Can you identify these medals?

OccasionallyOnTarget

OccasionallyOnTarget

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Not sure if this is the right place for this, but these are my grandfather's medals and I was hoping I could find out what they all are. As far as I know he was in England 1940-1945.

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From the left;
39-45 star/France & Germany Star/War Medal/Canadian Volunteer Service Medal (CVSM) with overseas bar/Defense medal.
A common set to a Canadian Solider who served in Europe in WW2.
Bottom photo;
Victory medal 1914-18/War medal (British)
Common set to a solider who served in WW1. Check the rim of both of these for a name
Here is a link that has more detailed info at Veteran Affairs Canada under Orders and Decorations
http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/medals-decorations
 
Alonzo said:
From the left;
39-45 star/France & Germany Star/War Medal/Canadian Volunteer Service Medal (CVSM) with overseas bar/Defense medal.
A common set to a Canadian Solider who served in Europe in WW2.
Bottom photo;
Victory medal 1914-18/War medal (British)
Common set to a solider who served in WW1. Check the rim of both of these for a name
Here is a link that has more detailed info at Veteran Affairs Canada under Orders and Decorations
http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/medals-decorations
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Thanks! So obviously the bottom picture must be my great-grandfather or his brother, not my grandfather.
 
Depends when your grandfather was born. There were lots of guys in the Great War sporting medals from the Boer War and earlier conflicts, lots of guys in the Second who already had a set from the Great War.

Only thing to do is check the medals themselves, unless you have access to paperwork (birth certificates, attestation papers, enlistment forms) which will confirm or refute an idea.

Good luck in the search!
 
If u apply to veterans affairs u can get all of ur relatives documents from their service records. Got my father's awhile back it makes for interesting reading.
 
Komodo said:
If u apply to veterans affairs u can get all of ur relatives documents from their service records. Got my father's awhile back it makes for interesting reading.
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Yep, took 6 months but I just got my great grandfather's a few months back. Full service records, attestation papers, discharge papers. Really cool to read through.
 
My great-grandfather was English and served in England and in France in 1914-1918. The WWI medals must be his.
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My grandfather was Canadian and served in England and apparently France (since he has the medal) in 1940-1945. He met and married my grandmother in England in 1942.
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War Medal was called derisively the "Spam Medal", CVSM was called the "Vote Mackenzie King".

Our unbeloved Prime Minister might have got his Liberal mug on the $50 bill, but he was the only war leader EVER to have been BOO'D BY HIS OWN TROOPS....

..... and for damned good reason, too!

Check it out for yourself.
 
Quite a number of Canadian soldiers married English wives and started families there. Some were there from late 1939 until after the Normandy invasion in mid 1944, so they had plenty of time to put down roots.

The CVSM was issued to those who volunteered for service, and not to those who were conscripted. I wouldn't be too critical of any of these medals as they all indicate that a person volunteered to serve without any conditions and was liable to serve in any location where he might be in jeopardy.

Mackenzie King sought desperately to avoid a re-run of the conscription crisis of WW1 and initially thought that Canada could avoid large scale ground combat by becoming a major contributor in non-combat roles such as food and industrial production and the Commonwealth Air training Plan. The RCAF bore the major share of Canadian casualties until the Army was finally committed to combat in Italy in mid 1943. This didn't raise any political problems as RCAF aircrew were all volunteers and casualties were fairly modest compared to ground combat. Once the Army began large scale combat in Italy and NW Europe infantry manpower replacement demands finally forced King to come to grips with sending conscripts overseas. It can also be said that the Cdn Army did a poor job of manpower utilization by getting it's force structure wrong, by consistently understating the demand for infantry replacements and by generating an excessive number of replacements for other branches of the army with lower loss rates than the infantry. Ultimately a lot of people who had been trained for the artillery and various non-combatant branches wound up being remustered and retrained (often hastily and poorly) to feed the demand for infantry replacements.
 
sunray said:
Campaign ribbons commonly know as 'I was there medals'.
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Respectufully, my grandfather wore some of those same medals, and others not pictured, and he was more than "I was there"

If you want to impart your often incorrect gun knowledge, fine. But when it comes to making comments that frankly sound marginalizing to those that served, I would respectfully request that you not.
 
smellie said:
War Medal was called derisively the "Spam Medal", CVSM was called the "Vote Mackenzie King".

Our unbeloved Prime Minister might have got his Liberal mug on the $50 bill, but he was the only war leader EVER to have been BOO'D BY HIS OWN TROOPS....

..... and for damned good reason, too!

Check it out for yourself.
Click to expand...

Ironically, just reading Farley Mowat's book "The Regiment" tonight, and the CVSM was referred to as the "E.B.G.O. " , Every Bastard's Got One. After being thoroughly beaten during Operation Chuckle in December 1944, the resentment toward the conscripted "Zombies" that were still sitting comfortably back home was at an all time high. A very informative, somewhat depressing read of the war in Italy from the perspective of the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment that Mowat served in during WW2.
 
fenceline said:
Respectufully, my grandfather wore some of those same medals, and others not pictured, and he was more than "I was there"

If you want to impart your often incorrect gun knowledge, fine. But when it comes to making comments that frankly sound marginalizing to those that served, I would respectfully request that you not.
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I'm afraid Sunray was right. A postal clerk 50 miles behind the lines could get the same decoration as the grunt at the front. So, there were a lot of "I was there" medals.
My father-in-law was with bomber command flying over Germany and has a row of medals that were the same as the mechanic that stayed at the airfield. That's just the way it is.
The only decoration I got in my service was the SSM with NATO bar. We called it the beer drinking medal. But, if you want to get all heroic, I was defending God, Queen, country and the combined free nations of Europe against the communist hoards. Take it either way.
 
points said:
I'm afraid Sunray was right. A postal clerk 50 miles behind the lines could get the same decoration as the grunt at the front. So, there were a lot of "I was there" medals.
My father-in-law was with bomber command flying over Germany and has a row of medals that were the same as the mechanic that stayed at the airfield. That's just the way it is.
The only decoration I got in my service was the SSM with NATO bar. We called it the beer drinking medal. But, if you want to get all heroic, I was defending God, Queen, country and the combined free nations of Europe against the communist hoards. Take it either way.
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While I get the whole "Battle of Jubilee" sentiment, one set of medals worn by one individual, can represent an entirely different set of circumstances of an identical set of medals worn by another person.

The "I was there" connotation usually brings with it a lack of involvement upon the person it is directed at, when in reality one may have been hanging their ass out quite far to end up getting the same meager decoration.

It is doubly insulting, intentionally to the guy who went and fought little, and unintentionally to the guy that went and fought a lot.

Every medal, or rack of medals has it own story, regardless how many of them were given out. Sometimes "there" was behind the line. For others, their "there" was hell.
 
fenceline said:
While I get the whole "Battle of Jubilee" sentiment, one set of medals worn by one individual, can represent an entirely different set of circumstances of an identical set of medals worn by another person.

The "I was there" connotation usually brings with it a lack of involvement upon the person it is directed at, when in reality one may have been hanging their ass out quite far to end up getting the same meager decoration.

It is doubly insulting, intentionally to the guy who went and fought little, and unintentionally to the guy that went and fought a lot.

Every medal, or rack of medals has it own story, regardless how many of them were given out. Sometimes "there" was behind the line. For others, their "there" was hell.
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Well said.
 
fenceline said:
While I get the whole "Battle of Jubilee" sentiment, one set of medals worn by one individual, can represent an entirely different set of circumstances of an identical set of medals worn by another person.

The "I was there" connotation usually brings with it a lack of involvement upon the person it is directed at, when in reality one may have been hanging their ass out quite far to end up getting the same meager decoration.

It is doubly insulting, intentionally to the guy who went and fought little, and unintentionally to the guy that went and fought a lot.

Every medal, or rack of medals has it own story, regardless how many of them were given out. Sometimes "there" was behind the line. For others, their "there" was hell.
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You don't have a rack do you? I have a whole rack of "I was there" medals. I am not insulted. It is what it is.
 
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