Victory Medal WWI : Able Seaman Richard Porter Harmer Royal Australian Navy
Date1914-1918
Object number00050456
NameMedal
MediumBronze, fabric
DimensionsOverall: 116 x 35 mm
ClassificationsCoins and medals
Credit LineANMM Collection
DescriptionWorld War I Victory medal awarded to Able Seaman Richard Porter Harmer for service in the Royal Australian Navy. The medal is bronze with a winged figure of Victory on the obverse. The reverse has the words ‘THE GREAT WAR FOR CIVILISATION', all surrounded by a laurel wreath.
The Victory Medal was authorised in 1919 to commemorate the victory of the Allied Forces over the Central Powers. Each of the Allied nations issued a Victory Medal to their own nationals with all of these having the figure of Victory on the obverse as a common feature. Australians were awarded the medal issued by Great Britain.
This medal is part of a World War I trio to Able Seaman Richard Porter Harmer for service in the Royal Australian Navy. Harmer served in HMAS ENCOUNTER in operations against German New Guinea
HistoryFollowing the outbreak of World War I, Australian troops captured German New Guinea and the nearby islands in 1914, after a short resistance led by Captain Carl von Klewitz and Lt Robert von Blumenthal, while Japan occupied most of the remaining German possessions in the Pacific. The only significant battle occurred on 11 September 1914 when the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force attacked the low-power wireless station at Bitapaka (near Rabaul) on the island of New Britain, then Neu Pommern. The Australians suffered six dead and four wounded — the first Australian military casualties of the War. The German forces fared much worse, with one German officer and 30 native police killed and one German officer and ten native police wounded. On 21 September all German forces in the colony surrendered.
