technically I suppose he would have been out of uniform to have done so, at least after his transfer to the Royal Scots.

Sometimes referred to as the 'Kenyan Home Guard', the KPR was formed in 1948 as an important of the British efforts to combat the Mau Mau during 'the troubles'. Apparently Europeans were autmatically awarded the rank of Inspector, so Assistant Inspector for an 'Asian' would make sense. There was also an African Section of the KPR, made up of untrained black kenyans and commanded by Europeans, or Asians perhaps, so that is an alternative explanation for the 'A.S.' prefix to the serial number.

Bernhard I have had the dubious privilige of working on several 'historical' fims over the last decade or so, several for PBS and similar nteworks, a couple for the broader commercial market and a number for in-house use by historical sites. As I point out to others involved, except in the last category, the fim makers are not selling history, they are selling popcorn! These days it is considered desireable to have an 'hsitorical consultant' even on such fantasies as the Pirates of the Caribbean series. In fact, that consultant is a good fried. That said, the producers want to have hired a consukltant, not necessarily to have consuled same, and money, story line or the idosyncracies of the director almost always trump historical accuracy. Its the world we live in, I'm afraid: experts and connoisieurs are doomed to disappoinment. I see a lot of Hollywood films with my best mate, who is in the business, and we either shrug, roll our eyes or grit our teeth, then leave the theatre and have a cleanisng pint. To do otherwise is to court madness!

Clearly no IQ attached to getting a gun licence in that jursidiction! Dad and the insurance company gonna be seriously pissed!

Also, sadly, both national, internal and inter-service politics, I strongly suspect, play a part. The most obvious examples, to go to a by gone age, were the number of VCs awarded for the relief of Lucknow during the Indian Mutiny - 24 in a single day - or for the defence of Rourke's Drift. How badly the force(s) and or the public need 'bucking up' must sometimes influence the awarding authroities. And that is in now way a dig at those honoured! But it does, I think, explain some of the apparent discrepanices mentioned by dave and BigJar.