Ed_Haynes

A nice little wooden box. It won't scan well, need the camera? Outside, the impressed PDRK coat of arms. (It may take some imagination, but it IS there. Really.)

And the Research Medal (imaging still leaving something to be desired).

The best I can do with the various Management Medal images.

Thanks for bumping this one, Gerd. It remains one of my favorite guests. And there is some long-shot hope of research possibilities, currently being explored.

I am woirking on the photos. They need some tender, loving care. Watch this space . . . .

Well, He -- Ras Tafar I ["Eye", as in "I and I"] -- wouldn't have gotten any nasty non-imperial gongs, as He had fled the country (again) during those days. Information on socialist Ethiopia is hard to come by -- the new collecting wave (for sure!)?? Someplace, I have an aging-but-lovely photo of Him at John F. Kennedy's funeral, standing side-by-side with de Gaulle (at half his height). Full (and I do mean FULL) medals.

And hope that when The Day comes, the publisher (actually the copy editor/book designer) doesn't make a dog's dinner out of it (between first and second proofs). Have been struggling, and drinking, and weeping over such a situation all day today.

Nice pictures, Gerd. If you can't get the medals, you can have their images?

Oh . . . wow . . .

Very VERY interesting. Let me look.

Well, as is usually the case, it depends entirely on who you ask. They might have been Irish Freedom Fighters, attempting to liberate Canada from the Yoke of English Oppression. They might have been American Terrorists. Other possibilities exist.

Nice. Many thanks!! More, more, more. What is the naming? And which clasp?

Nice post, Dave. Had not seen this one before. Sometimes the internet eats things?

I have, and let me find, numbers for the Indian Army. I can't say, however, as far as medals awarded to natives (of the British Isles) are concerned.

He apparently eneterd the European theater of operations too late to qualify for the 1939-45 Star. These groups missing the 1939-45 Star are oddities and there is usually an interesting story. (Or there is some very sloppy mounting involved!) Other than the MiD leaf, there are no clasps or other devices to the War Medal. See also: http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=11116

Interesting, Bob. Questions worth asking. Shall do so. In a couple of weeks.

It is a really good question. Someplace, I have seen that information, . . . ???

Well, both hero stars have indicators for subsequent awards, but they live on another cosmic plane.

Not yet, but some say "soon". We can hope. Anything numbered has records.

No, but they can sometime, eventually, be traced anyway, even without the booklet.

Why??????????

Thanks, would appreciate this. I have a ton of photographs of things not in my collectoion and need to struggle with the ethics of posting them.

To get us back on, or even "toward", the topic, I suspect all nations, in times of war, exaggerate and "stretch" when it comes to writing up awards recommendations. Anyone who writes up someone else for an award obviously wants to see them get that award. And, as anyone over the age of six knows, not everyone who deserves awards gets them, and not all who get them deserve them; whining aside, this is just the way the system works, always has, always will. Most awards recommendations are intended for internal, contemporaneous, bureaucratic circulation only and were not intended to be "propaganda" (a slippery value-laden term of undetermined meaning). This is why it is so difficult for a researcher to access recommendations; they were never intended to be public documents. In extraordinary cases of heroism, where the individual was later marked (by the government) to be put forward to the public, through the media, as a model for emulation, the public relations guys get to work their "special magic" on the recommendation to dress it up for public consumption. And this may entail adding a final zero onto the body count or exggerating in other ways as the internal recommendation becomes a press release. None of this should detract from the real heroism that often lies behind these accounts, but when the deeds of a hero are repackaged to motovate the public during time of war, some "marketing spin" always takes place. For recent examples, glance at the Medal of Honor or Victoria Cross recommendations coming out of Iraq.

The name in Arabic transliterates as Wisam al-Satahaqaq al-Suri (sorry, I can't figure out how to do on-screen Arabic the way Dave does). That is the real name. The usual English translation is, indeed, the "Order of Civil Merit". I guess Russians can tralslate the name however they wish, as could the Japanese or Indians or anyone else? This habitual English name (used by the Syrians too) distinguished this awards from the Wisam al-Sharif al-?Askari / Order of Military Honor. The Wisam al-Satahaqaq al-Suri is, of course, the successor to the French-era award which we call in English the Honor Medal of Syrian Merit. I'm not sure what your question was, but I hope I have answered it.

Some nasty scans and limited information. Let me see if I can do better.