Arctic Convoy E-Petition

A controversial viewpoint Andy, but entirely fair – there are many, many examples of forgotten campaigns and personal sacrifice and each is equally deserving of recognition.

‘Our’ generation is prone to fiddling with history to make events in the past fit in with our idea of right and wrong as we see it today – for example, recent apologies over the 19th century slave trade. In fact, Alan Turing broke a law which was in force at the time of his offence – ridiculous by today’s standards, but a lawful prosecution at the time.

However, what we can do is to try and correct oversights and errors in the recent past, and by that I mean within living memory. I see little real merit in pushing for retrospective recognition for participants in the Peninsular War for example, but to an elderly gent (or lady) who lived through their own particular hell on behalf of their country we can at least ensure their experiences are recognised formally whilst they are still able to accept the appreciation of a grateful nation.

To horribly misquote Edmund Burke: “All that is neccessary for brave deeds to be forgotten is for good men to do nothing”.

Mo

I apologise if I touched a raw nerve. I did not intend to offend, and I am up there and ahead of the rest when it comes to campaigning issues like this as you will see elsewhere on this forum.

That your father and his pals richly deserve(d) a medal is beyond question. Indeed, and notwithstanding my comments above, I signed the e-petition anyway.

What I am saying is that retrsospective issue of “new” medals at this distance in time raises all sorts of questions and problems, not least of all the emergence of any number of other deserving groups and campaign veterans. All service personnel in the conflict 1939 -45 (though I think officially to 1947) qualified for the appropriate stars and medals for their theatre, sometimes with specific bars to the ribbon. Trouble is, I can easily think of at least another two dozen or so cases where it would be easy to say they should have had a specific medal or bar. Certainly, those cases should have had them but doing it now is all a bit late. Equally, you need to remember that there were some gallantry awards that were never made (look up Garland, Grey and Reynolds or Percy Burton) and other cases where campaign bars were later WITHDRAWN from some Battle of Britain aircrew. I fear it is now far too late to do anything about any of these groups.

Might be a controversial view….but. And it doesn’t alter the fact that they DESERVED such medals.

Count me out of this!!

Mo

Whilst Andrew Robathan’s comments were surely disgraceful, might we consider for a moment the question of retrospective issues of medals? I am not saying that such an award would be richly deserved, and some, but retrospectively wanting to issue medals to a whole plethora of individual campaigns and actions raises all sorts of questions. One is never going to achieve fairness in the apportionment of campaign medals and bars, anyway -and not least of all because of the usual arbitary and artificial means by which the qualifying dates are set. For example, Sqn Ldr George Lott was blinded in one eye on 9 July 1940 and thus denied the Battle of Britain bar (or his name on the monuments etc) which was effective from 10 July. He later said “Unfortunately, nobody had told the Germans that the Battle of Britain hadn’t started.” The date was set post-war by Dowding, who probably decided not to go for the earlier date of 4 July, for example, because it would have been embarrassing for Fighter Command had he done so. A lesser case is my father, who failed to qualify for the Italy Star by about 12 hours.

My point is; what dates would you set? Not only that, but thousands of veterans have surely died since and many died in the convoys themselves. Would they retrospectively qualify, too? And how? Also, there is the bigger picture of a medal for Bomber Command. And what about Atlantic Convoys? Or Japanese POWs…and so on and so on…

I just think it is easy to go for a knee-jerk and tabloid-esque “They deserve a medal!” campaign without thinking things through.

Those who might be aware of some of my campaigning issues will know that, ordinarily, I’d be the first shouting the case and the cause from the rooftops. But…..

However, that does not alter the fact that Andrew Robathan is certainly a fool for making his remarks in such a crass manner.

You are right of course. But regardless of the name (my bad), they were well and truly done over.
Mo

HMS Exeter perhaps?

Moggy

My Father passed away in 1972 with a destroyed body. After surviving the Battle of The River Plate on HMS Essex and all that concurred, he had 5 bouts of “survivor’s leave” in 1940 – 1942. He was on Arctic Convoys for a year or so and ended with Normandy Bombardment on HMS Bellona.

It cut his life by too much and as a greay ladies man he never saw his beautiful grand daughter grow up – let alone his lovely great grand daughters.

How do you put a valuation on things like that?

Mo

Done

Answered my own question!

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/5211

The link above should take you to just such a petition – a very, very good cause. A great uncle of mine survived being torpedoed twice and never got over his experience – according to Andrew Robathan however this was not sufficient ‘risk and vigour’ to merit a campaign medal.