1957 War Office Report on the Army Medal Office (A.M.O.) Droitwich

WW2 Medal Card Front

WW2 Medal Card Back — A privately held copy of a CS 20 Application For Issue Of Campaign Stars And Medals card which was not completed by 10669918 H.F. Varey Royal Army Service Corps. The cards were intended until transfer to the Army Medal Office at Droitwich (by 1957) to be processed by relevant Army Record Office. With the decision not to engrave the claimants name and military details on WW2 Campaign medals it was possible for the Record Offices to send out the relevant Campaign medals without reference to the War Office. Whereas in WW1 other ranks or their next of kin were automatically sent the Campaign medals they qualified for, the WW2 Campaign medals were only sent out to other ranks in the immediate post war years if they completed a C.S. 20 Card. Officers continued to need to apply for their Campaign medals as had been the case following WW1. By 2014 the M.O.D. Medal Office had a total of 1,561,800 of these cards (see ‘WW2 (C.S. 20) Army Medal Cards – Information from Freedom of Information Requests’, for link click here). Unlike the WW1 Medal Cards which represent a fairly complete picture of the Great War British Army who served in an overseas Theatre of War the WW2 Medal Cards represent only a fraction of the over three million men who served in the WW2 British Army.

Alongside additional information on the C.S. 20 World War 2 Medal Cards the information in the report sets out the organisation of the Army Medal Office into divisions by 1957 and their proposed reduction from four to three divisions following the report. Mention of the Divisions is sometimes found written on the WW1 Medal Cards (an example of a medal card refering to Division I can be found by clicking here and looking under the subheading ‘The Echelon Rolls’).

Army Medal Office Droitwich Divisions Replacement Page 2

The slightly confusing reference in the table for ‘Div III’ was intended to indicate that the new Division III would take over an unchanged range of work from the old Division IV.

Army Medal Office Droitwich Divisions Replacement Page 3