Accumulated Campaign Service Medal

 

General Service Since 1969.

 

Further relevant historical context can be found at the foot of this entry.

 

 

The Accumulated Campaign Service Medal is a British campaign medal originally presented to those holders of the General Service Medal (1962) who have completed an accumulated operational service of thirty-six months since 14 August 1969. The medal was instituted in January 1994, for ‘long service on campaign’ and recognises repeat operational service. Originally, it recognised 1080 days of cumulative campaign service, part-time members of the Royal Irish Regiment need only complete 1,000 days.

 

Its purpose was to reward those who had done multiple tours of duty in Northern Ireland but who would have only the General Service Medal 1962 medal with the Northern Ireland clasp, to show for all their service.

 

The Queen approved an amendment to the qualifying criteria for the Accumulated Campaign Service Medal for members of the Armed Forces, MoD Civil Servants, and Contractors on deployed operations that came into force on 1 July 2011.

 

 

The medal is circular, 36mm in diameter and was struck in silver. The obverse of this medal bears the Jubilee head effigy of Elizabeth II and the inscription; 'ELIZABETH II DEI GRATIA REGINA FID. DEF'. (meaning Elizabeth II, by the grace of God, Queen and Defender of the Faith).

 

The reverse depicts a spray of oak and laurel branches with the inscription; ‘FOR ACCUMULATED CAMPAIGN SERVICE’.

 

The ribbon suspender is of an ornate swiveling style attached to a fastening that surmounts the medal. 

 

The recipient's details can be found on the medal's rim impressed in sans serif capitals.

 

 

 

The Ribbon is that of the General Service Medal 1962 but with an additional central gold stripe.

 

 

Those who participated in ‘Operation Maidenly’ and ‘Operation Barras’ wear a silver rose emblem on the ribbon.

 

A silver coloured laurel leaf bar is awarded for each additional 36 months (1080 days) Operational Service. A month is defined as 30 days and part-months may be accumulated.

 

Further relevant historical context can be found at the foot of this entry.

 

 

 

* It should be noted that the values quoted above reflect the average price that a medal dealer may expect to sell this medal for - please see the ‘things you should know’ web page for more details about valuing medals.

 

** The individual medal value will vary considerably based on the recipient’s details.

 

 

This section contains information on:-

 

- British Forces Post World War II.

- British Forces In Northern Ireland.

- British Forces In Sierra Leone.

 

British Forces Post World War II - Following the creation of the United Nations (UN) on 24 October 1945, Britain became one of five permanent members of the UN Security Council. Britain was still considered as a global power, despite it having been eclipsed by the two superpowers - the USA and Soviet Union - and the efforts by many colonies of the Empire to gain independence.

 

Another global organisation, known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), was established on 4 April 1949 with Britain one of its founding members. The creation of NATO signified the beginning of the 'Cold War' between the ideologically divided 'Western Allies' and the Eastern Communist powers, controlled by the Soviet Union; they created their own NATO equivalent in 1955, known as the Warsaw Pact.

 

An integral part of NATO's defences in the now divided Europe was the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) in West Germany, the British Army's new overseas 'home' that replaced independent India. The British Army, just as in the aftermath of World War I, had established BAOR in the immediate aftermath of the war which was centred on I Corps (upon its re-establishment in 1951), at its peak reaching about 80,000 troops.

 

At home, there were five regional commands: Eastern, Western, Northern, Scottish, and Southern Command, which all eventually merged to became HQ UK Land Forces or UKLF in 1972.

 

The Army was beginning to draw down its forces, beginning demobilisation shortly after the end of the war. The Territorial units were placed in 'suspended animation', being reconstituted upon the reformation of the TA in 1947. On 1 January 1948, National Service, the new name for conscription, formally came into effect.

 

The Army was, however, being reduced in size upon the end of British rule in India, including the second battalions of every Line Infantry regiment either amalgamating with the 1st Battalions to maintain the 2nd Battalion's history and traditions, or simply disband, thus ending the two-battalion policy implemented by Childers in 1881. This proved too severe a decision for the overstretched Army, and a number of regiments reformed their second battalion in the 1950s. The year 1948 also saw the Army receive four Gurkha regiments (eight battalions in total) transferred to them from the Indian Army and were formed into the Brigade of Gurkhas, initially based in Malaya.

 

More reforms of the armed forces took place with the 1957 Defence White Paper, which saw further reductions implemented; the Government realised after the debacle of the Suez War that Britain was no longer a global superpower and decided to withdraw from most of its commitments in the world, limiting the armed forces to concentrating on NATO, with an increased reliance upon nuclear weapons.

 

The White Paper announced that the Army would be reduced in size from about 330,000 to 165,000, with National Service ending by 1963 (it officially ended on 31 December 1960, with the last conscript being discharged in May 1963) with the intention of making the Army into an entirely professional force. This enormous reduction in manpower led to, between 1958 and 1962, eight cavalry and thirty infantry regiments being amalgamated, the latter amalgamations producing fifteen single-battalion regiments. Brigade cap badges superseded the regimental cap badge in 1959.

 

Many of the regiments created during the 1957 White Paper would have only a brief existence, most being amalgamated into new 'large' regiments - The Queen's, Royal Fusiliers, Royal Anglian, Light Infantry, Royal Irish Rangers, and the Royal Green Jacket - all of whose 'junior' battalions were disbanded by the mid-1970s.

 

Two regiments - The Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) and The York and Lancaster Regiment - opted to be disbanded rather than amalgamated. The fourteen administrative brigades (created in 1948) were replaced by six administrative divisions in 1968, with regimental cap badges being re-introduced the following year.

 

The Conservative Government came to power in 1970, one of its pledges included the saving of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders after a popular campaign to save it had been provoked by the announcement of its intended demise. The Government also decided to stop the planned amalgamation of The Gloucestershire Regiment with The Royal Hampshire Regiment.

 

Further cavalry and infantry regiments were, however, amalgamated between 1969 and 1971, with six cavalry (into three) and six infantry (also into three) regiments doing so.

 

HQ UK Land Forces was formed in 1972, and the previous home commands were effectively downgraded to districts.

 

In the immediate aftermath of the war in the Far East during World War II, the Army was tasked with reoccupying former British territories such as Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong. The British Army also played an active part, if only briefly, in the military actions by other European nations in their attempts to restore their pre-World War II governance, occupation, and control of South-Eastern Asian countries.

 

For example, British and Indian Army forces were sent to the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies in September 1945 to disarm and help repatriate the Japanese occupation forces. It was a month after the local nationalists - who had been provided with arms by the Japanese - had declared an independent Indonesia.

 

The situation in Java was quite chaotic with much violence taking place. The British and Indian forces experienced fierce resistance from the nationalists; the former Japanese occupation force was also employed by the British to help maintain order, and fought alongside the British and Indian forces. Dutch forces gradually arrived in number and the British and Indians left by November 1946.

 

A similar situation existed in French Indochina after Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh declared the independence of Vietnam on 2 September 1945. British and Indian troops, commanded by Major-General Douglas Gracey, were deployed to occupy the south of the country shortly afterwards, while Nationalist Chinese attempted to occupy the northern areas of Vietnam. Vietnam was at this time in chaos and the population did not want French rule restored. The British military decided to rearm a large number of French POWs - who then went on a rampage - and British forces also re-armed Japanese troops to help maintain order.

 

The British and Indians departed by February 1946 and the First Indochina War began shortly afterwards. War in Vietnam would continue for more than twenty years.

 

The latter part of the 1940s saw the British start to begin to withdraw from the Empire, the Army playing a prominent role in its dismantlement. The first colony the British withdrew from was India, the largest British possession as measured by population, though not the largest by geographical area.

 

In 1947 the British government announced India would become independent on 15 August, after being separated into two countries, one mostly Muslim (Pakistan) and the other mostly Hindu (India). The last British Army unit to leave active service in the Indian subcontinent was the 1st Battalion, The Somerset Light Infantry (Prince Albert's) on 28 February 1948.

 

In Palestine, there was a surge in attacks against the British mandate and occupation by Zionist organisations such as Irgun and the Stern Gang after the British attempted to limit Jewish immigration into Palestine. British military and other forces eventually withdrew in 1948 and the State of Israel was established on 14 May.

 

Elsewhere within British territories, Communist guerrillas launched an uprising in Malaya, starting the Malayan Emergency.

 

In the early 1950s, trouble began in Cyprus, and in Kenya - the Mau Mau uprising. In Cyprus, an organisation known as EOKA sought unity with Greece, the situation being stabilised just before Cyprus was given independence in 1960. Kenya was one of many deployments for the Army in Africa during the 1950s, most of the others being former Italian colonies placed in the temporary control of Britain and the British Army.

 

The British Army also participated in the 1st Commonwealth Division during the Korean War (1950–53), fighting in battles such as Imjin River which included Gloster Hill.

 

Elsewhere, the Army withdrew from the Suez Canal Zone in Egypt in 1955. The following year, along with France and Israel, the British invaded Egypt in a conflict known as the Suez War, after the Egyptian leader, President Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal which privately owned businesses in Britain and France owned shares in.

 

The British Army contributed forces to the amphibious assault on Suez and British paratroopers took part in the airborne assault. This brief war was a military success. However, international pressure, especially from the US government, soon forced the British government to withdraw all their military forces soon afterwards. British military forces were replaced by UN peacekeeping troops.

 

In the 1960s two conflicts featured heavily with the Army, the Aden Emergency and the Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation in Borneo.

 

British soldiers driving through South Belfast in 1981In 1969 a surge of sectarian violence and attacks in Northern Ireland against Catholics by Protestants, loyalists and the RUC in which seven people were killed, hundreds more wounded and thousands of Catholic families were driven from their homes led to British troops being sent into Northern Ireland to try and stop the violence.

 

This became 'Operation Banner'. Among those killed in the attacks by the RUC was Trooper Hugh McCabe, the first British soldier to die in the conflict. The troops were initially welcomed by the Catholic community as they believed the troops would protect them; however, this developed into opposition as the troops began to support the RUC, and the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), a militant break-away from the IRA which had been quiet since the 1962 cessation of the Border Campaign, began to target British troops.

 

The British Army's operations in the early phase of its deployment had it placed in a policing role, for which, in many cases, it was ill suited. This involved seeking to prevent confrontations between the Catholics and Protestants, as well as putting down riots and stopping Republican and Loyalist paramilitary groups from committing terrorist attacks.

 

However, as the Provisional IRA campaign 1969-1997 grew in ferocity in the early 1970s, the Army was increasingly caught in a situation where its actions were directed against the IRA and the Catholic Irish nationalist community which harboured it. In the early period of the conflict, British troops mounted several major field operations.

 

The first of these was the Falls Curfew of 1971, when over 3,000 troops imposed a 3 day curfew on the Falls Road area of Belfast and fought a sustained gun battle with local IRA men. In 'Operation Demetrius' in June 1971, 300 paramilitary suspects were interned without trial, an action which provoked a major upsurge in violence. The largest single British operation of the period was 'Operation Motorman' in 1972, when about 21,000 troops were used to restore state control over areas of Belfast and Derry, which were then controlled by republican paramilitaries.

 

The British Army's reputation suffered further from an incident in Derry on 30 January 1972, Bloody Sunday in which 13 Catholic civilians were murdered by The Parachute Regiment. The biggest single loss of life for British troops in the conflict came at Narrow Water, where eighteen British soldiers were killed in a PIRA bomb attack on 27 August 1979, on the same day Lord Mountbatten of Burma was assassinated by the PIRA in a separate attack.

 

In all almost 500 British troops died in Northern Ireland between 1969 and 1997. Most of these deaths however occurred in the early 1970s, when British troops were placed at the forefront of the conflict and had little experience in dealing with a low intensity conflict in a predominantly urban, heavily populated area.

 

By the late 1970s, the British Army was replaced to some degree as 'frontline' security service, in preference for the local Royal Ulster Constabulary and the Ulster Defence Regiment (raised 1970) as part of the Ulsterisation policy. By the 1980s and early 1990s, British Army casualties in the conflict had dropped. Moreover, British Special Forces had some successes against the PIRA. The conflict tied up over 12,000 British troops on a continuous basis until the late 1990s and was ended with the Good Friday Agreement which detailed a path to a political solution to the conflict.

 

'Operation Banner' came to an end in 2007 making it the longest continuous operation in the British Army's history, lasting over thirty-eight years. Troop numbers where reduced to 5,000.

 

The collapse of the Soviet Union, ending the Cold War, saw a new defence white paper, Options for Change produced.

 

This saw inevitable reductions in the British armed forces. The Army experienced a substantial cut in its manpower (reduced to about 120,000), which included yet more regimental amalgamations, including two of the large regiments of the 1960s - the Queen's Regiment and Royal Irish Rangers - and the third battalions of the remaining large regiments being cut. The British Army in Germany was also affected, with the British Army of the Rhine replaced by British Forces Germany and personnel numbers being reduced from about 55,000 to 25,000; the replacement of German-based I Corps by the British-led Headquarters Allied Rapid Reaction Corps also took place.

 

Nine of the Army's administrative corps were amalgamated to form the Royal Logistic Corps and the Adjutant General's Corps). One major development was the disbandment of the Women's Royal Army Corps (though the largest elements were absorbed by the AGC) and their integration into services that had previously been restricted to men; however, women were still prohibited from joining armoured and infantry units. The four Gurkha regiments were amalgamated to form the three-battalion Royal Gurkha Rifles, reduced to two in 1996 just before the handover of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China in 1997.

 

The Labour Party became the country's new government and after their election victory in 1997 a new defence white paper was prepared, known as the Strategic Defence Review (1998). Some of the Army's reforms included the creation of two deployable divisions - 1st (UK) Armoured Division and 3rd Mechanised Division, with the 1st Division being based in Germany - and three 'regenerative' divisions - 2nd, 4th, and 5th Divisions.

 

The 16 Air Assault Brigade was formed from 24 Airmobile Brigade and elements of 5 Airborne Brigade to provide the Army with increased mobility, and would include the Westland WAH-64 Apache attack helicopter. Other attempts to make the Army more mobile was the creation of the Joint Rapid Reaction Force, intended to provide a corps-sized force capable of reacting quickly to situations similar to Bosnia. The Army Air Corps's helicopters also helped form the multi-service Joint Helicopter Command.

 

Another defence review was published in 2004, known as Delivering Security in a Changing World. The defence white paper stated that the Army's manpower would be reduced by 1,000, with four infantry battalions being cut and the manpower being redistributed elsewhere.

 

One of the most radical aspects of the reforms was the announcement that most single-battalion regiments would amalgamate into large regiments, with most of the battalions retaining their previous regimental titles in their battalion names. The TA would also be further integrated into the Army, with battalions being numbered into the regiment's structure. These are reminiscent, in some respects, to the Cardwell-Childers reforms and the 1960s reforms.

 

The elite units of the Army are also playing an increasingly prominent role in the Army's operations and the SAS was allocated further funds in the 2004 defence paper, conveying the SAS's increasing importance in the War on Terror. The 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, meanwhile, is to become part of a new tri-service unit to support the SAS and the Navy's SBS, being acclaimed as the Army's equivalent to the U.S. Army Rangers. Another élite unit, which became operational on 6 April 2005, is the Special Reconnaissance Regiment.

 

The end of the Cold War did not provide the British Army with any respite, and the political vacuum left by the Soviet Union has seen a surge of instability in the world. Saddam Hussain's Iraq invaded Kuwait, one of its neighbours, in 1990, provoking condemnation from the United Nations, primarily led by the United States. The Gulf War and the British contribution, known as 'Operation Granby', was large, with the Army providing about 28,000 troops and 13,000 vehicles, mostly centred around 1 (UK) Armoured Division. After air operations ended, the land campaign against Iraq began on 24 February. 1st Armoured Division took part in the left-hook attack that helped destroy many Iraqi units. The ground campaign had lasted just 100-hours, Kuwait being officially liberated on 27 February.

 

The British Army has also played an increasingly prominent role in peacekeeping operation, gaining much respect for its comparative expertise in the area. In 1992, during the wars in the Balkans provoked by the gradual disintegration of Yugoslavia, UN forces intervened in Croatia and later Bosnia.

 

British forces contributed as part of UNPROFOR (United Nations Protection Force). The force was a peacekeeping one, but with no peace to keep, it proved ineffective and was replaced by the NATO IFOR though this was in turn replaced the following year by SFOR. As of 2005, Britain's contribution numbers about 3,000 troops. In 1999 the UK took a lead role in the NATO war against Slobodan Milošević's forces in Kosovo.

 

After the air war ended, the Parachute Regiment and Royal Gurkha Rifles provided the spearhead for ground forces entering Kosovo. In 2000, British forces, as part of 'Operation Palliser', intervened in a civil war ravaged Sierra Leone, with the intention of evacuating British, Commonwealth and EU citizens. The SAS also played a prominent role when they, along with the Paras, launched the successful 'Operation Barras' to rescue 6 soldiers of the Royal Irish Regiment being held by the rebels. The British force remained and provided the catalyst for the stabilisation of the country.

 

The early 21st century saw the world descend into a new war after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York by Al Qaida: the War on Terrorism. A US-led invasion of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan followed, with the British contribution led by the RN and RAF; the most important Army element being the SAS. The British later took part in the invasion of invasion of Iraq in 2003, Britain's contribution being known as 'Operation Telic'.

 

The Army played a more significant role in Iraq than Afghanistan, deploying a substantial force, centred around 1 (UK) Armoured Division with, again, around 28,000 troops. The war began in March and the British fought in the southern area of Iraq, eventually capturing the second largest city, Basra, in April. The Army remained in Iraq upon the end of the war and subsequently led the Multi-National Division (South East), with the Army presence in Iraq numbering about 5,000 soldiers.

 

This information was taken from ‘Wikipedia’. The original article and details of the authors can be found here. It is reproduced on this web-site under the ‘creative commons’ licence which can be found here.

 

British Forces In Northern Ireland - ‘Operation Banner’ was the operational name for the British Armed Forces' operation in Northern Ireland from August 1969 to July 2007. It was initially deployed at the request of the unionist government of Northern Ireland to support the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). After the 1998 Belfast Agreement, the operation was gradually scaled down. Its role was to assert the authority of the Government of the United Kingdom in Northern Ireland.

 

The main opposition to the British military's deployment came from the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). It waged a guerrilla campaign against the British military from 1970 to 1997. An internal British Army document released in 2007 stated that, whilst the Army had failed to defeat the IRA, it had made it impossible for the IRA to win through violence, and had also reduced substantially the death toll in the last years of conflict.

 

This information was taken from ‘Wikipedia’. The original article and details of the authors can be found here. It is reproduced on this web-site under the ‘creative commons’ licence which can be found here.

 

British Forces In Sierra Leone - ‘Operation Barras’ was a British Army operation that took place in Sierra Leone on 10 September 2000. The operation aimed to release five British soldiers of the Royal Irish Regiment who had been held by a militia group known as the ‘West Side Boys’.

 

The soldiers were part of a patrol that was returning from a visit to Jordanian peacekeepers attached to the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) at Masiaka on 25 August 2000 when they turned off the main road and down a track towards the village of Magbeni. There the patrol was overwhelmed by a large number of heavily armed rebels, taken prisoner, and transported to Gberi Bana on the opposite side of Rokel Creek.

 

The British Army negotiated the release of six of the eleven men on the patrol, but were not able to gain the freedom of their Sierra Leone Army liaison officer and the other men before the West Side Boys' demands became increasingly unrealistic. Negotiators concluded that these were delaying tactics rather than an effort to resolve the crisis; by 9 September, the soldiers had been held for over a fortnight. Fearing that the soldiers would be killed or moved to a location from which it would be more difficult to extract them, the British government authorised an assault on the West Side Boys' base, to take place at dawn the following day, 10 September.

 

The ground operation was conducted by D Squadron, 22 Regiment Special Air Service—who assaulted Gberi Bana in a bid to extract the Royal Irish—and elements of 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment (1 PARA), based around A Company, who launched a diversionary assault on Magbeni. The operation freed the five soldiers as well as twenty-one Sierra Leonean civilians who had been held prisoner by the West Side Boys.

 

At least twenty-five West Side Boys were killed in the assault, as was one British soldier, while eighteen West Side Boys - including the gang's leader, Foday Kallay - were taken prisoner and later transferred to the custody of the Sierra Leone Police. Many West Side Boys fled the area during the assault, and over 300 surrendered to UNAMSIL forces within a fortnight.

 

The operation restored confidence in the British forces operating in Sierra Leone, which had been undermined by the capture of the Royal Irish patrol. After the operation, the British government increased its support of UNAMSIL and its efforts to bring the Sierra Leone Civil War to an end, both politically, through the United Nations Security Council, and through the provision of staff officers to support UNAMSIL.

 

The successful use of 1 PARA in Operation Barras influenced the creation of the Special Forces Support Group - a permanent unit, initially built around 1 PARA, whose role is to act as a force multiplier for British special forces on large or complex operations.

 

This information was taken from ‘Wikipedia’. The original article and details of the authors can be found here. It is reproduced on this web-site under the ‘creative commons’ licence which can be found here.