Italian Order of the Crown

[mebu]

Seeking any information or help on why the Italian Order of the Crown, Bronze Medal for Military Valour.

 

Lieutenant, later Captain, John Geldard of RMLI was awarded this probably because of service at Gallipoli.

 

Why would Italian medal be awarded?

 

Any help welcome.

Thanks, Peter

[travers61]

from reading this forum, it seems that foreign awards were not always awarded for service in the awarding country, but rather as a way of rewarding (sometimes after the war) continued good service or gallantry during the war or for an individual event. Often CO's nominated men with MID's or certificates of some kind, where a British award was not available & the foreign  award was issued when a batch of awards was made available to the British under the inter-Alied arrangement.

 

Gallipoli not so far from the Italian sphere of influence, as they occupied several Greek Islands including Kos during WW1 & up until WW2.

[ForeignGong]

His LG for the Bronze Al Valore Militare

https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/30386/supplement/11925

There are approx. 954 gazetted for Ww1 up to 1925

[mebu]

Thanks for the info, most appreciated.

 

What I cannot understand is why the Italian government, which (I think) had no involvement at Gallipoli, should confer a medal. Looks like they gave out quite a lot.

 

Thanks, Peter

 

 

[ForeignGong]

All the allies had a reciprocal arrangement of handing out awards to each other. It was up to the British Authorities to distribute them as they saw fit.

When you compare 115,000+ M.M's for WW1, then 954 is not a great number. I would have thought that an LG date of 17 Nov 1917 was a bit late for Gallipoli, usually the LG was 3-6 months after the event. Just a thought.

 

Peter