COLD WAR VETERANS
 

There is very little public recognition of the British Armed Forces, except when they are engaged in operations.

There is now an initiative to get belated recognition for the millions who served and helped to preserve the peace during the Cold War.

Please view the petition via the link below, and sign it if you agree with the cause:

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/655361

Where's the laughing emoji when you need it? Medals are awarded for 'Risk and rigour ' not going on the lash in West Germany for a few years.

Fully agree.

Back in the days when IDF was improvised drinking facility.

A pewter beer mug on a lanyard about the neck would seem a fitting medal, rather like the MoH is worn.

I do not think my time spent keeping the Warsaw Pact at bay is sufficiently meritorious to deserve a medal, unless it is for services to tax free shopping and my selfless support of the German brewing and wine making industries.

On our small Colonial aircraft carrier during the Cold War, its primary mission was the transportation of our testicles from one cocktail party to the next.

That was reward enough.

So where would you place the Nimrod R crews in this? Some of their now unclassified missions were definitely on the risky side. Baltic, east of the North Cape etc. Or the handful of Canberra crews who did solo recce flights into USSR? Or the WIWOLs on QRA trips into the Iceland Faroes gap with an unreliable jet, no real navaids and a fuel gauge that was calibrated between not enough and pitiful?

I doubt if the families, friends, and colleagues of the hundreds of UK mil aircrew killed whilst in training, or on exercise between 1947-1991would consider the Cold War as a hoot and a roar, or just all beer and skittles!!!

I agree with my late father. He got GSMs for Cyprus and Aden. Anything else in his 28 year career was just work. After he retired from the RAF he never identified himself as a veteran - he got on with his life.

If you feel that these losses are a direct result of the Cold War, then perhaps there is a case for them to receive a medal. It is not an argument for everyone who was in the armed forces during that period to receive a medal.

Ninthace, I didn’t say that, or even allude to it!

All that I was pointing out, however clumsily, was that for some the Cold War was not all about simply getting p*ssed at the NAAFI bop, as some of the earlier respondents seemed to imply!

Actually, as I found by accident, RAF Veteran is now on my NHS docs and probably everybody else's as well.

The Cold-War period still had many "hot" spots. Suez, Kenya, Malaya, Cyprus, Aden, N.I. Many of those had GSM awards.

As civvies, Met. would not get any such medal, and rightly so.
However, 15 of my 40 years were overseas and they were harder work and more rewarding than UK.
Winning the Cold War was reward enough, even though the victory was squandered.

There were/are ways of recognising particularly valuable service. To lump them in with anyone who participated in the cold war, which is basically anyone in uniform at the time, would do them no favours.

The following is with the provisio, I can't see it happening given the number of suggestions from within parliament for additional medals eg for Op Relentless. Look how feet have been dragged over the 'Wider Service Medal' which Ben Wallace says he signed off months before he stepped down as SoS.

I notice the originator of the petition states One thing missing from the petition is a sensible minimum service criterion (with exceptions for those who died or whose service was terminated early due to injury in the line of duty).

The outlook is very UK/Commonwealth, I am thinking of the US Recruiting service and training service ribbons, Professional development Ribbons, Service and training awards etc.True my father's generation joked USN personnel came out of basic training with the Head Cleaning Medal.

There are exceptions to the risk and rigour criteria (which applies to campaign medals), medals are awarded for other reasons, without diminishing the status of campaign medals or gallantry awards.

Do those above who deride the idea, but would be eligible think, LSGCMs should not be awarded?

Thanks to Her Late Majesty's longevity plenty of Jubilee medals are to be seen. As is the King's Coronation Medal.

One shouldn't forget the Soviet Union was happy to send material supplies to the Provos as war by proxy. (Yes, I know GSM NI)

Anyway thanks to those of you who put in a real shift in the Cold War we are still all entitled to express our differing opinions.

The qualifying criteria for this proposed medal haven't been specified. They need to be, if this is going to be taken at all seriously.

As a veteran of Egg Banjo's I feel the need to say bring it on.. The Egg Banjo's that is.. although we did suffer incoming fire in Roermond when some of the locals set off fireworks in our general direction..