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Fred Keenor received these medals (The 1914-1915 Star, The British War Medal 1914-18 and The Allied Victory Medal) for his service during the First World War.

Fred Keenor’s success on the pitch is well known amongst football fans.  Fred captained Cardiff City when they won the FA Cup in 1927, made 32 appearances for Wales and played 484 games as an inspirational tough-tackling defender.  However his service and experience in the First World War is less well known.  As his nephew, Graham Keenor tells us “Fred received an injury to his leg during the War and he thought he’d never play again.”

Fred made his first team debut with Cardiff City Football Club in 1913 and played throughout the 1914/15 season.  When war broke out, Fred like many other footballers at that time, joined the 17^th Battalion Middlesex Regiment, known as the Footballers Battalion.  He fought and was injured in The Battle of the Somme, one of the bloodiest battles of the First World War.  It began on the 1 July 1916 and by the end of the battle in November 1916, more than one million soldiers had been killed or wounded.

Graham tells us why the medals are replicas: "I couldn’t find Fred’s war medals, nobody in the family knew where they were, so I got replicas made. You can tell they are authentic replicas due to the inscriptions on the side of the medals."