Devices? What Devices? 02

Top row--

EK2 1914
Bavarian MMO frontline ribbon
Hamburg Hanseatic Cross
Hindenburg Cross

lower row--

KVK2 1939 (sic)
1941/42 East Medal (sic)
Austrian Anschluss 1938
Sudeten 1938
? Order of the Star of Rumania

Now, aside from the KVK and East Medal being out of place-- should have been 2nd and 3rd/5th positions depending on when regulations were being interpreted--


notice that no ribbon devices are being worn-- and none were ever present on those ribbons.

It was a Bavarian fashion NOT to wear swords on their Military Merit Orders and Crosses, so we'll give Harss a pass there. But there should be Xs on his Hindenburg and KVK ribbons.

So why AREN'T they present?

For personal fashion style "reasons," Major Harss decided to wear his needlessly large ribbons in two rows. Two SEWN ON rows. Two very LOOSELY sewn on rows, as the gaps under his wrinkled tunic shows.


With ribbon bars that flexible... it would have been ineveitable that the corners of X devices would have caught, snagged, and torn the ribbon bars off. So he's just... ignored using them properly.

But what we would be left with, if these ribbon bars were found removed from a tunic, would be completely false impressions of what CORRECT awards were being worn, and on what sort of uniform.

Courtesy of Robert Noss.