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The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Remembered Today:

Members opinions of medal/trench art ?


acoy1stbatttigers

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hi pals

i have hopefully for the first time managed to upload an image onto the forum,i have found this item recently on my travels,it is a full sized allied victory medal which which has been "cut out" and mounted on to a peice of a shell case, art or vandalism ?

i would be interested on your veiws !

post-51803-1266754318.jpg

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Impressive and evocative.

If it was done or commissioned by the medal recipient then it's for them to decide what they wanted to do with their medals - if it were done last week by someone with access to the appropriate tools then vandalism. Medals mean different things to different people, and it would be foolish to look upon this with solely a collector's eye.

On a similar note, my great grandfather fought in Sudan and the Boer War with the Warwickshire Yeomanry, earning the DCM at Omdurman. His children, including my grandmother hardly saw him for years, and his wife had to bring up the family single-handedly. When he came home in 1902, his wife had one of his spurs made into a pair of sugar tongs (for cubes), to signify that his time in them was over and he must return to domestic life*.

Possibly this re-use of a (possibly unwanted) medal and cartridge case was commissioned to create something good from something intrinsically bad -

I don't know. Nice piece though.

__________________

* He still tried to re-enlist in 1914 - my great grandmother was having none of it.

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my familiy has had simular experiences,my late father in the 1920s traded a close relatives silver war medal for some cigarette cards,it was handed into a police station but was uncalimed by our family,my brother in the 1960s drilled a hole through our grandfathers allied victory medal and used it as a keyring !

Going back to my original post, i hope the recipient of the victory medal had the peice made for himself,

all the best jonathan

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That piece if work represents a lot of cutting and shaping, so it it wasn't casual vandalism. If it was done by the man himself, he knew who he was and what unit he served in.

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I really like it!

TT

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