Grandad (Robert James Hooker aka Robert William Hooker 1879 – 1956) earned his medals during his service in the Royal Marines.  He gave them to my father, who passed them on to his son Barry, who in turn gave them to our sister Irene.  She has lent them to me so that I may identify them and hopefully find out why, where and when they were issued.  I did start this job some time ago but, in a fit of tidying up, seem to have discarded whatever information I obtained.

So, it’s back to the drawing board – or rather, the computer.

Concurrently with this, I am attempting to find the service record of Grandad.  In theory, this is available to order online at the site of The National Archives UK – in fact, though I have located the record number and know what I want, I have been unable to overcome the concerted efforts of my bank to make my life difficult – in other words, I got caught in one of those programming loops from which the only escape is to turn the whole thing off and run screaming from the room.  However, I shall persevere!!

Basically, I have 2 jobs to do here –

1. find out about the medals

2. get hold of the service record.

When I have done that, I will put them on this blog.  Meanwhile, here (courtesy of David Furber) are some photos of the medals themselves.

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ps – I realise that these thumbnail photos do not do justice either to the medals or the photographer – when I have found out more about the medals I will put full-size versions on the tribalpages website.