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Operational Honours and Awards List - July 08
The latest personnel honoured
The King's Badge
Putting the record straight
Waterloo to Bhurtpoor
In the thick of it from Belgium to India
Father of the Light Infantry
Sir John Moore's legacy to the British Army
The war against women
The elite strike force of the Kingdom of Dahomey
Only a pair
Uncovering the past
A local history aspect to medal collecting
Making connections with your local area
The first bars to the Air Force Medal
Historic flight in aviation's days of infancy
Regular Features
THE EDITORIAL PAGE
NEWS AND VIEWS
MARKET SCENE
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
ON PARADE
BOOKSHELF
DEALERS' LISTS
MEDAL TRACKER
CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING
DIARY
Medal News
September 2008
Volume 46 No. 8
What's in a name?
AS I’m writing this, in late summer 2008, the newspapers, television, internet, etc., are full of stories of medals and heroes. However, they are neither the medals, nor the heroes that we are perhaps used to. Unless you have been on Mars or on a retreat somewhere with no media access, you will know that for the latter part of August much of the World’s attention has been focused on Beijing and China’s Olympics and it is Bronze, Silver and Gold Medals and not Conspicuous Gallantry Crosses or MCs that take up much of the column inches, and the “heroes” that we’re hearing about aren’t service men and women risking their lives every day in Iraq or Afghanistan, but rather the British Athletes, or “Team GB” as they’ve been styled. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m exceptionally proud of our athletes—they have done unbelievably well this year and even the usual cynics and doomsayers can’t deny that 19 golds and a total of 47 medals, our best haul for a century, is pretty good going. We were fourth in the overall medal table, beaten only by much, much larger countries with populations many times ours from which to pick their best medal hopes. We even managed to successfully beat all our various “main” sporting rivals (and you know who you are . . . !) just about every time we came up against them—not bad for a country that is used to coming valiantly down the order and putting a brave face on sporting defeat. The wave of optimism and National pride that has followed the Olympic success has been a welcome break from the grey, dull weather and the constant bad news about the economy and there’s no denying that we finally have something to smile about. But I can’t help thinking that maybe we’re over egging the pudding slightly.
As we go to press the Government has already announced that the Olympians will be rewarded for their endeavours via the Honours system and a raft of OBEs, MBEs even Knighthoods are sure to be on the cards. Now it’s not that I don’t think that our athletes are deserving of such accolades, they have worked tirelessly to
