Victory Medal (South Africa)

The Victory Medal (South Africa) is the Union of South Africa's version of the Victory Medal (United Kingdom), a First World War campaign medal of Britain and her colonies and dominions. The medal, never awarded singly, was awarded to all those South Africans who were awarded the 1914–15 Star or the British War Medal. The Victory Medal, also known as the Inter-Allied Victory Medal, was instituted to celebrate the Allied victory in the Great War, in accordance with a recommendation of an inter-allied committee in March 1919. The award of a similar medal to their own veterans by each allied country was intended to prevent a mass exchange of campaign medals. The same ribbon and variations of the basic medal design and wording on the reverse were adopted by Belgium, Brazil, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, Italy, Japan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Siam, South Africa, the United Kingdom and her colonies and dominions and the United States of America. Most of the medals depict the Winged Victory, a female winged figure representing Nike, the mythological Greek goddess of victory. A particular form of Nike or her Roman equivalent Victoria was chosen by each nation for its version of the medal, except by Japan and Siam, where the concept of a winged victory was not culturally relevant. The years of the war were shown as 1914 to 1918 in every case, except on the two medal versions of the British Empire, which show the years 1914 to 1919. The British version of the Victory Medal was awarded to British combatants as well as to those from the dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Empire of India and to colonial forces. The Union of South Africa awarded its own version of the Victory Medal, identical to the British version on the obverse, but with the inscription on the reverse in English and Dutch, the two official languages of South Africa at the time. In precedence, the two versions rank on par. Recipients had to have entered a theatre of the war between 5 August 1914, the day following the British declaration of war against the German Empire, and the armistice of 11 November 1918, both dates inclusive.