trackend said:
...with a lot of the awards they seemed to go to the senior non com or ranking officer as he represented the unit/squad/platoon.
Tell me about it. It happens a lot with us, too.
Not really a citation, but remember that Golden Jubilee medal they produced for the Queen's 50th anniversary on the throne? Well we produced one too. I'm assuming the Aussies and Kiwis did as well. Anyway, it was presented to every serving member of the armed forces of the UK, as it should have been. You know what they did here? They produced a grand total of just over fifty-thousand medals, and distributed those amoungst "every walk of life", as they put it. In other words, to people of every manner of civilian occupation, from Native band chiefs to artists and poets.
It went to very few members of the serving military and RCMP (I'm glad they were recognized), and out of those almost every flag officer and senior NCO got one. It just goes to further show how the Armed Forces rank in this country: Poorly!
Very few ratings actually got one, though I was one of them. To this day, none of us have really figured out the "selection" process for that. Name out of a hat maybe, who the hell knows. We've dubbed it the "bag licking medal", and I have one.
The point to this long-winded ramble is that every single serving member of the Canadian Forces should have received what was supposed to be nothing more than a commemorative medal. Instead, they treated it as some sort of merit award. Complete crap! And it's not the first time.