Ulsterman

I believe Karen got a gallantry award in the Balkans. I think I rRemember seeing that name in a Spinks circular .

The Levente had some great medals and badges. In this case, I think this is a military sports tournament medal from the Horthy period. the Levente fought with the SS during the siege of Budapest. My neighbors Dad was a 16 year old half Jewish Levente volunteer who drove an ambulance during the siege...and was given an SS uniform parka and cap to wear. Later he was a pow in Russia, was repatriated and got out of Budapest after 1956 and became a US citizen and ran a CVS. He lived long enough to vote for Obama.

Cool! what did Butenko do?

by the way, saw the flag of the 461 st last year. it was offered to me for a mere $300.

Dude, seriously, that may the rarest and best thing you own. An EK1 to An E2 for a brutal slugfest against the USMC? it would be like finding an RK doc. To one of the Panzer oGrenider officers who broke the 108th in the Bulge or a Sacred Treasure awarded for Iwo Jima. if you ever want to sell, act ually, I do not think I could afford it.

I am amazed that ARB or Glenn haven t turned him up. I am going to print this out and send this off to the research Gnomery and see what happens for you.

Cool. looks like it was patterned after the Maine Gold Star medal, which many GMIC members here helped fund initially. At $70 a medal, I hope it is a nice, well made one.

Cool. I have looked for an in wear photo of these for years.N o luck so far.

Wonderful group. These days chaps like Tudor would be in MI 6 or MI 5. it would be interesting to see what his speciality was. can you see his personal file at all in the Indian archives?

Outstanding Weimar DRK bar! I love it.

Ah! As a loyal Newmarket lad, it is good to know they appreciated the horse culture in the proper way. :)

yes. NCO is enlisted status. But if he was not a retired OberFeldwebel I will eat my hat. my guess is stable master.

Nice! is there a makers' mark on the reverse at all? I know the Derg sent officers to Bulgaria, Hungary, the DDR, Cuba and Moscow for training and many wore their foreign academy badges. Those teachers badges are splendid ! The top row I would wager a weeks' pay we're made in the DDR, as they look so similar to DDR awards.

hmmmmmmm.....a Prussian cavalry NCO from an elite Guard regiment who was born @ 1840-50 and lived to at least 1915 by the LS medal and the Austrian Military Merit cross. hmmmmmmmmm....age 65+ in 1915.....I am thinking liveried senior Imperial Butler/Stable-master and yet no foreign awards beyond AH and precious few royal household awards, so not someone Going on tour with the Kaiser. Any chance he is senior Berlin Police or Postal Service?

Catholic School Merit medal @ 1900? from Spain by the crown?

The book I have was published in 2001, well put together at Kinkos I should say. The US on-line alumni directory has come up since then and is interesting more for what it omits rather than what it often says. For example, the Harrar association makes a concerted effort in its meetings/presentations to dodge the Derg era and who did what to whom. BUT, I am always left wondering at an entire class as being listed as merely " deceased" and most seemingly dying of undisclosed causes in the 1970s . I would LOVE to get interviews with some of these guys, but they are VERY reserved. It reminds me a lot of my Dad's encounters with Wehrmacht veterans in the early 1960s. there is another Ethiopian Patriots group in The DC area and they seem to be more forthcoming with information, especially about the Eritrean, Somali and Italian wars. good Luck! The Ethiopian Crown Council may also know.

Very cool. looks like he left school at 16 and ended up an E5, which is pretty cool. Note his DD 214 states his wounds were on Okinawa. Is the medal numbered at all? he got the Phillipene Liberation ribbon with 2 stars, which I have always wondered about. how did one qualify for 2 stars? I have seen lots of Liberation medals with 1 star, but 2 ?

There is an active Harar Military Academy Association in the USA and to a lesser extent, London. they have alumni lists. This medal is on the cover of the Alumni booklet and I believe is a commemorative or graduation medal. It may be pretty easy to locate alumni in the DC area who can positively identify this.

wow! something new. my understanding is that the new Ethipian government redesigned the wound medal, but retained the heart motif. this I have no idea, but suspect it is either a 1. interim wound medal (1990-1995) or A local award OR an Italian collaborators piece.

Fantastic!

The mustache although Chaplin like, was actually, in Germany, the mark of a front line soldier. It was the proscribed facial hair by regulation for the early gas masks. I have a bunch of Stahlhelm soldiers wearing this, but not younger men or Spd/KPD supporters, nor Adel chappies.

:0. is that an India WW2 service medal?

Maybe, the Honor medal of the fire Association has kept records and the Hessian medal should be easy to find. The Order of the October Revolution second variation 63,404, was with a very nice Ukranian Order of Lenin copy, but I expect to pick up an Order of Glory third class for $40.

And this photo was taken Monday at a wreath laying ceremony in Washington DC at the African American Civil War Memorial. Note the Korean war vet on the left, the WW2 vet in the middle and somebody important on the right!

Last month the Korean government, as part of its diplomatic outreach program to mineral rich Ethiopia and also to commemorate the Korean War (perhaps made a little more dramatic by recent threats by the DRNK to restart the war) held a ceremony to commemorate the 340 remaining members of the Kagenew Battalion (many of whom later served in the Ethiopian Imperial Guards). They also offered financial assistance to many of the veterans, a small pension and direct aid in the form of supplies. Many of the veterans are desperately poor, their pension land having been stolen by the Derg/Mengitsu regime and Ethiopia is too poor to provide much in the way of pensions. Korea also offers free education to the progeny of Ethiopian Korean veterans and presently 60 young Ethiopian war scholars are studying hard in Soel. Note in this picture the former NCO on the right. He wears the Typical NCO combination of Sellasie medal (a merit/LS award), a Ethiopian Korean medal, a UN Korean medal and the Korean (from Korea proper) war medal. Alas, he does not have the Korean "war veteran's association" medal, which many of his fellow veterans also own. (It is the last medal on the middle right chap's bar) Then the chap in the middle right is REALLY interesting. While it takes a lot of effort, one can clearly see his Victory Star and the edge of his Patriots' medal, indicating that he fought against the Italians in 1937-41. He also has clearly exchanged his old silver (made in Sweden) Imperial Korean war medal for the later Derg version, which is in the penultimate place on his medal bar. He probably did this during the death squad purges of the late 1970s, when old Imperial soldiers were treated as a threat by the Communists and often liquidated, along with their families. Photo via The Government of Ethiopia