Marion, I believe that if you experiment with the Military Medal Attribute you will find that it copes with any type of Military Medal. It is meant to cover any form of military medal. Not just the specific "Military Medal" you mention. Have you thought of using the Standard Title Attribute which should allow you to specify the MBE, OBE and BEM titles. Mike Tate -----Original Message----- From: family-historian-users-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:family-historian-users-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Marion Woolgar Sent: 23 September 2011 16:23 To: 'FHU Mailing List' Subject: [FHU] Military Fact I need to be able to set up a new Fact that will cover all types of Honours and Decorations. This would be used for decorations for gallantry e.g. the Military Cross, Military Medal . I also have several instances where people have had a Mention in Dispatches; and there are also some civilian Honours such as the MBE, OBE and BEM. I've looked at the Military Fact Set on the FHUG web site, but unfortunately, that doesn't quite meet the case as it only appears to cover the Military Medal and I really need something much broader than that. Can anyone explain how I can set up a Custom Fact that would meet my needs, please? Best wishes, Marion Woolgar Bognor Regis, West Sussex

<<snipped>> I believe that if you experiment with the Military Medal Attribute you will find that it copes with any type of Military Medal. It is meant to cover any form of military medal. Not just the specific "Military Medal" you mention. <<snipped>> It looks like that to me, too. _However_ depending on how pedantic and / or accurate you need to be, there is something to be aware of. Military medals (lower-case "m" for both) fall into 2 broad classes - gallantry awards and campaign medals. The latter you get for being there - and if that sounds slightly dismissive, then I apologise, it's not meant to be. Just "being there" in the trenches would be unimaginable for most of us. The pedantic point is that gallantry medals are _awarded_ and campaign medals are _issued_. I therefore have 2 facts - both attributes - for medals. Attribute 1 is for "awarded" and my template sentence is {individual} was awarded the <{value}>< {date}>< {place}>. Notice this is different from the military1 downloads, which has a sentence of {individual} was awarded the <'{value}'> {label} {date} {place} where the label is set to "Military Medal" (without the quotes). By omitting the {label}, I avoid confusion over whether the label refers to the gallantry award of the Military Medal or just any military medal. The value then contains the full title of the medal. Attribute 2 is for "issued" and I simply copied the stuff for the gallantry-medal "awarded" fact, except for replacing "Awarded" with "Issued with" and having a sentence that reads: {individual} was issued with the <{value}>< {date}>< {place}>. It does occur to me that the first sentence doesn't quite work for a Mention in Dispatches. Maybe that one simply needs to be over-written manually. Adrian B PS - if you do go on to use the Military1 fact set (which I don't) it _appears_ to record peoples' regiments. Well, during the Great War, infantry and cavalry were in regiments, but the important thing for an infantryman is his battalion, because that says where he is 99% of the time. And an artilleryman is in either a battery or a brigade - forget the "Royal Regiment of Artillery" which is meaningless for that period. So in the template sentence for Regiment that reads like this in the downloaded fact set {individual's} {label} was the <'{value}'> {date} {place} then I'd alter it to {individual's} unit was the <'{value}'> {date} {place} so it permanently reads 'unit' and the value can contain things like "7th Battalion, Cheshire Regiment".