peter monahan

Hi Guys,

Can anyone point me in the right direction to where I might ascertain what if any medals Pakistan issues to its soldiers & police officers, for service in the current war againest the Taliban?

MG.

Monkey God

Are you sure such a thing exists? Many armies are leery of issuing awards for 'civil insurrection' duties, as they tend to be political hot potatoes. It may be that soldiers and police serving in anti-Taliban operations qualify for the regular 'time served' / 'long service' awards of their respective services but I wonder whether there is [yet] a specific award for hard and bloody 'internal security' duties.

Any one else have thoughts on this one?

Peter

If he was a recon Co. I assume he was in a Staurt Tank ? or a halftrack?

Am I right? Not much on him yet.

Scott

Not an expert by any means, but it appears that the recon. units in US armoured outfits used the M8 armoured car, called the "Staghound" by the British. Too lightly armoured for heavy combat, especially the floors, which were too thin to protect against mines. Perhaps that's the 'boobytrap' which killed your man. By the end of the Italian campaign, crews were stacking sandbags on the floorplates, which can't have helped agility on mountain roads!

Here's a site with some general info. on the armoured division TO: www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/usarmy/infantry.aspx

Good luck with the research. Let us know what you find out, please.

Peter

Just a guess, but on the not-so-temporary rank, here;s a theory: an NCO, filling what is essentially Warrant Officer's rank because he has the experience, knowledge and initiative to fill a kept appointment, but lacks the education [or perhaps unblemished record] to meet the formal requirements for permanent stsus in the rank.

Or, a way to get him the pay and prestige of a Sub-Conductor when there was no space on the table of organization for another Sub-C.

My thruppence worth

Peter

I'm happy with my decision.

Tim

I agree! A risky business but one which, in this case, worked out very well. Very good looking ribbon.

Peter

Distinguished Service Medal named to Second Lieutenant Talat Mohamed Farid of what appears to be the Eastern Arab Corps.

Very classy looking medals! Any chance of researching the Lieutenant?

Peter

I fully agree with you Brett. Congratulations to Bob who suggested the Forum and to Brian - who will no doubt 'keep it in shape' !

Hear him! Well done and congrats to both. Looking forward to many hours of virtual visiting.

Peter

My investigative instincts point me towards the Hejaz Campaign, where selected Indian Muslim troops served.

Harry

Let me check my old records and collogue with a friend to make sure my middle-aged memory is correct. Don't want to start any wild hares. I'm fairly sure that the chap is Daf. Mangal Singh but will try to confirm that.

Another title: 1st Bengal Cavalry

Years and years ago, "BC" [before children] I was lucky enough to own this man's medals. He was photographed - this shot- at the 1995 Jubilee celebrations in London, when he was a Daffadar [sergeant of cavalry] but went on to become Rissaldar Major, the senior Native Officer in an Indian cavarly regiment, the Colonel's right-hand man, a cross between the RSM and the Adjutant and the link between the British Officers and the Indian ORs.

This man was apparently a demon polo player, though in his later years he looks to have weighed a good few stone - hard on the ponies! Also, interestingly enough, he left Mesopotamia in 1917, with his Colonel, from which he returned calling himslef "Alhaji": one who has been to Mecca. Mecca, of course, was well inside the Turkish Empire at that time. I was never able to find out any more than that, but it had 'diplomacy' [thinly veiled espionage] written all over it!

Stuart

I've got a uniform with badly tarnished silver lace - I wear it when I do war of 1812 re-enacting [big boy war games ]. I have used the cream of tartar treatment, just made into a paste with a little water. The bread is just an alternative to Elvis 'leather' - it takes off the paste but isn't hard enough to scratch or tear the lace.

It works fairly well, except when trying to clean crevices and folds. Your cap looks ideal, at least around the body: nice smooth surface. The vinegar might help too.

When I asked the same question on an 1812/ Napoleonic forum, someone suggested 'potatoe water' - what's left after you boil pratties - as a slightly acidic liquid to soak the lace in. It works, of course, only if the fabric under the braid is colour fast. When I tried soaking a test piece in it it got shiny but also went green - perhaps more a comment on the quality of modern 'silver' lace then on the method, so I'd stick with the paste of Cream of Tartar and water and gentle rubbing. Good luck!

Peter

Many years ago I read his autobiography "The Moon's a Baloon" and enjoyed it thoroughly, especially the parts about Sandhurst and his time in the HLI.

The other volume of his biog. is called "Bring on the Empty Horses", from a command Alex Corda allegedly gave during the filming of "The Charge of the Light Brigade". Corda's English was practical but not elegant.

Another anecdote, possibly apocryphal, has Corda losing his temper with Niven and Errol Flynn when they laughed at one of his utterances and roaring "You, you, you think I know f**k nothing! Well, you are wrong. I know f**k all!"

This volume is also worth a read.

If you look at the Guest Identification forum you will see a litle more information on the British snake bucle belts in its 19th century incarnations.

Peter

just wondering if some forum members could help in a friendly argument!!on this thread

http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=40961

Noor picked up a VERY rare and sweet 3 place bar to a policeman from pre ww1 with all the visit to ireland medals ribbons on it! now i say as the police force at the time was under british rule wouldnt that mean that it is technically a british bar to an irish police man??? Noor says it a pure irish bar but i say its british!! what you guys reckon??!!shall i be eating my words!!

I tend to agree with you. Sorry, Noor! The medals/awards are those of the awarding authority / nation. The fact that an Englishman [or Irishman] won the Croix de Guerre wouldn't make it a British medal, whether he won it in the French Army or Foreign Legion or had it given him for some valiant act associated with France or French troops. Mind you, fine thing however one labels it!

Peter

What a lovely thing! I've always had a weakness for anything realting to the 'Yellow Boys'. In fact, I have a limited edition print painting by an artist called W E Fente: a head and shoulders portrait of a Sowar of HH against a backdrop of several galloping men and one of the frontier forts {Ali Musjid?]. I've recently sold my Indian cavalry badge collection but Skinner's Horse and Hodson's were the ones I was most tempted to keep. If I lived on the same continent, Mervyn, I'd likely have that statue off you pd.q.!

Peter

Seems to read - 'transferred 'G' ref 24/3/19'

And the "G" probably stands for a records series in the Archives. I know that in our [Canadian] National Archives runs or groups are lettered "G', "H", "M" and so on in some arcane formula known only to the archive gnomes but one does have to have the letter as well as the actual box/fond/file or reel numbers to find anything.

I don't see the "22 F.D.S." you mention but at a guess, for that period, I'd say "Field Dressing Station" - first stop on the road to Blighty for wounded or ill airmen and soldiers. Does that make any sense in the context? Might he have been a medical orderly or some other useful trade which would see him attached to a local aid detachment?

Peter

She would make one hell of a display room Scott.

Yeah, but parking her in the driveway would seriously annoy the neighbours! :whistle:

As someone who is .5 Canadian, Yipee I had no idea!

I agree! A very fine artifact indeed. Thanks for posting the news.

James

A very commendable project.

Regards

Brett

Hear, hear!

I'm not so sure, Peter. The IVs also had a "kick-up" at the back of the breech, which this one doesn't have.

Old age is a terrible curse! That and twenty years or more since I handled the Mk 4 "'Tini". Michael is correct: this is not the long lever Mark 4 at all. Mea culpa!

The reason for the lever being lengthened, however, is as stated.

This site has some nice clear shots of all four models: http://www.martinihenry.com/infantry.htm

This is a Mark 4 version of the 'Tini too, with a long lever rather than the short one which was in fact more common. The was a slight tendency for the rifles, when heated by repeated firings, to jam. I believe that the original cartridges, like those for the Snider Enfield, were brass foil on a solid brass base and when they jammed the base came away, leaving the foil in the barrel. One solution for this proble, obviously, was to go to a solid brass cartridge but in the Mks 1-3 these jammed entirely, so the 'long-lever' was an attempt to solve this by giving the user a little more leverage during extraction.

BTW, it's these - Mk 4s - that were used in the film Zulu. The Indian Army had thousands of them, one of which I owned in the palmy days of my youth, and they eventually flooded militaria and gunstores across the former empire [in Canada, in the late 1970's]. A lovley gun, still one of my favourite pieces of British issue!

Peter

I tend to agree with the 'cheap tat' thread here. Sure, getting it at all has some value, but soldiers like flash and glitter, hence the complete failure of every army I can think of to put all the guys and girls in the same uniforms, without the so aptly named 'tribal distinctions' for Grenadiers, Fusileers, Alpini, special forces and so on.

A boring hunk of cheap metal is what this is. As someone suggested, it looks like the stuff you find in souvenir shops next to national landmarks - pencil sharpeners, key chains and so on ad naseum. I also wonder how long it will take all the Planning and Support rear echelon types to swap off for the yellow stripe the sharp end troops get to wear. SIGH!

Many years ago there was a bloke who showed up in Toronto [Canada] representing himself as an officer and a veteran and wearing a group of medals starting with an Egypt and running up to and including WWII. He managed to get himself accepted as a member of the Canadian Military Institute and was treated in all ways as an honoured old soldier. However, a canny member of the CMI eventually twigged top the fact that the ribbon for "an Italian award" which he wore behind his other ribbons was in fact the same IGS ribbon Mervyn has shown here! At that point somebody stopped to do the math and figured that he would have had to have been 12 or 14 at Tel-El-Kebir to have earned them all. He was outed and quietly crept away into deserved obscurity.

Oddly enough, the Egypt and 'his' Boer war pair floated around the medal dealers and junk shops in Toronto for years after alway, to the best of my knowledge, with this story attached. As best I recall, they were name erased, not renamed to him - he had an explanation for that too, apparently. I'm not sure whether its a good thing or a bad that we are still so prone to take a man at his word, but it must say something about the brotherhood of old soldiers that we do. Sadly, this seems to be an increasing problem. The Yanks have even passed a new law after several fairly high profile outings of "self-made men" and I recall the fuss last year when a British chap tried to pass himself off as a decorated vet at a memorial parade. We are a curious race!

Brian

Very clever indeed! When I saw the post topic I immediately thought 'Oh, yes, a jeweller's tapered [whatchamcallit]', which they use to restore the other kind of rings to roundness. But of course those have no provision for the ring on the medal itself, which your groved dowel does a treat. Wery wery good indeed!

Peter

I must confess to having the same reaction as you did: too good to be true, even if one ignores some errors and implausibilities in the narrative. I actually spent some time chasing this story down a year or so ago and the best conclusion I could come to was the great Scots criminal verdict of "Not proven", which in my mind means 'not true'. I was sure the official version of |Mtecalfe's saga would be avaiable if it had been true.

Today I dug a bit deeper and here's the official story from the Bank of Canada's [/u]web site, the section on bank note designs:

"The armistice that marked the end of World War I in 1918 is commemorated with annual Remembrance Day ceremonies, held on 11 November, in cities and towns across Canada.

The Remembrance Day service illustrated on the back of the $10 note shows a male veteran, a young boy, and a young girl observing the ceremony. In the background, a male master corporal from the land forces stands vigil at a memorial cenotaph, with a female naval officer. They are depicted in accordance with the standard protocol observed at Remembrance Day ceremonies.

The master corporal wears the distinctive land forces uniform in the Number 1 order of dress. He is armed with a Canadian issue C7 rifle and is at the rest-on-arms-reserved position. The female naval officer is a nurse and is dressed in the distinctive naval uniform with an overcoat in the Number 1 order of dress. Members of the Canadian Forces stand vigil at memorials/cenotaphs only for Remembrance Day services.

The monument depicted on the back of the $10 note is not true to life. It is meant to represent cenotaphs/war memorials across the country. Together, the illustrations commemorate all Canadians who participated in past wars."

In other words, perhaps sadly, the story is a fabrication. Robert Metcalfe, however, is not. The story of his settling in Canada is true and he worked tirelessly for the Gurkha Welfare Trust and to assist veterans. Here is the text of the Department of Veterans Affairs Commendation which he was awarded in 2003:

"A Veteran of the Second World War, Mr. Metcalfe was awarded a Life Membership to The Royal Canadian Legion in 1996, in recognition of his valued commitment and support of the RCL. During the past 45 years, he has helped raise thousands of dollars on behalf of the Gurkha Welfare Appeal, to provide pensions, welfare, recreation and medical centres to the Veterans of Nepal.

For the past 10 years, Mr. Metcalfe has been The Royal Canadian Legion speaker at the "Encounters With Canada" program, addressing grade 12 and 13 students from across the country. Mr. Metcalfe also served many years as a volunteer guide at the Canadian War Museum, offering them remarkable insights into the achievements and sacrifices of Canadian Veterans. Mr. Metcalfe hosted at his own expense, many groups of Veterans and their families in Europe, leading them on visits of First World War battlefields, cemeteries and cenotaphs. In addition to funding two tours to Sicily and Italy, Mr. Metcalfe conducted several tours to coincide with D-Day anniversaries. He has personally researched the sites prior to conducting the tours, ensuring that the next of kin would visit the final resting places of their relatives and comrades.

Mr. Metcalfe has published his war memoirs, thereby keeping alive for future generations the memory of the sacrifice of Veterans. Mr. Metcalfe is a much-admired role model among Veterans and in his community."

While his memoirs are mentioned, no details are given and I suspect at least some of what appears in the 'legend' represents embellishment by the unknown original author(s) of this touching urban myth. A pity people feel compelled to make up such stories when so many true ones are as stirringand yet go unremarked.

Hello Peter,

Just an observation.

It would seem that the likelihood of an explosion while attempting to produce an explosive compound or any such similar endeavour increases exponentially with the number of video devices in close proximity times the number of alcohol beverages consumed.

Regards

Brian

Brian

Absolutely! "You might be a redneck if someone in your family's last words were "Hey, y'all! Watch this!". Or, as any number of police reports put it so succinctly, "Alcohol may have been a factor." :speechless:

hi, well the charcoal was easy, and managed to palm some potassium nitrate from the local university chemistry department.... I wouldn't think about trying to mix my own gunpowder as I've heard it's very tricky to get the amounts right!

Helen

Beat me to the punch, Helen! I was going to suggest whichever company supplies school labratories in your area. I have gotten ingredients for 'slowmatch' that way, through the post, in Canada. And the company apparently has no qualms about shipping off to individuals like myself - scary thought - though that may be different where you are.

Yes, the 'secret' to gunpowder is the mix. That and 'corning' it so it burns more rapidly. Too much of any one ingredient and one gets either a quick 'whoose' or a long low 'fizzle' and an almighty stink, as opposed to a short sharp 'bang'.

Mixing it up in the wrong conditions - static electricity is really bad - can be hazardous to one's health but wearing your Saint Barbara medal is guaranteed to protect you from that too!

Peter