How the WWI Victory Medal Came To Be
- Dan Barnfield
- Oct 31
- 4 min read
Updated: Nov 20
A small bronze circle, a rainbow ribbon, and a whole lot of post-war paperwork.
If you've ever held a First World War Victory Medal, you know it's a sturdy little artifact. Bronze disc. Winged figure on the front. A rainbow ribbon that looks like someone in 1919 finally snapped and said, "You know what? We're using all the colours."
The Allies actually agreed on a shared medal as early as March 1919—a remarkable moment for countries that had just spent four years engaged in bloody fighting.
What followed, though, was the messy middle: the months when newspapers kept printing scraps of the process as different governments worked out the fine print. Eligibility. Design tweaks. Ribbon rules. International politics disguised as aesthetics.
The clippings I'm sharing live in that gap—after the agreement, but before Britain (and by extension, Canada) formally authorized the medal on September 1, 1919. They're the backstage commentary to a decision that had technically already been made.
Let's walk through them.
The Big Idea: One Medal for All Allies
The Vancouver Sun, April 13, 1919, offers a window into how quickly things began moving after the March agreement. Reporting from Washington, the paper describes the newly unified design agreed upon by all Allied nations. General March announces:
"…a design has been approved for issuance to every soldier who participated in the great war on the Allied side of a 'victory medal' in commemoration of his service to civilization."
That's classic post-war language—solemn, sweeping, and very convinced that medals could somehow sum up the last four years.
But the key point is simple: by spring 1919, the idea wasn't a proposal anymore. The Allies had already shaken hands on it.
Paris Has Opinions
By July, we start seeing details on the physical design—especially from France. The Hamilton Spectator (July 18, 1919) prints a Paris dispatch that reads like a first draft of the final medal:
"The medal will be of bronze, about an inch and a half in diameter…The obverse will show a winged figure of Victory without any inscription, while the reverse will bear the words: 'The Great War for Civilization,' with the name and in the language of the allied state to which the bearer belongs."
That's almost word-for-word what was struck. Well, except the "Z" was replaced with an "S" for more respectable British spelling of the word.
The British Complicate Things
Now we get to the good stuff—the bureaucracy.
By August, the British government still hadn't formally authorized the medal, but they were clearly trying to sort out the details. The Daily Gleaner (August 19, 1919) published a long explainer titled "British War Medals Which Will Be Open to Canadians."
It hints at just how tangled the job had become. The committee had to figure out:
who qualified (and who didn't)
whether certain roles "counted"
how many medals were needed (answer: millions)
how to keep the award more or less uniform across the entire Allied world
Even the name sparked debate. One suggestion was the "Allies' Medal," but the Americans hated it and proposed "Allies and Associated Powers." It's diplomatic hair-splitting, but it shows how tightly national pride wrapped itself around even a simple war medal.
And then there was the eligibility mess. One proposal argued for a separate medal for men who had gone "over the top"—the classic trench-assault scenario. But as the committee dug into the records:
"It was found that millions of men had been engaged, and to go into the claim of every man would take 20 years."
So the committee did the opposite of what committees usually do: they broadened the rules rather than tightening them. Anyone who served in a theatre of war would qualify. Sailors. Nursing Sisters. Civilians under contract with the forces.
It's one of the rare times bureaucracy created more inclusion rather than less.
So Who Actually Got to Wear It?
By mid-September, Britain formally authorized the medal; the instructions for wearing the ribbon finally reached Canada.
The Calgary Herald (September 17, 1919) reported:
"Wearing of ribbon of Victory medal by those entitled to issue of the medal is authorized."
And the paper sums up the qualifying service:
"All officers, nursing sisters, non-commissioned officers and men of Allied forces who actually entered theatre of operations on strength of any military unit on any front."
That last line matters.
You didn't need to have served in France specifically, but you did need to have been in a place where things could go catastrophically wrong at any moment.
By then, the decision had been made, the ribbon approved, and the medal officially authorized. Everything the newspapers had been speculating about was suddenly real.
Why This All Matters
The Victory Medal isn't rare. It was meant to be universal—a shared symbol for a shared war. But the story behind it matters because it shows how the Allies tried, awkwardly and sometimes beautifully, to unify their experiences into one physical object.
The medal was never about national bragging rights. It was about recognition across borders. A Canadian soldier could look at a French or American ribbon and know instantly: we stood on the same front line.
A small bronze disc, born from months of negotiation, meant to say one thing: I was there. You were there. We survived the same storm.
-Dan Barnfield
References
1. The Vancouver Sun (Vancouver, B.C.) — April 13, 1919
“Universal War Medal.” The Vancouver Sun, 13 Apr. 1919, p. 12. Newspapers.com. https://www.newspapers.com/image/490123214/?match=1&terms=%22Victory%20Medal%22.
2. The Hamilton Spectator (Hamilton, Ont.) — July 18, 1919
“Victory Medal: France to Strike Them for Allied Soldiers.” The Hamilton Spectator, 18 July 1919, p. 19. Newspapers.com. https://www.newspapers.com/image/1005766779/?match=1&terms=%22Victory%20Medal%22.
3. The Daily Gleaner (Fredericton, N.B.) — August 19, 1919
“British War Medals Which Will Be Open to Canadians.” The Daily Gleaner, 19 Aug. 1919, p. 3. Newspapers.com. https://www.newspapers.com/image/1100370430/?match=1&terms=%22Victory%20Medal%22.
4. Calgary Herald (Calgary, Alta.) — September 17, 1919
“Wearing of Victory Ribbons Permitted.” Calgary Herald, 17 Sept. 1919, p. 8. Newspapers.com. https://www.newspapers.com/image/478924958/?match=1&terms=%22Victory%20Medal%22.
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