The clasp, together with two small silver roses, was awarded to those who had served under fire or who had operated within range of enemy mobile artillery in France or Belgium during the period between 5 August and 22 November 1914.

[10] Admiralty Fleet Order 4036 dated 17 December 1919 concludes with a similar list of formations in paragraph 6, albeit those that are not eligible and therefore do not qualify for the clasp.

[11] Paragraph 4 was explicit that 'clasps earned by deceased Officers and men will be issued to their Legatees or Next of Kin entitled to receive them'.

Nonetheless, those fatalities whose next of kin were automatically issued a clasp by the War Office are denoted with a green letter "C" on the respective 1914 Star medal roll for their unit.

[5] The 1914 Star was principally an Army award, although some Royal Navy personnel who served ashore at Antwerp during the qualifying period received the medal.

[17] There were 160 awarded to members of the 2nd Canadian Stationary Hospital who served with the British Expeditionary Force, whose deployment commenced on 6 November 1914.

These three medals, with either Star included, were sometimes irreverently referred to as "Pip, Squeak and Wilfred", after three comic strip characters, a dog, a penguin and a rabbit, which were popular in the immediate post-war era.

[5][10][16] The ribbon is 32 millimetres (1.3 in) wide and has the red, white and blue colours of the flag of the United Kingdom in shaded and watered bands.