War
Service Badge
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It can be seen from surviving
snippets of paperwork that the Admiralty Transport Department’s original intention
was only to issue a War Service Badge to the crews of colliers and oilers in
home waters. (There was also a scheme to provide dockyard workers with card
‘tickets’.) An Admiralty instruction of 30th January 1915, at least
theoretically, widened the issue to officers and men on all transports
and also to dockyard workers that were deemed essential in getting transports
fit for sea. It was further decided in March 1915 that civilians of
military age on ‘all Trawlers, Drifters, Tugs, Launches, Motor Boats and
other small craft taken up by the Government’ should also receive these. In
time this was amended to all those on non-commissioned craft. As might
be expected, it all remained ill-thought out. Mariners appear to have
regarded them as their personal property. Far from being a ‘decoration’, as
stated in an Admiralty edict, these badges were ‘merely a token that the
recipient’ was ‘on Government service and while so employed’ was ‘not
eligible to be recruited’. This in itself was nonsense though, since mariners
and dockyard workers were not only allowed to join the armed forces, it is
known that more than a few did. Principal and Divisional Naval Transport
Officers of the ports operating transports had many more complaints
though. Some were just annoyed at losses on a scale ranging from carelessness
through to desertion. One even claimed to be in fear that lost badges might
‘get into the hands of German spies who would then be able, when wearing
them, to go about unquestioned and unsuspected’. A few also wanted to link
the issue of these directly to mariners’ good behaviour. (There were
also occasional calls by these same elderly R.N. officers to have civilian
mariners, whether on government service, or not, subjected to the Naval
Discipline Act.) In time, this must have settled down,
as apart from anything else, the majority of merchantmen were on government
service. Evidence of how this probably operated was provided, quite by
chance, by a past-client of mine. A master mariner himself, his grandfather
had also been a master during the Great War. He came across a tin with
thirteen of these badges inside and I was delighted when he gave me one. So,
it may well have been that transports’ masters were issued with a number, to
be given to mariners going ashore. Also, until then I had not known
definitely which war badge mariners wore, since the example in the
relevant A.T.D. file had been removed and no other information was
forthcoming. |
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Return to the Merchant Mariners’
War |
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