Filed under Gallantry Awards and Citations: A Method Guide
First checks before you go further
A campaign medal marks qualifying service in a campaign, while a gallantry award marks a particular act or service singled out for recognition. The records differ too: campaign medals sit on rolls, gallantry awards sit in Gazette notices and citations.
If you cannot fix the unit or the dates, fix what you can and search on that, rather than guessing the missing filter to make the search feel complete. Fix the person first, then the record. Searching for a record before you have fixed the person is how two people become one timeline.
Reading what the record actually says
Corrections, crossings out and later additions are part of the evidence, not damage to it. A record corrected at the time tells you something changed. The order of sheets in a file is not always the order of events. Rebuild the date order yourself, and do not trust filing order to do it for you. A record that names several people should be read for all of them, not just for yours. The others are what prove, or break, the identification.
Common traps in this record type
The most expensive dead end is a wrong person adopted early. Everything after that looks consistent, because it was built on the wrong foundation. Change one filter at a time, spelling, initials, number, unit or date range, and keep a note of which combinations you have already tried. The most common reason a search fails is a date filter that is too tight. Widen the range by a year on each side before you conclude anything is missing.
A step by step way through
Alternate between personal records and unit records as the steps require. Personal records fix the person, unit records fix the place and the date, and both are needed. A step that involves another person, a holder, an archive, or a relative, should be prepared before it is taken. Unprepared requests get vague answers. A step is finished when its finding is written down with a reference, not when the record has been read. Reading without writing is not research, it is browsing.
| Step | What to do |
|---|---|
| 1 | Find the published notice first, and note the award, rank, unit and date exactly as published. |
| 2 | Look for the citation, where one was published, and read it as an official account of one act, not as a biography. |
| 3 | Check name, rank and unit against the personal file before adding the award to the timeline. |
| 4 | Use the citation to frame questions for unit records, not as a substitute for them. |
Where to go next from here
The next step is usually a record that answers one specific thing: a date, a unit, a place, or a name, rather than a whole new area of research. Ask what single fact would most strengthen the weakest link in the timeline, and let that fact choose the next record.
The neighbouring guides are not a reading list. They are the next links in a chain, and the chain order matters more than the reading order. A short timeline built from records beats a long story built from guesses.
Primary sources for this guide
Everything here is kept general and tied to official holders, so check the current position with the holder for your own case. The guide is educational information only: it is not personal professional advice, it is not a lookup service, and it settles nothing about any one person's service.