Shake-up after medal bungles

From the Swindon Advertiser, first published Saturday 28th Jan 2006.

THE Ministry of Defence has announced a radical shake-up of its medals office four months after the Adver revealed that Suez veterans across the country were being sent the wrong awards.

In October, we revealed how Swindon pensioner Raymond Mahoney, pictured, received the campaign medal of a former comrade who lives 270 miles away.

Another of the town's Suez heroes, Jeffrey Williams, from Park North, was sent his campaign medal, but only after the MoD originally claimed he had never served in the Canal Zone.

Both bungles took place as the medal office at RAF Innsworth in Gloucestershire struggled to cope with a backlog of 3,794 Suez medal applications and a further 8,054 outstanding applications for medals for service in the last Iraq war.

This week junior defence minister Don Touhig announced the medal office will gain an extra 21 staff and is to be given "significant additional resources" to clear the backlog.

There are currently about 9,000 Second World War medal applications outstanding and an average of 780 come in every month.

Mr Touhig said applications take as long as 14 months to process "because of the onerous nature of the research of historic files involved."

He pledged that all new applications for historic medals should now be processed within four months.

The case of Mr Mahoney from Freshbrook, was taken up by South Swindon MP Anne Snelgrove, who urged ministers to intervene.

The 73-year-old, who served nine months' national service in the Royal Berkshire Regiment, received a silver medal engraved with the name C.

Lancaster veteran Clive Lancaster from Carlisle in Cumbria.

When he called the former solider, he was told had also been sent the wrong medal this time of a veteran in Swansea.

Eventually all the medals were sent to their rightful owners.

The MoD announced in October 2003 that those who served in the 1951-1954 Egypt Campaign, protecting the Suez Canal, would be awarded the General Service Medal with a Canal Zone clasp.

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