USA Inter-Allied Victory Medal 1917-1919

 

World War I.

 

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

 

 

This medal was instituted in 1919 as a result of an international agreement at the Inter-allied Peace Conference immediately preceding the Treaty of Versailles which was signed in June 1919.

 

The basic design - a ‘Winged Victory’ - and ‘rainbow’ ribbon was adopted by Belgium, Brazil, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Union of South Africa and the USA. Siam and Japan also issued the medal but with a different design - although the ribbon matched that of the others.

 

The intention to institute the American version of the medal by Act of Congress (prior to the peace conference) but this never materialised. Subsequently it was left to the Service Departments to undertake it under ‘General Orders’. This was done by the Army in April 1919 and by the Navy in June 1919.

 

The American medal was awarded for active service between 6 April 1917 and 11 November 1918. The award was later extended to those who served in European Russia between the 12 November 1918 and the 5 August 1919 and with the Expeditionary Force in Asian Russia between the 23 November 1918 and the 1 April 1920.

 

It was designed by the eminent American sculptor James Earle Fraser (1876-1953).

 

Approximately 2,500,000 medals were awarded.

 

 

The medal is circular, 36mm in diameter and was struck in bronze. The obverse of this medal depicts a winged figure of Victory.

 

The reverse depicts a U. S. Shield besides which can be found the names of the Allied nations to either side. Above the shield is the inscription; ‘THE GREAT WAR FOR CIVILIZATION’. Six five-pointed stars are inscribed below.

 

The medal was suspended by a ring through a small laterally pierced mount fixed to the top of the medal.

 

This medal was issued un-named.

 

 

 

The ribbon is 37mm wide and is the silk moiré rainbow coloured design common to all the Inter-Allied Victory Medals issued by the First World War Allies.

 

 

The medal was issued with the following clasps - of which over 50 were issued:-

 

Army Battle Clasps - The following self-explanatory battle clasps, inscribed with a battle's name, were worn on the medal to denote participation in major ground conflicts:-

 

 

For general defense service, not involving a specific battle, the ‘Defensive Sector’ Battle Clasp was authorized. The clasp was also awarded for any battle which was not already recognized by its own battle clasp.

 

The WWI Victory Medal bears the clasps of the battles the US Army participated in across the ribbon. Not all battles are shown on the bar clasps. Only the battles designated as battles that would have bars issued were shown on the medal.

 

The famous battle of Chateau Thierry to hold the Chateau and the bridge as a joint effort between the US Army and the US Marines against the German machine gunners did not get awarded clasps.

 

Navy Battle Clasps - The following self-explanatory Navy battle clasps were issued for naval service in support of Army operations and had identical names to the Army battle clasps. There was a slight variation of the criteria dates for the navy battle clasps, as listed below:-

 

 

The 'Defensive Sector' Clasp was also authorized for navy personnel who had participated in naval combat but were not authorized a particular battle clasp.

 

Navy Operational Clasps - For sea related war duty, the Navy issued the following operational clasps, which were worn on the World War I Victory Medal and inscribed with the name of the duty type which had been performed:-

 

 

Unlike the army, the navy only allowed one clasp of any type to be worn on the ribbon. Members of the marine or medical corps who served in France but was not eligible for a battle clasp would receive a bronze Maltese cross on their ribbons.

 

Army Service Clasp - For non-combat service with the army during the First World War, the following self-explanatory service clasps were authorized to be worn with the World War I Victory Medal. Each service clasps was inscribed with a country or region name where support service was performed. The U.S. Army issued the following service clasps:-

 

 

Navy Service Clasps - The U.S. Navy issued similar service self-explanatory clasps to the Army for service in the following regions during the following periods:-

 

 

Silver Citation Star - The Silver Citation Star to the World War I Victory Medal was authorized by the United States Congress on 4 February 1919. A silver star was authorized to be worn on the ribbon of the Victory Medal for any member of the U.S. Army who had been cited for gallantry in action between 1917 and 1920. In 1932, the Silver Citation Star was redesigned and renamed the Silver Star and, upon application to the United States War Department, any holder of the Silver Citation Star could have it converted to a Silver Star decoration.

 

Navy Commendation Star - The Navy Commendation Star was authorized to any person who had been commended by the Secretary of the Navy for performance of duty during the First World War. The Navy Commendation Star was worn as a silver star on the World War I Victory Medal, identical in appearance to the Army’s Silver Citation Star. Unlike the Army’s version, however, the Navy Commendation Star could not be upgraded to the Silver Star medal.

 

Campaign Stars - Since battle and service clasps could only be worn on the full-sized World War I Victory Medal, bronze service stars were authorized for wear on the award ribbon. This was the common method of campaign and battle display when wearing the World War I Victory Medal as a ribbon on a military uniform.

 

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.

 

*** Due to the large number of clasps available for this medal, the value for medals which contains certain clasps will vary considerably.

 

 

This section contains information on:-

 

- American Forces During World War I.

- The Entente Powers.

 

American Forces During World War I - The United States was a formal participant in World War I from April 6, 1917 until the war's end on November 11, 1918.

 

Before entering the war, the US had remained neutral, though the US had been an important supplier to Britain and other Allied powers.

 

In 1917 the Germans resumed submarine attacks, knowing that it would lead to American entry - most famously the sinking of the 'Lusitania'.

 

When the U.S declared war, the U.S. army was still small by European standards and mobilization would take a year. Meanwhile the U.S. continued to provide supplies and money to Britain and France, and initiated the first peacetime draft.

 

Industrial mobilization took longer than expected, so divisions were sent to Europe without equipment, relying instead on the British and French to supply them.

 

Since the transport ships needed to bring American troops to Europe were scarce at the beginning, the army pressed into service cruise ships, seized German ships, and borrowed Allied ships to transport American soldiers from New York, New Jersey, and Newport News, Virginia.

 

The mobilization effort taxed the American military to the limit and required new organizational strategies and command structures to transport great numbers of troops and supplies quickly and efficiently.

 

The French harbours of Bordeaux, La Pallice, Saint Nazaire and Brest became the entry points into the French railway system which brought the US forces and their supplies to the front. American engineers in France built 82 new ship berths, nearly 1,000 miles (1,600 km) of additional standard-gauge tracks and 100,000 miles (160,000 km) of telephone and telegraph lines.

 

The first American troops, who were often called 'Doughboys', landed in Europe in June 1917. However the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) did not participate at the front until late October 1917, when the 1st Division, a formation of experienced regular soldiers and the first division to arrive in France and entered the trenches.

 

By the end of 1917 four divisions were deployed in a large training area near Verdun: the 1st Division, a regular army formation; the 26th Division, a National Guard formation; the 2nd Division, a combined formation of regular troops and United States Marines; and the 42nd ‘Rainbow’ Division, a National Guard formation consisting of units from nearly every state in the United States. A fifth division, the 41st Division, had been converted into a depot division near Tours.

 

At the beginning, during early 1918, the four battle-ready U.S. divisions were deployed with French and British units to gain combat experience by defending relatively quiet sectors of their lines. After the first offensive action and AEF victory on 28 May 1918 at the Battle of Cantigny, by the 1st U.S. Division, and a similar local action by the 2nd Division at Belleau Wood beginning 6 June, both while assigned to French armies, Pershing worked towards the deployment of a US field Army. The rest followed at an accelerating pace during the spring and summer of 1918. By June Americans were arriving in-theatre at the rate of 10,000 a day.

 

The first offensive action undertaken by AEF units serving with British was by 1,000 men (4 Companies from the 33rd Division AEF) serving with the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) during the Battle of Hamel on 4 July 1918. This battle took place under the overall command of Australian Corps Commander Lt. General Sir John Monash and combined Artillery, Armour, Infantry and Air Support (Combined Arms), serving as a blueprint for all subsequent Allied attacks using 'Tanks'.

 

American Army and Marine Corps troops played a key role in helping stop the German thrust towards Paris, during the Second Battle of the Marne in June 1918 (at Château-Thierry and Belleau Wood). The first major and distinctly American offensive was the reduction of the Saint Mihiel salient in September 1918.

 

During the Battle of Saint-Mihiel, beginning September 12, 1918, Pershing commanded the American First Army, comprising seven divisions and more than 500,000 men, in the largest offensive operation ever undertaken by United States armed forces to date.

 

This successful offensive was followed by the Meuse-Argonne offensive, lasting from September 26 to November 11, 1918, during which General Pershing commanded more than one million American and French combatants. In these two military operations, Allied forces recovered more than 200sqmi (488sqkm) of French territory from the German army. By the time the Armistice had suspended all combat on November 11, 1918, the American Expeditionary Forces had evolved into a modern, combat-tested army.

 

Late in the war American units ultimately fought in two other theatres at the request of European powers; Pershing sent troops of the 332nd Infantry to Italy, and President Wilson agreed to send troops, the 27th and 339th Infantry Regiments, to Russia; these latter two were known as the American Expeditionary Force Siberia, and the American Expeditionary Force North Russia.

 

The AEF sustained about 320,000 casualties; 53,402 battle deaths, 63,114 non-combat deaths and 204,000 wounded. This high AEF casualty count was sustained at a time when French casualties for 1918 are listed as 330,000, but with a much longer front line to hold.

 

The influenza pandemic during the fall of 1918 took the lives of more than 25,000 men from the AEF while another 360,000 became gravely ill. Other diseases were relatively well controlled through compulsory vaccination. Typhoid fever was also practically eliminated. Relatively few men suffered actual injury from poison gas, although much larger numbers mistakenly thought that they had been exposed

 

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.

 

The Entente Powers - The Entente Powers or Allies were the countries at war with the Central Powers during World War I. The members of the Triple Entente were the French Republic, the British Empire and the Russian Empire; Italy ended its alliance with the Central Powers and entered the war on the side of the Entente in 1915. Japan, Belgium, Serbia, Greece, Montenegro, Romania and the Czechoslovak legions were secondary members of the Entente.

 

The United States declared war on Germany in 1917 on the grounds that Germany violated U.S. neutrality by attacking international shipping and because of the Zimmermann Telegram sent to Mexico.

 

The U.S. entered the war as an ‘associated power’, rather than a formal ally of France and the United Kingdom, in order to avoid ‘foreign entanglements’. Although the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria severed relations with the United States, neither declared war.

 

Although the Dominions and Crown Colonies of the British Empire made significant contributions to the Allied war effort, they did not have independent foreign policies during World War I. Operational control of British Empire forces was in the hands of the five-member British War Cabinet (BWC).

 

However, the Dominion governments controlled recruiting, and did remove personnel from front-line duties as they saw fit.

 

From early 1917 the BWC was superseded by the Imperial War Cabinet, which had Dominion representation. The Australian Corps and Canadian Corps were placed for the first time under the command of Australian and Canadian Lieutenant Generals John Monash and Arthur Currie, respectively, who reported in turn to British generals.

 

In April 1918, operational control of all Entente forces on the Western Front passed to the new supreme commander, Ferdinand Foch.

 

The only countries represented in the 1918 armistice which ended the combat were Britain, France and Germany.

 

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.