Courage rewarded

Being rational AS many of you may know (if only through this column), in addition to collecting medals, I also collect whisky. I’ve always liked whisky, ever since a customer in a pub where I was working some 35 years ago bought me a shot of Laphroaig, a peaty, smoky Islay malt that’s not for the faint hearted. I think he was expecting me to retch at the oily “seaweedy” taste, but instead I loved it and that started a love affair with Islay malts that carries on to this day. In recent years I’ve been collecting whisky more seriously, not only Laphroaig and other Islay expressions, but Speyside malts, blended variants, bourbons, all sorts, anything that caught my fancy I’d buy. Until I ran out of room. Recently I have decided to rationalise my collection, I’ve sold off all the cheaper “basic” bottles and am now concentrating solely on bottles that fit certain criteria—the age of the whisky, whether or not it’s from a single cask, etc. This has allowed me to a) free up some space and b) be able to afford more exclusive bottles, instead of spending £50 each on ten bottles I’ll buy one bottle at £500. It makes sense and keeps my wife happy as the floor of the study is no longer littered with whisky bottles! It struck me that I did the same with my medals when I first started collecting. I started with the Devon Regiment (as I live in the county) and the Sherwood Foresters (Notts and Derby Regiment) as I had been to University in Nottingham and felt I knew the area. I started by buying everything I could, mainly World War I trios and pairs as they were cheaper, I then moved into QSAs. I soon realised that my knowledge of Nottingham was limited, my knowledge of Derbyshire non-existent, so sold off the Sherwoods to concentrate on the Devon Regiment. Selling and rationalising allowed me to buy more expensive Devon Regiment medals, MMs, the odd MC, etc. Then one day I purchased a World War I pair to a Devonshire chaplain attached to the Devon Regiment who went on to be a vicar in a parish not too far away from where I live. A parish I duly visited to discover that the church there had a stained glass window commemorating him and there was much about him in the parish records. When I saw the amount of research that I could do, both on his active service and his life before and after the army, I was hooked; most of my Devon Regiment collection was nothing more than an accumulation, I could find little out about the enlisted men bar their census records and MiCs (officers were a little different, but even there the trail grew cold quickly), but chaplains I was able to research in depth, visit the churches where many of them later preached, follow their careers through Crockford’s Clerical Directory and so on. The fact that I had also read theology (along with philosophy) at university was an added bonus! At first, I started collecting chaplains alongside the Devons but realised that my old theme was being neglected and so the Devon collection had to go (annoyingly including medals to men from Exeter, the theme I’m pursuing now) and I started afresh. Again, rationalising the collection, selling off one area, allowed me to expand the other, freed up some money to buy some pretty special medals and I was proud to have put the chaplain collection together. Would I have been as happy had I stayed just collecting Sherwoods and Devons World War I groups? Maybe, but probably not, the chaplains collection I worked at, I had specific criteria for, I’d turn down QSAs if I had the clasps already, would pass on unnamed World War II groups even in boxes of issue were addressed to “Reverend”, I would say no to those medals to men who were vicars but joined line regiments or if they got ordained later. I was very specific and that “hunting rifle” versus “scatter gun” approach made my collecting more fun, at least for me. I know some of you collect “whatever catches your eye” and to be honest I envy you that, my problem has always been that an awful lot catches my eye and were I to collect that way I’d soon be broke and homeless, my wife having kicked me out long ago, so I really don’t know how you do it. Rationalising, downsizing has allowed me to stay on track rather than get overwhelmed and for me at least it has been the right decision, for you it may not be and that’s OK. One thing is for certain, if you aren’t like me and you don’t want (or need) to sell things off, then you won’t have to cope with the regret factor. I regret selling every single medal that I ever have, not because it was the wrong decision or I didn’t get what I hoped for it, but purely because I wish I still had them. I simply hate getting rid of things, even when I know I must. I’m the same with my whisky, even though I didn’t sell off anything particularly rare or exciting I still regret parting with it, even though it was becoming overwhelming. I do still have a house and marriage though, so there is that!