Office of Military Secretary, Army honours and awards confidential working files

Accession Number	AWM119
Collection type	Official Record
Object type	Official Record
Conflict	Korea, 1950-1953 Second World War, 1939-1945 Malayan Emergency, 1948-1960 Indonesian Confrontation, 1962-1966 Vietnam, 1962-1975
Copyright	Item copyright: Commonwealth of Australia copyright
Copying Provisions	Copyright restrictions apply. Only personal, non-commercial, research and study use permitted. Permission of copyright holder required for any commercial use and/or reproduction.

Accession Number

AWM119

Collection type

Official Record

Object type

Official Record

Conflict

Korea, 1950-1953
Second World War, 1939-1945
Malayan Emergency, 1948-1960
Indonesian Confrontation, 1962-1966
Vietnam, 1962-1975

Item copyright: Commonwealth of Australia copyright

Copying Provisions

Copyright restrictions apply. Only personal, non-commercial, research and study use permitted. Permission of copyright holder required for any commercial use and/or reproduction.

The records in this series are the working files created by the Army Office of the Military Secretary in processing applications for honours and awards relating to the Second World War, Korea, the Malayan Emergency, the Indonesian Confrontation and Vietnam. The Honours and Awards subsection (MS 1) comprised a major and two corporals who in addition to the honours and awards, also administered special staff and honorary colonel appointments, and maintained the organisation’s reference library.

The types of awards fall into four main categories;

Periodic awards, including King’s Birthday and New Year’s Honours
Operational awards
Bravery awards
Commendations
In December 1983 a consignment of records was transferred to the Australian War Memorial from the Department of Defence (Office of the Military Secretary – Army). The shipment comprised three types of records.

- Army officer’s confidential career reports, c1910-1978 (accessioned as OW83/12)

- Army records of service ledgers, c1880s-1940s (originally unaccessioned)

- Army honours and awards confidential working files (accessioned as OW83/13).

Of these three groups, the career reports were later accessioned as AWM118, the service ledgers as AWM182, and the honours and awards files as AWM119. In November 1988 however, the Department of Defence recalled both AWM118 and AWM119 to their custody. In 2000 the Department transferred AWM119 back the Australian War Memorial.