THE GALLIPOLI MEDAL

Otago Witness, Issue 3336, 20 February 1918, Page 17

THE GALLIPOLI MEDAL

A SERIOUS ANOMALY. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, December 28. A statement has been published here, which is accepted as semi-official, to the effect that a medal is to be issued by the No iv Zealand and Australian Governments, with the sanction of the King, in recognition of services in Gallipoli. The commonwealth and dominion Governments, it is understood, will agree upon a design and riband, which the King will then be asked to approve. The issue of the "Gallipoli Star," as it will be called, is to be governed, it is said, by two conditions: 1. The recipient must have participated in the Gallipoli campaign by actually landing on the peninsula. 2. He must have embarked in Australia or New Zealand on or before December 31, 1914. This announcement has given great satisfaction to the Main Body and the earlier reinforcements. There is, however, a certain amount of disappointment amongst several thousands of men who bore a heavy part of the fight on Gallipoli, and in some cases spent six months or more on tho peninsula, but who are nevertheless disqualified by the fact that they did not leave New Zealand before the end of 1914. I understand 'that not a few men who sailed in the early days of 1915 took part in thtt landing at Anzac on April 25, and bore their full share-of the campaign there, taking part in the hardest fighting of all in August and remaining until the winter weather in November transformed the whole aspect of the fight. Yet they would seem not to have earned the decoration. On the other hand, men who happened to leave New Zealand a week or two earlier, and perhaps spent only a few days on Gallipoli. are qualified. If this ie really tho intention, the decoration must bo wrongly named. Instead of being called the "Gallipoli Star," it should be called, like the Imperial decoration, 'the "1914 Star." General Godley, in reply to my query on the subject, remarks that "it will be perhaps as much, or more, in the nature of a 1914 Star for the Main Body as for those who served on Gallipoli"