Dave Danner

Can anyone help with the script below? It looks like "Bataillons Kom ___ Rgts". Is that a number?

And what made it interesting for me is this - I just happened to have had the corresponding ribbon bar for the past few years:

The Albrecht Order is marked "S" for Scharffenberg of Dresden. There is also a nice tailor's tag on the back from a Dresden tailor.

One of the two 4-place medal bars I got at Gunzenhausen. This one is apparently to an anonymous Saxon lieutenant. He would have received the Silver Friedrich August Medal as an officer candidate and the Albrecht Order as an officer.

I picked up this 4-place medal bar as a last minute purchase just a few minutes before leaving the show at Gunzenhausen. It was a nice looking bar but nothing spectacular - at least until I thought about it more. The Bavarian Military Merit Order 4th Class with Crown and Swords was typically awarded to captains, although a number of awards were made to more junior officers who already had the 4th Class without Crown. The W?rttemberg Friedrich Order Knight 2nd Class with Swords was typically awarded to lieutenants. The lack of a Bavarian Army jubilee medal also pointed toward someone commissioned after early 1911. In looking through the various lists of BM4XmKr's and WF3bX's to Bavarians, I only found one match. There might be others because I'm not sure how complete the WF3bX to Bavarians list is, but for now I have just the one guy as a tentative match: Leutnant der Reserve Heinrich Fichtbauer. He doesn't show up in the Bavarian 1914 rank list because he was apparently commissioned after the war started (and so no jubilee as well). He received the BM4XmKr on 15 November 1917 and the WF3bX on 31 December 1917. Googling the name, I found that there was a Lt.d.R. Heinrich Fichtbauer, originally of the 19th Bavarian Infantry Regiment, who was severely injured in a plane crash (which killed his observer) on 28 May 1918. He was then serving with the Bavarian Fliegerabteilung (A) 286 b. So it seems like a good possibility that this last minute impulse buy might be an aviator's bar. Feel free to rain on my parade if there are any other candidates or if there is reason to rule out Fichtbauer (e.g. if he died by 1934 and couldn't have had an FKE or if he also received other states' awards).

As noted above, the Public Safety Officer Medal of Valor was created by an Act of Congress. It is awarded by the President in the name of Congress. That makes it a national award as far as I can tell. Indeed, it is more of a national award by these criteria than the Bronze Star Medal, for example, which was created by Executive Order of the President. From the regulations governing the medal: "Eligibility: The medal shall be awarded to any DoD civilian employee meeting the definition of ?employee? under title 5 United States Code, Section 2105, and who is eligible for an award under DoD 1400.25-M, Subchapter 451, ?Awards,? including employees of non-appropriated fund activities, when killed or wounded by hostile action while serving under any competent authority of the Department under conditions for which a military member would be eligible for receipt of the Purple Heart. Additionally, the Secretary of Defense has discretionary authority to award this medal to non-Defense personnel who are otherwise qualified to be awarded the medal based on their involvement in DoD activities." [empasis added] See: http://cpol.army.mil/library/permiss/5487.html The medal has in fact been awarded to employees of Halliburtons' KBR subsidiary and other contractors for DOD. According to an April 2007 report in Mother Jones, "119 American contractors (95 of them kbr [sic] employees) have been awarded the Defense of Freedom medal".

"Mercenaries" is not euphemistic. It is a politically loaded term and I know you are too smart to not realize this. And, by the way, by what stretch of the definition, politically loaded or not, are Halliburton employees mercenaries? Halliburton, through KBR, provides logistics support - cooks, construction workers, laundry and the like - services the armed forces cannot provide for itself due to cutbacks in the size of the forces and a conscious decision to shift such non-military work to private contractors. As The Nation has reported, KBR doesn't even do its own security, but has contracted with Blackwater and the like for security for its workers. As for Blackwater and other private security contractors, even here "mercenary" is a loaded term. The primary role of PSCs is security for government agencies, oil companies, etc. Is the security guard hired by my local McDonalds a mercenary? Also, most PSCs do not even work for DOD. They are hired by other government agencies such as the State Department or by private companies operating in countries like Iraq who need security. Blackwater's main contract in Iraq is with the State Department, because the Bureau of Diplomatic Security does not have the personnel. The four Blackwater employees murdered in Fallujah in 2004 were escorting a food convoy belonging to Eurest Support Services.

Moderators: Is this a medal discussion or a political rant thread?

There is a civilian law enforcement equivalent of the Medal of Honor. It is the Public Safety Officer Medal of Valor. From the enabling legislation ("Public Safety Officer Medal of Valor Act of 2001"): Public safety officer is defined as "a person serving a public agency, with or without compensation, as a firefighter, law enforcement officer, or emergency services officer, as determined by the Attorney General. For the purposes of this paragraph, the term 'law enforcement officer' includes a person who is a corrections or court officer or a civil defense officer." More information: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/medalofvalor/welcome.html

Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. Wake Island doesn't have a native population; you might be thinking of Guam. Guamanians are also U.S. citizens.

Enlisted men must be U.S. citizens or green card holders. Officers must be U.S. citizens. Here is a summary from the U.S. Embassy in Germany: http://germany.usembassy.gov/germany/dao/enlistno.html And from the U.S. Navy: http://www.navy.mil/navydata/questions/foreign.html

Second to last is the Bulgarian National Order for Military Merit.

Here is Wanner's entry in the 1918 Handbook for the German Reich. It doesn't add much except some positions, as his awards aren't listed. These positions might have put him in line for some of the Prussian awards, though.

There was no RIR 162 or LIR 162. L?beck's reservists and Landwehr men apparently went to either Schleswig-Holstein or Hanseatic regiments (likely RIR 31, RIR 76, RIR 84 and/or RIR 86; LIR 31, LIR 75, LIR 84 and/or LIR 85). Other units with L?beck connections: - II./IR 187 - Brig.Ers.Btl. 81 (later IV./IR 362 and then II./LIR 327) - IR 394 - IR 426 - III./IR 464 - III./RIR 214 - Landsturm-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 9 - Landsturm-Infanterie-Bataillon IX/8 L?beck - Landsturm-Infanterie-Ersatz-Bataillon IX/33 L?beck

O'Connor stated that the rolls were there in Eutin, but apparently incomplete. He said that there were about 2,400 OFAK1s and 55,000 OFAK2s, but Friedhelm Beyreiss stated that as of the end of 1918, there were 6,900 awards of the OFAK1 and 62,800 of the OFAK2. O'Connor also noted that a number of known recipients from his prior research were missing from the rolls.

According to Hartwig Busche, 1. Landsturm-Infanterie-Bataillon Gleiwitz VI/10 was mobilized on 9 August 1914. It was at times attached to the combined Infantry Regiment Rupprecht (zusammengesetztes Infanterie-Regiment Rupprecht), under Army Group Linsingen, attached to the 92. Infanterie-Division, General-Gouvernement Warschau.

All I can read is "Tu? a l'ennemi". I can't tell if the handwriting above goes with that or with the place of death above.

"w" in the German State Handbook after the EK2 means on the white ribbon. "m.Sp." is used for the 1914 Spange to the 1870 EK2. I can check the 1914 handbook tomorrow to see if there's an EK listed there, in which case one would be 1870, though if that were the case, you'd expect to see the "m.Sp."

OK, I see #2 is a Main-Armee-Kreuz, not K?niggr?tz, and #5 is from the Empire of Brazil, for the campaign which ended the Uruguayan Civil War in 1851-52. No idea how much value to put on that. Given how odd and rare the combination appears, the asking price seems OK.

You have 1 and 2 reversed. #1 is a non-combatant Franco-Prussian War medal. #2 is the K?niggr?tz Cross from the Austro-Prussian War. #3 is the Commemorative Cross to the Schleswig-Holstein Army 1848-1849. That one is rather rare. #5 may be Danish, not Swedish.

Sorry, I uploaded the same entry again and this software won't allow me to delete the wrong attachment and include the right one. If a moderator could fix it that would be most appreciated. Here is the correct entry. Best regards, Dave

Here is Minister Sydow's entry:

The Ministry for Trade and Industry was a Prussian ministry, so it's in a different book from the German State Handbook. Here is the entry for Huber in the 1918 Prussian Court and State Handbook, which uses a pretty little icon for the Verdienstkreuz f?r Kriegshilfe. You're right on target about the RAO4 and KO3. Cordial greetings, Dave

Here is Brigadier General Edmund E. Dillon, Chief of Defence Staff, TTDF. His 2nd and 3rd ribbons are the Efficiency Decoration and Efficiency Medal, and the last is the U.S. Army Commendation Medal (probably from Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti). What would the first one be?

Stupid typos: Milit?r-Verordnungsblatt, not Milit?r-Verdordnungsblatt! Personalien-Beilagen, where awards and promotions were listed, were published until 1919. I don't know if awards were published after 1918, though. There was a 1920 edition of the Milit?r-Verordnungsblatt which might have also had Personalien-Beilagen (during the war they were published in separate volumes), but I have not seen it. Apparently to save space, in early 1917 they stopped publishing (i) all Iron Crosses and K?nig Ludwig Crosses, (ii) non-Bavarian decorations to enlisted soldiers and warrant officer-type ranks, (ii) Bavarian decorations to non-Bavarians, as well as to Navy and Schutztruppen. In the picture above, the huge volume is the second half of 1916. The size of that volume, which probably has 20,000 + KLKs and tens of thousands of EKs, is why they stopped publishing them.