Iraq Medal

The current applications position is as follows:

Background to the Iraq Medal

All three services are consulted about the award and eligibility criteria for any campaign medal, including the delineation of the theatre of operations. Once a proposal is drafted it goes before the Honours and Decorations committee, who in turn pass it on to the Cabinet office. Finally it is submitted to the Queen for approval. After this it is laid before Parliament. All this takes time. Historically it can take up to two years. All medals for WW2 for instance were not agreed to until 1947, with the Defence Medal taking until 1948. The apparent tardiness was for good reason, it allowed time to ensure all aspects of a particular campaign were recognised. In the case of the medal it was rushed through within a year. However the obvious happened and an amendment paper has had to be submitted for approval.

So it was that the IRAQ medal did not receive clearance to be issued until April 2004. By which time a great number of service personnel had completed their tour of duty and returned home. In the case of Augmentees, and Reservists they returned to their parent unit or civilian occupation as the case may be. Some service personnel have been posted, retired, or simply left the service. Whatever the case, all have had to be identified and contacted to award them their medal. To date the Medal Office has received over 99,000 applications for the IRAQ medal from all three services, of which over 97,000 have been assessed. To put this into context, the numbers are greater than for the South Atlantic and the Gulf War added together, each of those took more than two years to complete the medal delivery, and both had the added benefit of being finite in duration, whereas Op Telic is ongoing.

AFPAA took responsibility for medal delivery last October, and have invested heavily into the formation of the MOD Medal Office and its infrastructure.  A new laser-engraving machine was purchased last year, and another has been ordered for delivery during September this year - this will eat quickly into the engraving backlog. A new database is just about to be commissioned, which has taken the best part of a year to develop. These two issues combined will make a significant improvement to the assessment of eligibility and total delivery times. Once the new database is operational, AFPAA will also bring on stream an enquiry service, which will enable units to check on the progress of any application. The Medal Office’s target is to deliver current campaign medals within two months from receipt of an application and as the backlog is cleared later this year, this target will be achieved.

Much still depends on efficient unit administration. The Medal Office is still receiving Op Telic 1 applications from units. Put simply, if a medal has not been applied for, the Medal office cannot issue it!

Last Updated: 9 Jan 06