kimj

Nice one Peter! It's the Swedish Navy Association medal of merit, awarded 1944-86 in this form. Do you have her big sister too? /Kim

Thanks for showing these on the forum Peter! Most generous. /Kim

Sorry TS, the picture is from the museum's webpage and not mine. You can try writing them, they're pretty friendly and helpful. /Kim

No doubt that the Banner der Arbeit is good. But here's a pic from the auction I mentioned. For those who want to see it: eBay Nr 300346044296 /Kim

Isn't the stasi Banner der Arbeit document one of those being sold on German eBay? In that seller's listing he writes that the document is a "replica". He writes "replica", I have another word for it... Nice collection by the way! Too few East German award collections around. /Kim

No problem Claudio! Sorry, but I don't know what the last three are. My guess would be Swedish/Mexican/South American . That's as close as I would go. I don't have a full list of what he got with me. James, the bar is Thord Gray's. Promise. All of the items are in the hands of the Armémuseum in Stockholm, the national military museum. So my guess is that this is how he wore them his last years. More to see if you go to: http://www.digitaltmuseum.se/ownerInfo.do and type his name. If you type in "medalj" you will see most of the awards at our military museum in Stockholm. Great fun. /Kim

Here's the minis to go with the big bar.

No need to speculate IF it's true. All of what Claudio has written is a case of reality being better than fiction. Thord Gray is well documented professional soldier and if you want hard evidence I recommend the Bojerud book (unfortunately only in Swedish). Or a trip to the archive i Stockholm, Krigsarkivet. I'm sure they will be more than happy to help. Here's a pic of him as a White Russian General, from the Armémuseum collection. /Kim

Rick, the honest answer is that I have no clue about Latvian regulations. But if the first awards are Latvian followed by Lithuanian (and Swedish?) that would make sense as the Baltic states are very particular about being separate countries. So first of the foreign awards an order followed by foreign and unofficial/scouting medals. Also the texture of the yellow/blue ribbon looks like what you see with Swedish ribbons. But then again.... who knows for sure. /Kim

#4 Could also be the Swedish order of the Sword. I have 48 Latvians listed as recipients, of all classes. /Kim

It's nice to see a group to a Khasan figther! Can't wait to see the rest of the research. Kim

Nice bar Claudio! I did a quick search for him to see if I could find a pic. No luck, but I did find a medal/order related text. It's about the lanyard on the musicians uniform. Music inspector Ille Gustafsson was careful to pull it [ the lanyard /my comment] aside so that all the medals and decorations could bee seen. I guess he proud to show them of. Also I saw that www.gamlachristianstad.nu is planing an article about him in the next yearbook. /Kim

Post #2 and #8 are Swedish. #2 was sold to raise money for Finland during the Winter War. #8 is a pin for the 80th birthday of King Gustav V. /Kim

I don't know Finnish but I DO own a reference book. /Kim Most of the medals you are looking for can be found in it, Alexandre. ISBN is 952-5026-20-5.

I would be nice to see the ausweis. Never gotten one, although I have been outbid on a couple complete sets. /Kim

No, it's dated 1958. One of the others have a 1962 date and the same style of hand printed text as the common 1958 have. Do you have any documents for the medal? /Kim

ehrentitle: Of course one would expect some variation in the "production". But most documents I have seen were awarded on one occasion, 14 September 1958. So I would expect that they would be made in the same way. Although it could be diffrent batches at the document makers. Who knows... Anyway it makes a nice addition to my other urkunden. /Kim

Here the names. Gerhard Gr?nberg is my latest find. Fritz B?rner's group is already posted on this forum. /Kim

Here they are. First a pic of the cover.

I recently won a document group on German Ebay. The sad thing is that the group was broken, but the good thing is that it had the document for "k?mpfer gegen den Faschismus". I got it home today and discovered that the name of the awardee is printed, instead of the usual hand written. Now I wonder if anyone has seen this before? My first thought was that is was a higher grad of quality. But when I checked the tiny pic in Zeige of Willi Stoph's document it looks like his name was hand written too. And if Stoph doesn't get a "higher quality" urkunde then who gets one....? Pics will come when I get the time for it. Hopefully soon. /Kim

Mike: I have the 1886 and 1902 books and they add no names to your list. In the 1919 book I have these listed as Austrian/Hungarian: Order of Wasa 1 cl Year awarded/last name/first name (one of them) 1904 Berger von Waldenegg, Oscar E. T. 1918 Breuer, Maurice 1908 von Buschman, Franz; Baron 1908 von Donheimer-Herlth, Eduard; Ritter 1917 Drach, Adolf 1917 Frisch, Hans 1911 Ganglbauer, Ernest 1913 Gorup von Bes?nez, Ferdinand 1914 Hirt, Henrik 1910 Huber, Wilhelm 1917 Kunze, Erik 1911 Leisching, Eduard 1908 Lippich von Korongh, Alexiua 1904 Loebenstein von Algenhorst, Heinrich 1909 Messerklinger, Johann 1918 Meyer, Hans 1908 Nepalleck, Wilhelm 1908 Pers von Sant?Eliseo und Grabiz, Karl 1917 Pick, Franz 1904 Regner von Bleyleben, Oktavian; Ritter 1918 Schick, Alfred 1908 Schlechta von A?scherd, Ottokar 1904 Sieghart, Rudolf 1904 von Slatin, Heinrich 1911 Sonnensschein, Siegmund 1911 Spiess, Anton 1908 Swoboda, Johan 1904 von Tallian, Dionys 1904 von Weckbecker, Wilhelm 1908 Wimmer, Johannes I doubt that we have lost many between the years. Most of these people are court employees and medical doctors. No counts in this lot. If the text on the back is the correct name for the guy on the other side... /Kim

I doubt this is Hadik mainly because he's not listed in the Swedish list of foreign commanders of the Wasa order in the 1886, 1902 or 1919 lists. If you could place the photo in time I could make a list of the Austrian-Hungarian knight commander 2nd class recipients of the Wasa. But without a good guess what year... /Kim

Does this mean the tank unit was equipped with lend-lease tanks, Mk.III Valentine medium tank? In any case it's a nice citation and the related citations gives an interesting view of what was going on. /Kim

4 according to www.warheroes.ru and 747 heroes of the Russian Federation (at the last update...). /Kim

ID-ing this from the order of the North Star is not impossible.... but a lot of work. The easiest way, or should I say"easiest", is to look in the "statskalender". The book lists living holders of the Swedish orders that year. I only have the books for 1887, 1902 and 1937. In 1937 there are about 1000 foreign knigths of the North Star. Maybe 100 germans... Looks like the order is made of gold. This means that it was awarded before 1926. After that year only gilded silver crosses were given to foreigners. For some reason many just ignored the rule of sending it back after the recipients death.... /Kim