Armed Forces Personnel Administration AgencyCanal Zone Medal
The current position regarding Canal Zone applications is as follows
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Background to the Canal Zone Medal
In October 2003 Her Majesty the Queen agreed the qualifying criteria for the award of a GSM for service in the Suez Canal Zone. Since then over 47,000 applications have been received for this medal. Prior to issuing a medal, each application has to be assessed to confirm eligibility. This requires original service records to be drawn from archives. However, medals will only be issued if it can be proved from official evidence that an individual was in the right place at the right time for the necessary minimum period. It is known that some records of service give only general statements of where people served and corroboration will need to be sought from other records. As we are certain veterans already understand, medals are not issued automatically. If the medal office is unable to confirm eligibility, a medal will not be awarded. This is common to all applications for campaign medals and nothing to get alarmed about. The medal offices are confident that there will be no difficulty in the vast majority of cases, but it will depend on what is contained in the records. Careful checks will have to be made before medals are issued. Checking eligibility is a skilled, time-consuming and exacting job, but the medal offices have skilled staff who are experts at assessing eligibility quickly and accurately.
The Medal Office will acknowledge every application on receipt. In common with other campaign medals, all applications will be dealt with strictly in the order that they are received. They have received a large number of applications in the last few months and it will take a while to work through the backlog. If you intend to apply for the medal please be prepared for a wait. All the available resources are concentrating on recovering the necessary Service files from the Departmental archives, checking individual eligibility and preparing medals for despatch. They will deal with all cases as quickly as they can, but if the staffs of the medal office have to stop this work to answer additional correspondence asking when a particular case will be considered it will simply delay the issue of medals further.
Further details, including eligibility and how to apply for the GSM for service in the Suez Canal Zone can be found at the Veterans Agency website.
Last Updated: 18 Jan 06
