BSF Campaign Medal

[bifbas]

Fellow enthusiasts

 

Can you confirm that no specific campaign medal was issued to members of the British Salonika Force? I can find nothing in my 2015 copy of Medals.

 

thanks in anticipation

 

bifbas

[Gardenerbill]

As far as I am aware no campaign medals were issued for service in the Great War. Soldiers who served overseas in 1914 and 1915 were issued with the 1914 or 1915 Star regardless of theatre. Soldiers who entered theatres of war in 1916 or after were only issued with the British War Medal and Victory Medal. Some soldiers who served with the BSF were awarded the Serbian White Eagle medal but no campaign medal was issued.  

[BullerTurner]

As Gardener Bill says, no specific campaign medals were issued for the various Great War campaigns.  There was a process entered into of considering what campaign awards or bars might be issued.  Some 79 were agreed upon for the Army but these were not progressed, possibly because the administration of them would have been diabolical in 1919/1920 contexts??

I have, somewhere, in Captain Dorling’s inestimable book on Medals and Ribbons IiRC, a list of the proposed clasps.  If I come across it, I’ll check to see what recognition might have come the way of those troops in “Saloniky”?

 

[BullerTurner]

As I thought, the list of clasps for the Navy were published, some 68.   However the sister committee considering Army/RAF clasps did not publish a similar listing.  One can only imagine the challenge creating such clasps, ensuring equal recognition of all the Ypres battles, weird and wonderful expeditions to The Congo and actually calling battles like Arras by the “right” name!  It must have been a very, very disheartened body of men who finally closed that committee down!