World War 1 - Gallantry Awards and Medals


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The British Army 1914 ~ 1919: Gallantry Awards and Medals

Victoria Cross *  Military Cross *  Distinguished Conduct Medal *  Military Medal * Meritorious Service Medal  *  Mentions in Dispatches

An Officer or Man's entitlement to the Victoria Cross,  Military Cross, Distinguished Conduct Medal, Meritorious Service Medal or Military Medal may often be mentioned on his Army Medal Office service medal index card, but this is far from being a hard and fast rule, and subsidiary searches may be required in order to establish whether any such awards were made. As you might expect, entitlement to the VC is easy to establish from printed sources. The DCM, MM, and the MSM  have their own index systems, however these lead you to a London Gazette date entry only, not necessarily to a citation. Very briefly, the research possibilities for these gallantry awards are as follows:-

 

Victoria Cross

Victoria Cross - "For Valour" - Great Britain's most prestigious gallantry award, applicable to all ranks of all services. A total of 615 were awarded between 1914 and 1919 of which 415 were to the Army. There were only two instances of men receiving a second award (Bar), Lieutenant Martin-Leake and Captain Noel Chavasse MC who both served with the Royal Army Medical Corps. The award is well documented and research normally presents no problems.

Military Cross

Military Cross

The award of the MC is often mentioned on an Officer's service medal index card, but that cannot be relied on to reveal the fact that the man had been awarded the medal and further preliminary checks with the service record or in the "Army Lists" or London Gazette indexes may be required. There is no card-index system for this award and as far as can be ascertained no centralised or formal retention of the original citations took place.

Where a citation did appear in the London Gazette  it was of a rather "anonymous" nature in that the event leading to the award was almost always described in a fashion which did not reveal the date of the event or where it took place. However, the gazette date itself gives a starting point for research of the relevant war diaries and it is often possible to find reference to the Officer in those records, and hence the event / reason for the award. There is also a separate "annotated" series of draft gazette entries which note the date and place of the relevant action, - those details never going forward with the actual gazette entry. There are also sometimes quite specific references to MC awards in printed Regimental sources (see "Regimental Records" in the index above). Many MC's were gazetted without a citation, particularly those appearing in the New Years and King's Birthday lists, and it is more than likely that these particular awards do not relate to any one specific event or series of events. Those particular awards are effectively unresearchable. "2nd Lt Norman Dudley John Hight, Essex R., Spec. Res. - For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. He took part in a successful attack, and afterwards organized the defence of a strong point, getting his rifles and Lewis guns in working order though they were caked with mud. At dusk he beat off a counter-attack, killing many of the enemy, and handling his men in the coolest possible manner." - that is a fairly typical London Gazette citation for the MC, in this case the War Office annotated version adding - "(NE of Poelcappelle 22.10.17)"

2nd Lt NDJ Hight was attached 10th Battalion Essex Regiment when this event took place, and the Battalion, Brigade, and Divisional war diaries contain very good detail of both the action as a whole and the reasons for Hight's MC in particular. The Bn diary containing a report that “At about 4.30pm on Oct. 22nd a barrage was opened by the Germans on our front line and the Strong Point at V.14.d.55.10 was subjected to a very heavy bombardment by 5.9’s. 4.2’s, and H.E. shrapnel. 2/Lieut N.D.J.Hight, who was in charge of this point, placed his men in position …….. “ etc etc. The precise map reference allows the location of the strongpoint to be determined exactly - and in fact it is marked on the contemporary trench map. That precise location is easily found "on the ground" today.

Distinguished Conduct Medal

The DCM is much less difficult to research than the other main Other Ranks gallantry award, the MM, - an index system exists, this leading to a London Gazette entry which in the main (but not always) includes a citation. The main exceptions are awards gazetted in the King's Birthday Honours lists, which never give a citation. For those awards where a citation is given the scope of reasons for the award turns out to be surprisingly wide; some citations refer to distinct acts of bravery and others to good service over a period of time.   

Military Medal

Military Medal (reverse view) with 2nd award BarThere are a series of indexes to the MM awards, and as with the MC the fact of the award is often  (but not always) mentioned on the man's service medal index card. Either of those will lead back to an entry in the London Gazette but that will not give you a citation.

Formal citations for this medal were never published and establishing the reason for the award can be a bit of a slog. The gazette date is a starting point, and work in the relevant war diaries normally gives a good rate of return in establishing what action was the relevant one as the man will often be mentioned by the diarist. Some "Routine Orders" in Divisional and Corps files actually printed regular lists of MM awards and the reasons for their having been granted, - an unpredictable source, but certainly worth trying. Likewise, as with the MC, Regimental sources can be helpful.

This all leaves the MM as perhaps one of the most irksome gallantry awards to research, but it is a highly prestigious recognition of "Other Ranks" service and  is well worth pursuing.  "No 72214 Sapper G.W.Booth and No 500322 Sapper G.H.House, remained out in the open all night "teed in" on the line from 183 Inf. Bde. to 184 Inf. Bde., under heavy H.E. and gas shell bombardment without being ordered to do so, in order to localize breaks quickly and hasten the repairs. They were awarded the MILITARY MEDAL for this on Jan 10 1918" - War Diary of the 61st Divisional Signal Company, 4/12/17, a fairly typical example of what can be found when an MM search falls into place. In this case it was George William Booth from Goole in Yorkshire that I was looking for. At the time in question the 61st Division was having a very heavy time of it, fighting off constant enemy attacks astride the Hindenburg Line, just east of Beaucamp, during the latter stages of the Battle of Cambrai.

Meritorious Service Medal

Whilst there is an index system for this award it will lead to nothing more specific than a London Gazette "name list" entry, - with the exception of awards resulting from the mining and sinking of one hospital ship no MSM citations were published in the gazette before July 1920.

The vast majority of MSM awards are gazetted under the heading "for valuable services" and are "period" awards, so apart from establishing the date the award was gazetted there is little that can be researched. However, a fair proportion of MSM's were gazetted "for devotion to duty", these generally indicating an element of gallantry over a period of time. A smaller proportion still were actually gazetted for individual acts of gallantry and this latter category are therefore (potentially) researchable  in exactly the same way that awards of the Military Medal can be researched - via the unit and higher echelon war diaries. 

(nb - the ribbon to the MSM was plain crimson till 1916, when the white edges were added, then from August 1917 the central white stripe was added as the illustration above left). 

Mentions in Dispatches There are three separate index systems for MiD's, all of which lead to London Gazette entries, but that's very much a dead-end as no citations (in the instances where a citation may have been applicable) were printed and no other relevant records are known to survive. Other than establishing that an MiD was awarded and the date when it was gazetted there is little else which can be done.