peter monahan

Thank you for taking on what mst have been a fairly major task and ensuring that these men are not completely forgotten!

Wonderful info. from both posters! Thank you. Karhu, you actually have photographs of one of the awards being worn. May we ask how you were lucky enough to get that? Is it your own? :)

One tends to forget that, even before the days of het travel, people found themselves in the oddest places when wars broke out and often had 'fabulous adventures' [aka ' a bloody awful time'] in consequence. Is it safe to assume Olive was the only Australian who served with the Sebs?

That would make sense, James. Presumably there were equivalents for some of the African colonies and their traditional leaders as well. Probably an article in that for somebody!

As I got more deeply involved with this group and, at Mervyn's suggestion I might add, became a moderator, he was always ready and indeed eager to give advice, make comments and generally keep me from making to many new boy errors. On a personal note, when he discovered my daughter was heade to SA he offered to connect us with friends of his in Capetown, though he had never met either of us. An expert in many areas but, much more importantly, a true 'gent' in the old school sense. He will be missed.

Paul, you are correct about the Indian units too. High caste Hindus did not cross the Kala Pani [black water] if they could avoid it and had to pay a priest for an expensive ritual cleansing afterwards if they did. In fact the Indian Mutiny, now referred to by some as 'The First Indian War of Independence', was at least partly an industrial dispute, with strong cultural overtones! The HEIC had cancelled the field allowance - 'batta' - for service in Burma, as it was no longer considered 'foreign service' but Brahmins, who already saw their caste priviliges under attack, still had to pay to be purified. That, some prosletyizing by English missionaries and the better known 'cow fat/pork fat on cartridges' rumour were the proximate causes on the outbreak.

Mike I won't dispute your facts, as you're clearly the expert. Might I have been thinking of non-whites like Gandhi and his comrades in the bearer companies, rather than blacks, as recipients of bronze QSAs or am I still off base? As I say, it was a long time ago and the old brain is not always firing on all cylinders these days! ;)

Thank you, Karhu. Have you seen this, Megan?

Of course it is! My Korean is so rusty, you know... Thanks, Owain.

I believe the bronze medals were also issued to Africans [blacks] in some of the labour corps and so on, but I haven't been looking at QSAs in several decades and my memroy is far from perfect. I did some research on the ones issued to Indian troops, which probably numbered several thousand in all, as many cavalry sowars arrived in SA with drafts of remounts for the Imperial troops, most of which came in from Australia via India. To the best of my recollection, all I ever saw or heard of were nemed, so I suspect that if it is bronze and not named it is, as Mike says, an unissued specimen.

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