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    Eric B

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    1. Thanks for this! Great insight into the history of GPW awards and process; for us English-Only types such documents and translations add so much to our knowledge and collecting. Much appreciated!
    2. I believe the mint marks on both the Suvorov and Red Banner are not the same as shown on MONDVOR for their serial number ranges.
    3. Auke, I'd bet money it's a true Kursk award, specifically that part known as the Battle of Ponyri. The 16th Tank Corps fought there July 5-9th (to the west of Ponyri). It is where the German offensive was defeated in the north, as significant as Prokhorovka was in the south IMO. 16th Tank Corps was made up of 107th, 109th, and 164th Tank Brigades (as well as supporting units, including the 226th Mortar Regiment). Look for those numbers on the map and you'll get the jist of where they fought. Give my congratulations to whomever has this Red Star! And if he's in mood to sell, look me up!
    4. Exactly. To the extent it can be of course. Unit tends to be more reliable, what with the excellent histories now out there. SO many citations mention only villages or "hill # x" that simply can't be identified/found unless one has a starting point of the general area the unit was at. Even that can be frustrating though, everything from typos/mistranlations to conflicting references about where a unit was on which date.
    5. "Award inflation," same feats getting a higher award later in the war, definitely took place. It's one of the things that makes early awards so desireable IMO. While Stalingrad is desireable I've seen/read about many more awards associated with offensives in 1944, specifically Bagration and the Lvov-Sandomierz Offensive. (Both approx June-August 1944.) Massive, multi-month operations, in the last year of the war, when the RKKA was getting into the top of its game, it's no surprise really. Earlier than that there seem to be many awards for breaching the Dnieper in late 1943 (as I think someone said earlier).
    6. Wild Card is on the right track. The rarity of proper “Battle of Kursk” awards is largely due to the length of time of the campaign, about two weeks. That was all the time it took for the German offensive to run its course. Operation Citidel began 4 July 1943, Hitler cancelled the operation on 17 July. After mid July the RKKA went over to the offensive; Citidel, the “Battle of Kursk,” was over and new operations commenced. There is also the fact that it took place in mid 1943, and it’s easy to forget that the real flood of awards didn’t happen until 1944-45. Both add up to a dearth of awards for “Kursk”.
    7. You know, I never actually considered that, adding a photo later. Learn something new, thanks! Still don't like this "group" though. :beer:
    8. Of course you mean the photo beneath the stamp that says "Valid Without Photograph?" Fraudsters abound and this "group" is a good example.
    9. Call me paranoid, but this seller has an "Order of Honor" for sale as well, no reserve, only up to $11 (!) after days on the market. And he also sold another "documented set" consisting of a Glory II and Glory III back in July 2010 (sold for $425), and another "Order of Honor" (sold for $127) at the same time. And he sold a Labor Glory 1st class for $255, and a screwback Red Banner of Labor for $255 a couple of months before that. This guy gets a hold of multiple rare and valuable orders/medals and sells them for below what he could get for them if he sold them to a dealer? Too much of a good thing (selling for cheap) is a red flag for me. And I don't like the award book anyway. :rolleyes:
    10. I’ve research on a bravery medal to a young man drafted into the RKKA in January 1944 from Berdichev, a town less than 100km from the area where (I think) Muzychenko lived while in occupied Ukraine. At that time the Red Army was hurting for soldiers (stereotypes of endless Asiatic hordes being, of course, a myth), and recruited hundreds of thousands of troops from the newly liberated territories into the army on orders from STAVKA. (Glantz has translated an order dated 16-Nov-43 authorizing the Fronts to mobilize 185,000 for the month of Nov 1943 alone in “Colossus Reborn”.) They went through SMERSH interrogations (the NKVD was responsible for this recruitment/impressment), but as the numbers show a huge number were not trundled off to the gulag, instead joining the front as soldiers. So it’s not surprising that Muzychenko ended up a soldier, again, rather than a prisoner.
    11. According to generals.dk the general?s full name was Ivan Aleksandrovich Gorbachev. So we have the case of Alexander Ivanovich Gorbachev saving Ivan Aleksandrovich Gorbachev. :D
    12. Nice group, thanks! Will love to read the translations. One thing, the second award is a medal "For Bravery," though I've also seen it called a medal "For Valor." The Combat Service Medal is the medal sometimes called a Medal for Military Merit.
    13. Fascinating groups! These two groups show, IMO, the development of Soviet signals capability during the war. At the beginning of the war the Soviets were sorely lacking in both equipment and training for their signals work. By the end of the war this was not the case. The evolution of the first couple of years is covered well in Glantz?s ?Colossus Reborn: The Red Army at War, 1941 ? 1943.? But it took years to come to fruition. The dates of the awards are significant; the first group?s awards (when Lastovka was running about), are from 1943-44. The Gorbatov awards are from 1945. Less running about, as the signal services were fully developed by then. Just a note; the ?military and state secrets? mentioned in Lastovka?s citation may be exactly the kind of thing mentioned in this July, 1941 report by the new Chief of Red Army Signal Forces. For his first two awards Lastovkas was working in the developing arena where skills and equipment were still being developed. (The fact he was with a Rifle unit, and not a mechanized unit, also argues for being last to get the newest and best equipment as it was parceled out mid war.) Gorbatov on the other hand was awarded when the Red Army was at its peak, and conducting its final offensives of the war.
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