Great grand fathers medals 🎖

[Foxyboy43]

I too have been to Ypres many times and walked the sites of all three major battles. The first use of chlorine gas was at Ypres April 1915 against French colonial troops. Unbelievably the Canadians stubbornly refused to retreat.
We must beg to differ on your views on the British High Command!

Indeed - there and the Somme never fail to move me each time I visit.
My good pal has the trench diary of his uncle who was initially based at what is now the Bellegarde crater and ”lived” in a dugout underneath the Menin Road in conditions of absolute squalor. We also have his handwritten account of an attack which won him a Mention in Dispatches which cost many lives at no gain - like so many others before and after. Sadly he was killed on the River Lys in January 1916. His diary includes the entry he made that morning just before he led his men in an attack on the german trenches together with hand-written eye-witness accounts of his courage which ultimately won him an MC. This soldier was the only son of a Belfast Shipbuilding magnate and is the centrepiece of a wonderful memorial to him and 135 other shipyard men who also lost their lives in the Great War. A small group of family and friends gathered at the memorial on the 100th anniversary of the memorial’s unveiling and a prayer was read from his trench bible. A remarkable young man who gave up a directorship and a very bright future in his father’s business to defend King and Country and like so many others lost his life.
I do of course understand your views on the GS but IMHO Ypres was of no strategic military value, was a salient surrounded and dominated on three sides from the outset by enemy who could see virtually every movement. Just a few hundred yards away was the much easier to defend canal which already formed the basis of a strong defensive position elsewhere outside the town and yet we clung to it at a devastating cost. It could have been evacuated at any time and as a result the attrition rate aka slaughter could have been much reduced. A view shared by many of those who survived.

 

[Eric the Red]

I Got left these 1st world war medals when I was about 13 my younger brother gave them to his girlfriend temporarily as a gift when he was about 12 luckily her parents returned them , anyways Never met Grt granddad as he passed when I was very young but I got the medals some authentic ribbon with a view to having them mounted . I remember my old Grt nan but was too young to ask the sort of things I’d like to have asked now . Very proud to have them shame I never got to meet him

If you want these re-ribboned/mounted, feel free to drop me a PM and I can put you in touch with my chap. The cost is not exorbitent.

 

[Koenig]

Unless you want to wear them on Remembrance Day, I’d look to getting them framed. Framers can usually be found in the back pages of Soldier magazine or I dare say a Google search will throw something suitable up. If you know anyone still serving they will often know of someone on camp who does this sort of thing as a sideline.

 

[bfltd0]

Unless you want to wear them on Remembrance Day, I’d look to getting them framed. Framers can usually be found in the back pages of Soldier magazine or I dare say a Google search will throw something suitable up. If you know anyone still serving they will often know of someone on camp who does this sort of thing as a sideline.

You can do both - get them mounted with a pin so you can wear them, and get a frame made up that shows them off for the rest of the year.