Phil I get your point. No offence intended but I'm sure you will agree that the meaning of my message was clear even if the detail did not meet rivet-counting criteria.
This was the situation with my grandfather. He was with the BEF 39-40 and came back from Dunkirk 4/6/40 and then embarked for Algeria on 11/11/42 and was in North Africa and Italy until 1945. So he was only in the UK for 18 months and all his overseas service was operational so he was not entitled. I knew this from his medal entitlement in his discharge records but it didn't stop a medal dealer insisting that everyone with the War Medal was automatically entitled to the Defence Medal and trying to flog me one when I was reconstituting his medals 20 years ago!
My father has the Defence Medal but this is because the eligibility period included his service as a Police Auxiliary Messenger prior to being called up. My Grandfather's was based on 5th Div's period in a non-combat area with Paiforce
