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General => Armed Forces => World War One => Topic started by: mack66 on Monday 05 February 18 10:15 GMT (UK)
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Hello all
My grandfather's medal card lists 3 medals he was entitled too. However, one was returned undelivered. I obtained this from MOD.
Regarding the other two. No record of receipt in the family. Family members do not recall seeing or hearing about these two medals from relatives at the time or since.
Could they have been undelivered ?
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What's his name & no.
If they were undelivered there should be some reference to it on his MIC or Roll.
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Hi Jim
They were delivered according to medal card - one was returned for some reason. However, the sons and daughters never had them and nobody in family has ever seen them or heard about medals.
Maybe they were lost, sold or thrown away in grief.
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Return vouchers were issued for men returning medals that had incorrect information on them.
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Jim
Here is the medal card for James. Can you work out which medals were delivered?
What does it all mean? Thanks
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The Medal Roll shows a large number of Victory Medals from the 16/HLI being returned so there must have been some sort of admin. cock up. Only 3 were re-issued. The others may have been altered & returned rather than re-minted.
It's possible the mistake was spotted before they were issued.
All of these have the same date 21/12/1923.
Also your James White died in 1916 so they may not have been applied for & the return voucher is just from one dept. to another.
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Hi Jim
Thank you.
Does it mean the family took delivery of 1914/15 star and general medal then?
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If his parents were still alive in the early 20's when they were minted they more than likely applied for them but there's no real way of knowing for sure.
Coming into the 30's no-one wanted to know about WW1 & they may have ended in a drawer somewhere & eventually thrown out as just being "uncle James' old medals" or sold & this information has been lost in the mists of time.
A friend of mine discovered only last year his Grandfather's WW1 medals that were in the possession of his brother who assumed he knew about them. So the fact that no-one in the family have seen them isn't that unusual & may be in the possession of some distant relative, which also happened.
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thanks Jim appreciate all your comments.
The parents were alive in 1920's. I suspect they may have been too grief stricken to apply. As you say, we will never know.
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As an aside this is where he fell. Apologies if you already know.
Their objective was Mouquet Farm & quarry.
He was one of 534 casualties of the 16/HLI that day.
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thank you Jim
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It was only Officers who had to apply for medals (or applied on their behalf by e.g family if deceased). Those for the rank & file men were automatically sent to the last address known on their file.
Note the date stamp 21 Jun 1983. This means someone approached the medal authorities regarding this man/medals around that date. My understanding is that those records (i.e who, why etc) no longer exist.
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Here's a thread from 2008 on the Great War Forum which is about him (and another relative) Bear in mind that many documents were not online at that time.
http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/topic/109947-medals-issued/?tab=comments#comment-1045591
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thank you Gwil.
That's interesting what you said about approach in 1983. I am next of kin if you like got me wondering now.