Hi Chris, and members, sorry I am late to the party. My interest is the Old Contemptibles of the 1st Battalion East Surrey Regiment. They number approx 1850 ORs, NCOs & Officers. I believe from Andrew Thornton nbooks and podcasts that there were around 350,000 Mons Stars issued to these men, but that doesn’t tell me how many soldiers were Old Contemptibles - only the number of medals struck for them and I beieve the number includes Empire and Colonial troops as well. Is there some way of finding out how many British troops were Old Contemptibles please, so I can put my 1850 1ESRs in context?
As far as I know, the total number of issued clasps is not known. I have somewhere read that it was approximately 5/7ths of the number of 1914 Stars but I do not know the source of that or how valid it might be.