Featured medal: GV Imperial Service Order

Here’s my latest addition to my collection of service and campaign medals, an Imperial Service Order from the period of George V, 1910-1935.

This one is named to a bloke called Albert Smith. Interestingly my research shows that Albert was a biologist who published widely on mollusks and was admitted to the order in 1911. Mollusks. Mmmmm delicious tasty mollusks.

Wiki has a short article on the medal, “… The Imperial Service Order was established by King Edward VII in August 1902. It was awarded to the administration and clerical staff of the Civil Service throughout the British Empire for long and meritorious service. Normally a person must have served for 25 years to become eligible, but this might be shortened to 16 years for those serving in unsanitary locations. Both men and women were eligible, and receipients of this one-class order are entitled to use the post-nominal letters ‘ISO’…”.

When does an accumulation become a collection?

About six years ago I walked into a second-hand store in North Bay. There under the counter was what would later prove to be a World War II German Wound Badge in Silver. Of course I bought it and so began an obsession. Today I have an accumulation of World War II and World War I campaign medals. I call it an accumulation because it has so many holes and because I have not yet lurched fully into the morass of variants out there.

Along the way I have also picked up a rat bag collection of helmets, war badges and arm bands. At the beginning I focused on exclusively Third Reich stuff but I hit a wall early on. Partly the problem comes from the baggage that comes from having a case full of swastikas hanging on the wall. Then there is the problem of cost. Basically I have a modest amount of disposable income so it’s pretty easy to exceed my self-imposed limit of $500 per item. The Jerry stuff, well there’s a handful of things out there for less than this, EK’s (Iron Crosses), Flower War Medals, some of the more common War Badges and the War Merit Cross series. After that it rapidly escalates into high risk territory. High risk because the manufacturing of fakes basically started even before the war was over to satisfy the returning G.I.’s desire for souvenirs. And since then they have gotten better, so good that unless you really have your wits about you, you can spend a lot of cash on what is really an expensive lead pencil.

So I decided to branch out and collect campaign medals from all of the combatant nations. It’s been a lot more rewarding generally because the different countries use differing iconography and manufacturing methods when they strike these things. Some of them are quite pretty, some of them a terribly industrial, all of them represent something.

My favourite items are a King’s Medal for Service in the Cause of Freedom (2490 issued), a Southern Rhodesian War Service Medal (1700 issued), a Newfoundland War Service Medal (800 issued), a U-Boat torpedo timer & case and my WWI Prussian Infantry Pickelhaube (spiked helmet). As I pick up interesting items I will be showing them off here. No-one will care, but that never stopped me before.