MANY FORMS TO BE FILLED IN FOR WAR MEDALS

Wanganui Chronicle, 24 March 1950, Page 4

MANY FORMS TO BE FILLED IN FOR WAR MEDALS

Not slipping an inch from wartime peak performances, the services have managed to devote 592 square inches of forms to asking a man his service number, name, and present address, to which to send his war medals. The forms shelter behind notations diffuse enough to warm an orderly room clerk’s heart, C.S. and M. 1,2, and 3. The Minister of Defence (Mr. Macdonald) has said they cannot be simplified. So soldiers, sailors and airmen, harking resignedly back to their war days, are putting down whatever comes into their mind. This system seems to be working as well as it used to. As long as there is writing on the form somewhere everyone is happy. WITHIN THREE DAYS One ex-soldier, faced with the 60 squares offered for him to fill in on form C.S. & M. 1, declined to make a guess at the lucky square, put his name at the top, address at the bottom, and got his medals through the post within three days, without even trying his luck in the 15 special squares “for office use only." Many ex-servicemen often cannot remember just when they were where. Maybe they were in Cairo in Christmas, 1941, or Rome on Melbourne Cup Day, 1944. Their activities in either case did not lease the time or inclination to keep intricate files of their movements. “We were in the war,” says one infantryman, explaining problems’which did not seem to have bothered the precise designers of the form. Moreover, so far as ex-servicemen can find out it does not matter a lot what they put down on their form. All applications have to beschecked against files, and, except in special cases, medals will be issued on the record as it stands on the file, not as suggested by the serviceman’s five or 10-year-old recollection of the approximate months of the memorable episodes in his career. An artilleryman warily suspects the form-filling is a subtle form of keeping him in good army fettle for the next call-up. Defenders of the forms explain that there may be episodes in a serviceman’s career not recorded on the files. Escaped prisoners’ service with partisans, for instance. But so far as can be learned, no happy stab at form C.S. and M. 1 will be sufficient to convince the authorities on this. There will still have to be more detailed explanations, from the men affected, with or without the forms. Not that, for the moment, the formfilling has been much bothering servicemen round Wellington anyway. Applications have peen slack. "I know where I went in the war, without a lot of unengraved tin to tell me," said one this morning. “It was different with forms in the army, but I've something useful to do with my time now," observed another. A third is thinking of selecting the squares to fill in by hanging his form C.S. and M. 1 over the dart board at the next R.S.A. social.