The medal behind the man THIS month’s “Editorial” isn’t so much a “comment” as a request, a plea if you will. We are incredibly lucky here at MEDAL NEWS that so many people want to write for us. We have a large number of articles in the “queue”, enough, I think, to last us until summer of next year. There is, however, a small issue. Many of those articles, interesting though they are, are related to World War I. Now that’s fine, many of you collect medals from that period and it is of interest to many of our readers, so we certainly don’t want to ignore it, but in terms of medals it can be limiting. Most of the articles submitted cover trios, pairs, maybe a TFWM and some gallantry but that’s it. The article thus becomes about the person/people or action and not about medals, and whilst that isn’t an issue in itself, after all we understand that medals aren’t coins and generally collect them for the stories they represent, we would still like to carry some articles on just medals as objects. Not just the story of the men behind them, or the action for which they were awarded, but the physical medal itself. We’d like to know about why a medal was instituted in some cases and not others, who was behind its design, where was it struck or manufactured, why the ribbon colours were chosen, etc, the technical details of the medal and not just who received it. Think, if you will, of the Victoria Cross—the stories of heroism associated with it are incredible, but the medal itself is pretty special too. There are probably more people who know that it is made from the cascabels of captured Russian (actually Chinese) guns from the Crimea than who could name more than a few VC winners! It’s that kind of knowledge about other medals that we are after. The reason for this request is simple. In this month’s “News & Views” we showcase the 2026 programme for the Ottawa Branch of the OMRS, and this coming month’s talk by Mike Willmets is on the Newfoundland Volunteer War Service Medal [MYB194]. I have no idea what Mike’s talk covers (although he has promised to send me a copy of it), but I assume from its title that there will be some mention of medal itself rather than just its recipients. This caught my eye as the designer of the medal was one Ian H. Stewart, CM, a gentleman who passed away last year after a long career as a numismatic designer and medallist. As well as the NVWSM, he also designed the Malta George Cross 50th Anniversary Medal [MYB342] and a number of unofficial medals, the Normandy Veterans’ Medal [MYBU6] and the National Service Medal [MYBU12], to name but two. As well as being a Director of Award Productions Ltd, he was also my stepfather. Without wishing to bore you all with a long and convoluted personal story, Ian and my mother met in the mid-1980s through the world of coins and medals whilst she was working with my father on what was then Coin & Medal News. Subsequently, I had the privilege to watch Ian work on his designs over a number of years and vividly remember his explanations as to why various things were done the way they were. For example, on the Normandy Veterans’ Medal there’s a Normandy clasp; originally that clasp was supposed to indicate the beach on which the recipient had landed, or had set men ashore on, Juno/Sword/Gold, etc, but that simply became unworkable, not least because the Royal Naval personnel covered a variety of beaches in the early days of the campaign. I know these things about the medals, because I was part of it, but most of the medals we collect were designed and minted years ago and many of us simply don’t know much about them as medals. We know the story of the campaigns for which they were instituted, know the criteria under which they were awarded, but do we know who first mooted the idea of a medal rather than a clasp or vice versa? Why do some medals have clasps for specific battles, others for larger campaigns or even years? Why, for example, is there no Rorke’s Drift clasp to the South Africa General Service Medal but various “Defence of…” clasps for the QSA? Is it simply a case of the numbers involved? That there weren’t enough men at Rorke’s Drift to merit a separate clasp? Well, if that’s the case, why bother with some of the Boat Service clasps for the Victorian Naval General Service Medal, awarded as they were in double, even single, figures? The answers to such questions may well be known to some of you, but not, I think, to the wider medal collecting community and I’d like to change that. Yes, our strapline is “For the History of Heroes,” but we are MEDAL NEWS after all and I’d like to learn more about medals, not just the men behind them—so it’s over to you. That said, if you’re not up to writing about the “medal behind the man”, we’d still love to see your “man behind the medal” articles, but if you don’t want to wait for 18 months or more to see your work in print then perhaps look at Victorian campaigns, or those post-1945. Articles related to medals awarded to the emergency services (any period) would also be very welcome!