WW1 English Medal Named 1914-15 Star

[HARRY THE MOLE]

That's an odd situation Steve as the men on the Royal Navy escort ships would have qualified for the 1914-15 Star. Same waters facing same threat.

I can assure you though, that it is absolutely correct. You will not find any photographs of the 1914 volunteers of the Accrington Pals wearing a 1914/15 star. It is possibly connected to the amount of time that they spent in dangerous waters.

Update... additional information.

I've just been through the research I did for the Accrington Pals book, and it seems that a very small number of the battalion qualified for the 1914/15 star. They were the advance guard which were sent ahead of the battalion to France in 1915, but were then recalled when it was decided to send the battalion to Egypt instead. The reason the battalion was denied the medal was because they never actually set foot on foreign soil during the qualifying period for that medal. They were not allowed ashore when they docked at Malta, although officers were, this caused much resentment and several OR's jumped ship and got pi**ed. This resulted in severe punishment for the miscreants. The first time they set foot on foreign soil was at Egypt on January 1st 1916. The mayor of Accrington made very strong protests about the rather mean-spirited decision to deny the men the medal, but to no avail.

Cheers,
Steve

[Anderson]

It does seem mean spirited. The pedantic hand of the desk wallahs.