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BRITISH and COMMONWEALTH - SILVER WAR BADGE WORLD WAR ONE
$ 15.35
- Description
- Size Guide
Description
YOU ARE VIEWING AND POSSIBLY BIDDING ON A WORLD WAR ONE SILVER WAR BADGE:BRITISH / COMMONWEALTH SILVER WAR BADGE (S.W.B.) - WORLD WAR ONE
NUMBER: B 34687
The badge, sometimes known as the "Discharge Badge", the "Wound Badge" or "Services Rendered Badge", was first issued in September 1916, along with an official certificate of entitlement. If a person served in an active war zone then a King's Certificate of Discharge stating that they "Served with honour" would accompany the badge.
The large sterling silver lapel badge was intended to be worn on civilian clothes. The decoration was introduced as an award of "King's silver" for having received wounds or injury during loyal war service to the Crown's authority. A secondary causation for its introduction was that a practice had developed in the early years of the war in the United Kingdom where some women took it upon themselves to confront and publicly embarrass men of fighting age they saw in public places who were not in military uniform, by ostentatiously presenting them with white feathers, as a suggestion of cowardice. As the war had developed substantial numbers of servicemen who had been discharged from His Majesty's Forces with wounds that rendered them unfit for war service, but which were not obvious from their outward appearance, found themselves being harassed in such a manner and the badge, to be worn on the right breast while in civilian dress, was a means of discouraging such incidents being directed at ex-forces' personnel. It was forbidden to wear the badge on a military uniform.
The badge bears the royal cypher "GRI" (for
Georgius Rex Imperator, George King and Emperor)
; and around the rim "For King and Empire - Services Rendered".
Each badge was uniquely numbered on the reverse. The War Office maintained a register recording which serviceman each one had been issued to in United Kingdom, and the governments of Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Rhodesia maintained their own registers of issue (which were copied to the War Office in London to provide it with an Imperial master-record).
Silver War Badges issued by the Empire's dominion nations had their identification numbers on the reverse prefixed with the first letter of the issuing nation: Australia with the letter 'A', Canada 'C', etc. In the United Kingdom the War Office made it known that it would not replace Silver War Badges if they were lost, however if one was handed into a police station then it would be returned to the War Office, which would seek to return it using its records to its recipient.
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Condition: VERY GOOD (See Photos).
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Please see other items stretching from the Napoleonic Wars to the Crimea, to the Boer War and World War One and World War Two. British, Canadian, Australian, South African, New Zealand, India, Ceylon
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