Megan

I do hope the courage of ordinary people in the face of mindless criminality will be marked by awards - there are several stories worthy of at least a George Medal. However, I think we should consider the establishment of a terrorism-specific award on the lines of the Spanish Royal Order for Civil Recognition of the Victims of Terrorism (Real Orden de Reconocimiento Civil a las Víctimas del Terrorismo). Oddly enough a Spanish man who demonstrated great bravery by taking on one of the criminals with a skateboard and sadly lost his life has been awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Civil Merit by his home nation instead.

Nice! Thank you for sharing, Frank...

Thanks for the information, Frank. Never mind the CIA, I'm interested

I'd agree: St Michael and St George.

Fascinating thread - finding out about these modern awards can be very difficult!

At work - I'll see what I can dig up when I get home!

Thank you!

The Order of Democracy of Simon Bolivar (Orden de la Democracia Simón Bolívar), to give the beast its full name, was insitituted in 1980 and is awarded in six classes (Grand Cross with Gold Star, Grand Cross, Grand Officer, Commander, Officer and Knight) for 'extraordinary services to Colombia'. This would be the top class, I imagine (except they have taken to calling it 'Grand Cross with Collar' now): a delight to see such a set - haven't managed to find images for my website yet, alas.

The double-sided swords type was issued from about 1856 to 1975!

Beautiful, thanks for sharing!

What does the reverse look like?

Nice - Medaille für hervorragende Leistungen in der Leicht- Lebensmittel- und Nahrungsgüterindustrie der DDR (Medal for Distinguished Service in Light and Food Industry) (instituted 1975).

Wiki page is magnificiently informative... and bodes fair to distract me from current activities (Malawi on my site and US National Guard and British Campaign Medals on the OMSA site if you must know!).

Frank, I think we should recommend you for the Medal "For the Promotion of the National Guard" - as you are busy telling the medal-loving world about it!

Where is there one for distinction in cleaning the ablutions block?

Likewise... if only for the lemon juice, which I like anyway!

C'est magnifique, Hendrik - looking forwards to seeing more in due course. Must trundle off to reset links from my site!

Hendrik has moved house and ISP (who hosted the site). He's rebuilding with the intention of posting elsewhere, but you can find the site via the Internet Archive, which imaged it after the last time he edited it. Here's the link: http://web.archive.org/web/20160329120849/http://users.skynet.be/hendrik/index.html

Nice... but I agree that those Decorations "For Merit in the Destruction of Chemical Weapons" look more like jewellry than awards! So I guess it's time to add even more stuff to various websites...

Nice - thank you very much for those links!

I'm just wondering where this ought to go on my website. It's not quite a NATO award, as it is conferred jointly by Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania... yet those 3 are not giving it to their own forces only to people there on NATO service. So does it go in the NATO section? In the 3 baltic states' sections, or in those of the recipient nations (if I can find out all of who participated)? Any thoughts?

Well, if you see any images on my site that would be of use, give me a shout and I shall send you the large high-quality versions...

Impressive site with good images and excellent information. I'll link to it from my Bulgarian section...

Interesting, thank you for sharing, David.

Fascinating stuff, Emmanuel, thank you for sharing!