Paul L Murphy

Kevin,

I am sure you know this already but you need to see how the reverse of the ribbon is sewn to see if it is original or if bars have been added later to create a multi-bar award. Having said that, even with no bars this is still a very scarce medal.

Cheers,

Paul

Hi Brian,

Apologies but it is far from rare ! Japanese Red Cross medals are very common but there is a huge variety in die types etc so they can be a cheap but attractive and fascinating field of study in themselves. The female medals are harder to find than the male awards, but still not even scarce.

Best regards,

Paul

Hi Brian,

Interesting theory but not one supported by all of the medals I have seen, which run into hundreds. The Japanese did not sew their medals to their uniform, if female they pinned them and for men they used the hook and eye assembly fixed to a suspension bar. I will see if I have one of these at home at the moment and post a photo of the reverse for you so you can see the normal pin assembly.

Regards,

Paul

It would be good to post photos of the reverse as well since the makers' marks on the back are always a help in dating the badge.

The ring does not appear to be original. These female versions on the bow ribbons are usually found with a safety pin type assembly on the reverse. I suspect the pin broke off and has been replaced. Still a nice example of this medal.

Ceallach,

I think we both know the collector who is putting these up for sale. I think we also share the view that the catalogue is pretty poor. I know for a fact that a huge number of footnotes and research were left out of the catalogue to save printing costs !

Regards,

Paul

I just barfed my breakfast all over my keyboard ! Glad it happened in work and not at home

The recipient of this particular brevet and medal is called "Sapeur parachutiste". That means that he is from an airborne engineers unit, most probably the 17 ?me R?giment du G?nie A?roport? (17 th Airborne Engineers Regiment). Other airborne engineers units have existed, but at the time the brevet and medal were delivered, they had been disbanded.

I agree with you, given the date of the cert. I believe the 17th RGP would have been his unit. I think they were part of the 11th Para Division at that time.

The 1917-21 Medal looks ok. It is unusual that it is without the top suspender. Personally I would wait until I found one with the top suspended since it is an integral part of the medal.

Brendan,

I share PKs suspicions, you do not need to cut the ring in order to remove or replace the ribbon. I should know, I have a considerable number of original 1916 Medals in my collection (I started a long time ago !). I suspect you were the victim of a switch when the ribbons were changed.

Do you have any photos of the earlier group which we can compare ?

Regards,

Paul

I never realised rim jobs had anything to do with Iron Crosses

The 1916 Group illustrated from Whyte's catalogue is the group to Michael O'Riordan.

I have a similar group of four to Brigid Connelly (no relation to James) who served with Cumann na mBan in the GPO Garrison. It came with substnatial paperwork including her invitations to sign the 1916 Roll of Honour, veteran reunion invites etc. as well as her pension application. The value for a group like this is now in the region of EUR25,000 and rising all the time. It will be interesting to see what prices are like in Adams next auction on 17th April.

Well spotted on the size of the 1916 Medal, that effectively consigns it to the fake bin.

With regard to named medals, the named medals are those awarded to next of kin for recipients who had died before the medals were instituted in 1941. Also late claims by next of kin were given a named medal as well, which is why the higher numbered named 1916 medals are the thicker late issues. There were 401 officially named 1916 medals (if my memory is correct) and about 2,500 officially named medals for the Anglo Irish War, pretty evenly split between those with and without the Comhrac bar. The rank of the recipient had nothing to do with naming.

Regards,

Paul

It may be the fault of the photos but I would certainly want to handle that 1916 Medal before passing judgement. It lacks some of the detail I would expect from an original but it also lacks some of the reverse telltale signs of the fakes I have seen. If this pair are genuine then even without provenance they are probably worth in the region of 6,000 Euros based on where market values have gone recently.

An officially named 1916 Medal or an unnamed item with sound provenance will set you back more than 10,000 Euros these days. When I started collecting them I was getting named pairs for less than 1/10th of that !

They may have ended up fighting the Soviets in 1939 but these photos are earlier than that since a number of them are clearly dated Showa 8 or Showa 9, ie 1933 or 1934.

A nice set of photos but they are dated 1933 and 1934 (Showa years 8 and 9) so you may want to change the title to reflect that. These dates are consistent with the Manchurian Incident, as the Japanese called the 1931-34 fighting in that region.

This is a private purchase souvenier type item. The Japanese writing says Bushido, which means "way of the warrior". It would not surprise me if it was a post war fantasy piece.

I have placed a number of badges for the ITESL in the Genuine Sales section so take a peek since some of them are scarce.

From what rank up could a japanese soldier carry a sword?

Thanks

Chris

Corporals, Sergeants and Senior Sergeants could carry the NCO pattern sword. Warrant Officers (I believe) and officers carried the officer pattern.

This is a shameless plug for the fact that I have a few Japanese items listed for sale in the sale section of this forum. Take a peek. I will be adding a lot more over the coming days and weeks since I want to give forum members a chance to get decently priced items rather than flogging them through ebay. I will have some documents coming up shortly as well so stay tuned.

French para wings are still numbered. It is very difficult to get the certificate and wings with the same number to one recipient. I have two such sets, both Indochina period to Legion paras. The reason you get so many unnumbered pieces is partly becuase they are made for collectors but mainly due to the fact that the recipients buy extra insignia for their different uniforms (rather than change the insignia from jacket to jacket).

The insignia marked R to which Dave refers are Refrappe insignia (restrikes). These are mainly older Legion insignia that are sold via the Legion veteran's home and are marked R with a two digit number on the reverse. The number is the year in which it was restruck, ie R84 = restrike from 1984.

The first document shown is from Meiji 20. The very old form of 20 is written like this but you only see it on early documents from Meiji period. The watermark says Imperial Department (Konoe-kyoku).

Lovely docs.

Gordon,

Beautiful visor cap. These are getting difficult to find in Japan in a decent condition, especially with the white tops.

Gordon,

You will find them with white tops as well, normally removable. It was purely for summer wear, there was no submarine connection as in Germnay.

Regards,

Paul

The Bukosho award was instituted during the war after the Golden Kite was restricted to being a posthumous only award since there was nothign to reward bravery in action. It came in two classes and was awarded very sparingly. I will try o dig out some more information I have in my Japanese reference books but they are still not unpacked after my relocation to London. Hopefully I will get at them in the next few days.