Mutt, Jeff, Remembrance Day
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A set of British First World War Campaign medals have been nicknamed after cartoon characters.
Pip, Squeak and Wilfred are the affectionate names given to the three WW1 campaign medals — The 1914 Star or 1914-15 Star, British War Medal and Victory Medal respectively. These medals were primarily awarded to the Old Contemptibles (B.E.F.). and by convention all three medals are worn together and in the same order from left to right when viewed from the front.
When the WW1 medals were issued in the 1920’s it coincided with a popular comic strip published by the Daily Mirror newspaper. It was written by Bertram J. Lamb (Uncle Dick), and drawn by the cartoonist Austin Bowen Payne (A.B. Payne). Pip was the dog, Squeak the penguin and Wilfred the young rabbit. It is believed that A. B. Payne’s batman during the war had been nicknamed “Pip-squeak” and this is where the idea for the names of the dog and penguin came from. For some reason the three names of the characters became associated with the three campaign medals being issued at that time to many thousands of returning servicemen, and they stuck.
However when only the British War Medal and The Allied Victory Medal are paired, without the 1914 Star, the medals’ nickname suddenly refers to an American comic strip duo.
In a similar vein when only the British War Medal and Victory Medal are on display together they are sometimes known as “Mutt and Jeff”.
“Mutt and Jeff” was the most popular comic comic strip of its day in the 1910s and 1920s. Copyrighted by the cartoonist Bud Fisher the strip frequently involved bidding wars by distributors when contract time came up. The characters volunteered to serve in The Great War nearly two years before the U.S. entered the conflict.
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