Its taken me years to get around to displaying my dad's medals.
Some jobs are like that I guess.
But now its done, I'm happy with the result.
It was only due to stumbling across war medal frames on Amazon that I remembered the job was still on my to-do list.
Prices start around £20, but I wanted a frame that would take 6 medals and 2 photographs, which was just over £50.
Although I'd ordered a frame with silver trim, they sent me this gold trimmed version. As I wanted to get the job done and was not too precious about the frame, I decided to crack on.
Unlike a regular photo frame, this one has space between to the front mount card and the backing card to accommodate the thickness of the medals. This is achieved using some kind of thick, adhesive tape, acting as spacers.
Unfortunately, the spacers between the photo cutouts and the main medal cutout were fitted very carelessly; they should have been vertical, but were at a slight angle.
So I had to 'operate' with a Stanley knife to ensure that my photos were adequately supported.
The other consequence of this void between the front mount card and the backing, is that the photos are not held forward by the backing, so I fitted pieces of card behind the photos. This was particularly important because my photos were not the originals, they were simply printed on printer paper.
To get reasonable quality copies, I had to scan the originals several times, adjusting the scanner brightness & contrast settings each time. I also had to shut down & restart the scanner program each time because the new settings did not take affect until after a restart (...no idea why).
I found a skewer/kebab stick very handy when passed though the loop of each ribbon.
Velcro 'spots' are provided to hold each medal in place on the backing card. The skewer position was then adjusted to maintain tension on the ribbons, and then stuck down with small pieces of masking tape.
The photos were also held in place with 6-8 small pieces of masking tape. This is certainly something you would not do when mounting a picture properly.
The order of these medals are as they would appear when worn by a soldier.
The 3 star medals only have a single 'face', but the other 3 have 'heads' and 'tails' sides. I'm displaying these showing the most interesting face (2 tails & 1 head).
Also note that two medals have the wrong ribbons (...they were accidentally swapped). As this error was made 80 years ago, its now part of their history, so I've no intention of correcting this.
Why have I chosen to put this display on my wall?
Its not from any sense of pride (...I don't do 'proud'. Its not an emotion I've ever experienced).
But I like to view these medals because I just think it is so astonishing that very ordinary people, like my mum & dad, had their lives turned upside-down by the events of the 1930s & 1940s.
As I've mentioned before, its incredible to think that I owe my very existence to one mad, bad, German!