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)
“Common experience is the gold reserve which confers an exchange value on the currency which words are; without this reserve of shared experiences, all our pronouncements are cheques drawn on insufficient funds.”
—René Daumal (1908–1944)
“If there be any man who thinks the ruin of a race of men a small matter, compared with the last decoration and completions of his own comfort,—who would not so much as part with his ice- cream, to save them from rapine and manacles, I think I must not hesitate to satisfy that man that also his cream and vanilla are safer and cheaper by placing the negro nation on a fair footing than by robbing them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)