Inter-allied Victory Medals
At the end of World War 1 each of the Allied and Associated nations decided together that they should issue a Victory Medal and that the figure of Victory should be on the obverse.
I have a small collection of these as shown below.
The British Victory Medal - these all have the rank, name, number and regiment impressed around the edges.
The South African Victory Medal is almost the same as the British one but has the inscription on the reverse in both English and Afrikaans - it also has the name around the edge.
The Belgian Victory Medal
The French Victory Medal
The Italian Victory Medal
The Italian Victory Medal on the left has an unusual mounting when compared with the others like the British one on the right.
The United States of America Victory Medal - these are the only ones which have bars to designate specific battles fought by the recipient.
Below is possibly one of the most rare of my Inter-Allied Victory Medals - a Czechoslovakian version.
The medal below is the most rare of my Inter-Allied Victory Medals - it was issued by Japan. Although they kept to the basic design and ribbon they replaced the image of winged "Victory" with an image of Take-Mikazuchi-no-Kami. He was a son of the ancient god Izanagi and he defeated his brothers to conquer Japan. The reverse shows, within the outline of a cherry blossom, a globe with the flags of Japan, US, Britain, Italy and France, with characters below for "and the other allied and united nations". Around the edge there are the characters for "Great War for Protection of Civilisation, Taisho 3rd year to Taisho 9th year".
The medal is contained in a little wooden box which is fitted to hold it. There are impressed characters on the lid - I hope to discover what they say?
These are the Inter-Allied Victory Medals which I have in my collection - on the next page are illustrations of the others.
