The Volunteer Reserve Decoration (VD until 1947, then VRD) was awarded to commissioned officers in the United Kingdom's Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) for long service and good conduct.
The VRD was established in 1908. The medal has an oval medallion, consisting of the cypher of the reigning monarch in silver gilt surrounded by a silver rope tied with a reef knot at the base and surmounted by a gilt crown which acts as the ribbon suspension, hung from a ribbon which was dark green until 1919 and navy blue with a narrow central bands red-green-red thereafter. Originally, 20 years service was required, with wartime service counting double, and service in the ranks counting half.
The VRD and the separate Volunteer Reserve Long Service and Good Conduct Medal for RNVR ratings were discontinued in 1966, when RNVR merged with the Royal Naval Reserve.
In New Zealand a version of the award is still issued known as the Royal New Zealand Naval Volunteer Reserve Decoration and includes the post-nominal letters of VRD.
Famous quotes containing the words volunteer, reserve and/or decoration:
“We should have an army so organized and so officered as to be capable in time of emergency, in cooperation with the National Militia, and under the provision of a proper national volunteer law, rapidly to expand into a force sufficient to resist all probable invasion from abroad and to furnish a respectable expeditionary force if necessary in the maintenance of our traditional American policy which bears the name of President Monroe.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“I understood that all the material of a literary work was in my past life, I understood that I had acquired it in the midst of frivolous amusements, in idleness, in tenderness and in pain, stored up by me without my divining its destination or even its survival, as the seed has in reserve all the ingredients which will nourish the plant.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“The question mark is alright when it is all alone when it
is used as a brand on cattle or when it could be used
in decoration but connected with writing it is
completely entirely completely uninteresting.... A
question is a question, anybody can know that a
question is a question and so why add to it the
question mark when it is already there when the
question is already there in the writing.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)