Medals are attractive and interesting to collect in their own right, but can also offer a remarkable amount of information about the military career, eventual fate, and even the physical appearance of the men who won them on the battlefields of the last 200 years. In this study, Steve Dymond leads the reader towards discovering more about the recipient of the medal, using a number of readily-accessible archive resources. The advice here should help anyone researching family trees, as well as medal collectors. Above all, the author demonstrates the thrill of learning more about the past.