Instituted July 24th, 2001 by Royal Warrant the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Service Medal is a long service medal awarded to all officers, petty officers and ratings of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) after twenty years’ service.

Royal Fleet Auxiliary crews are civilians and thus not eligible for Royal Navy awards and decorations. In 2001, a Royal Warrant was promulgated establishing the medal to recognize the long and efficient service the Royal Fleet Auxiliary personnel.

Description:

Materials: The majority of the British medals and clasps are made of solid silver, though some were issue in bronze versions, mainly to Indian non-combatants. The majority of the British campaign awards are circular, usually 36mm in diameter.

Ribbons: Medals are worn suspended from their own specific ribbons. These were first made of silk but cotton was increasingly used as the nineteenth century developed. Their own colours often have a symbolic significance: the equal stripes of the ‘1939 to 1945 Star,’ for example, are dark blue to represent the service of the Royal and Merchant Navies, red, to represent that of the Armies and light blue to represent that of Air Forces.

Ribbon width can vary slightly though it is generally 32mm wide.

Ribbon – Central band of watered royal blue flanked by narrow stripes of cypress green, yellow-gold and purple

Royal Fleet Auxiliary Service Medal ribbon

Suspender - Straight

Type – Long service medal

Eligibility – Officers, petty officers, and rates of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary

Awarded for – Twenty years’ service

Established – July 2001

Naming – The medals are impressed on the rim with the recipient's name and rank and the date of qualification for the medal.

Bars / Clasps - Addition clasps are awarded for a further 10 years’ service.

Description – Silver circular medal 38mm diameter. The obverse shows the crowned effigy of the Queen, while the medal reverse shows the badge for the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Service with the inscription around the circumference ‘ROYAL FLEET AUXILIARY – FOR LONG SERVICE’

This guide will help you through all the parts and descriptions of military medals

Sources:

Bigbury Mint

< gov.uk/medals-campaigns-descriptions-and-eligibility>

Some of the material on this page was also partially derived from

<en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Royal_Fleet_Auxiliary_Service_Medal#cite_note-2 >

Which are released under the terms of

Creativecommons.org/licenses/by-s/3.0/.