Help Needed With Family Medals Please

[Paddy]

Hello All

I am calling on the medals/service records experts please for some assistance with a set of family medals. My brother in law has been given a set of medals which he has been told belonged to his uncle. The medals are 39-45 Star, Atlantic Star, Pacific Star, War Medal & Defence Medal. None of the medals are named and they have not been put on a medal bar. There is some doubt as to whether the 5 medals all belong together or if the have been mixed up with another family member. My brother in law believes his uncle was in the artillery (possibly RHA) but is this realistic given 2 of the medals are Atlantic & Pacific?

The man's name is George A Baldwin and he lived in Leicestershire. Are any of the medal boffins able to tell me his service number or if a GA Baldwin was issued with this set of 5 medals. I will try and get further information but this is all I have at the moment.

Many thanks

Paddy

[grenadierguardsman]

I believe to get his info you or next of kin have to apply for it ? WW2 info isn't searchable on the internet yet ? However if he died during the war, you may find some info, through CWGC. I may be corrected.....
Andy

[Alex Rice]

Hi Paddy
As unlikely as it may seem, it is not an impossible group to RA. He may well have been a DEMS gunner on ships and the medals are correct. I have an almost identical group in my collection to an RA DEMS gunner.
Cheers,
Alex

[Waterloo1815]

You can apply for WW2 service records under the following conditions (information taken directly from applicable forms): -

If you are the immediate Next of Kin or are able to provide the consent of the immediate Next of Kin you should make your application on the Application Form Part 1 for Next of Kin or Enquirers with the Consent of Next of Kin. A link can be found on the Service Records Information page.
Note that if you are not the immediate Next of Kin or do not have the consent of the Next of Kin then for a period of 25 years following the date of death the only information that will be disclosed to you is surname; forename; rank; service number; regiment/corps; place of birth; age; date of birth; date of death where this occurred in service; the date an individual joined the service, the date of leaving; good conduct medals (i.e. Long Service and Good Conduct Medal (LS&GCM)), and any orders of chivalry and gallantry medals (decorations of valour) awarded, some of which may have been announced in the London Gazette.
After this period the following information will also be disclosed, the units in which he/she served, the dates of this service and the locations of those units; the ranks in which the service was carried out and details of campaign medals awarded.

I applied for my uncle’s service records on from the Army Personnel Centre in Glasgow (full address: The Army Personnel Centre, MS Support Unit, P&D Branch, Historical Disclosures, MP 555, Kentigern House, 65 Brown Street, Glasgow, G2 8EX) using the downloadable ‘Military service request forms’ from the GOV.UK website, plus the required £30.00 search remittance. I waited 3 months before being informed that the records were now held at the National Archives Kew. This only applies to certain files as they are in the process of moving 10 million files to Kew over the next few years, so yours may still be at Glasgow. After reapplying to the National Archive, I was sent a copy of his service record. This is the ‘basic’ information that they supply (listed above), but they may also offer to send you copies of the entire file they may hold, and this will be costed on a price per page, i.e., the more pages they have, obviously the more it will cost you. I was asked to pay an additional £50 for all my uncles files, but a lot of it was just medical records, although there were some ‘gems’ of info, and as it happens, they forgot to charge me anyway! Also note; if you apply to Glasgow, and they eventually tell you the files have been moved to Kew, they will return your original cheque, and you’ll have to reapply to Kew with a new cheque.

[Toby Purcell]

Originally Posted by Paddy

Hello All

I am calling on the medals/service records experts please for some assistance with a set of family medals. My brother in law has been given a set of medals which he has been told belonged to his uncle. The medals are 39-45 Star, Atlantic Star, Pacific Star, War Medal & Defence Medal. None of the medals are named and they have not been put on a medal bar. There is some doubt as to whether the 5 medals all belong together or if the have been mixed up with another family member. My brother in law believes his uncle was in the artillery (possibly RHA) but is this realistic given 2 of the medals are Atlantic & Pacific?

The man's name is George A Baldwin and he lived in Leicestershire. Are any of the medal boffins able to tell me his service number or if a GA Baldwin was issued with this set of 5 medals. I will try and get further information but this is all I have at the moment.

Many thanks

Paddy

Paddy it’s important to note that unlike WW1 medals WW2 service medals (i.e. not including gallantry decorations) are not inscribed with soldiers personal details. This means that if they become separated from the box and paperwork that they arrive with, and subsequently become mixed up with others there’s no way of knowing whose is whose. The decision not to inscribe the details was taken by the newly elected Labour government of Clement Atlee when
an impoverished post war administration was trying to rebuild Britain and provide new homes in a way that hadn’t been necessary after WW1. I always thought it was a petty saving but apparently it made a big difference to the cost and so in some ways it’s understandable when so many priorities were being juggled. Nevertheless, in addition to making them cheaper to make and issue it’s made them close to worthless in comparison with WW1 medals unless accompanied by and mounted with a gallantry medal that gives them some provenance and identity.

[pioneercorps]

Hello Paddy. It cost me £25 for my Dads service records back in 2005 from Glasgow , and a years wait to get them. The records were not that informative even if you could understand the writing. Gerwyn.

[41st]

I was researching a chap who was in the Cardiff Pals in the 1st World War and went through the £30 route, including extra for obtaining his DC, in order to obtain records of his his 2nd World War service, which I knew he had from his RA tracer card.

It took me two goes during Covid to receive a response, but I did get it and in the end the MoD returned both cheques in recognition of the delay.

Well worth the effort in my opinion.

In the interim I now understand that there has been an agreement for 2nd WW service records to be available on Ancestry within the not too distant future.

[gary1666]

https://www.apply-deceased-military-...ervice.gov.uk/
Not great on medals but this was on the medal forum, I believe its free to apply from 1st April, although some records have been transferred to TNA and are not now held by the MOD - someone with more knowledge might be able to clarify that point.

[Paddy]

All

Many thanks for your replies and the information provided. I have passed the information and links to my brother in law and hopefully he will get some joy with his search.

Paddy