Ed_Haynes

One of the problems with thinking that online sources are in any way "real"? There is, of course, always the Wayback Machine (are any of you old enough to recall that?). http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

At OMSA: Our fellow forumite E. J. Fischer will have several copies for sale and will have flyers for easy ordering once you've seen the book. At OMRS: Unknown at present, shall advise.

Aha! You beat me to it Hugh! I was just about done fiddling with the images James had sent to me. Not easy (or, sometiomes, possible) to conjoin size and quality.

Done.

No, it only includes Europeans, no Indian Army (my interest).

This one -- and the ribbon especially -- looks vaguely familiar. I am thinking Southeast Asian. The scan, however, is too bad to say much.

Reminding us, perhaps, that the GPW was not about "things", or people, or even history, it was about families. For me, these are a sort of shrine to those who defeated fascism. I have many more. There were many more.

And the interior.

Reverse.

One more. Example 2

Interior.

Reverse.

Example 1

From a large collection acquired recently, a few examples. I leave it to the Russian readers to fill in the facts and the context.

I have always assumed that all those "reconversions" of originally screwbackled items (not what you allude to, I know) were reconversions by "helpful" dealers and coillectors who smelled more profit by doing so. Why in the world would have a veteran have converted his awards back to an obsolete style? Another victory of greed over history?

The place to start is the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website (not perferct, but they try hard): http://www.cwgc.org/ The problem comes with common names. There are four "Peter Watt"s. And there's no way to know which is which. There is also the "Soldiers Died" CD, but I don't have it (as it is restricted to Europeans). But witha common name, and no otyher information, the same problems will exist. Maybe others can help you target.

Good points, Paul.

A good working theory, Owain.

There was at least the theoretical chance that an award of these first, very (too?) freely distributed MBEs would be worn alone for civil awards. Any military recipient would -- it was assumed -- have had somethimng for The Great War to mount with it (hard to avoid!).

From all I have seen, the military awards, which were almost never worn alone, usually came without any upper fitting. Even few civil awards of that period did. The expected early remounting made the upper brooch fitting unnecessary. They could just as easily have discpensed with the ribbon (and I have seen some evidence that this was considered to save money). I 100% suspect this specimen never had any upper fitting. Why destroy history to make it fulfill our strange needs? Finding a period brooch would require ripping apart a period piece, as those pieces issued with it usually had the remelting of the brooch fitting factored into the cost when the remounting took place as a discount. Again: NOTHING wants "fixing" on this MBE. (Not even as one might "fix" their dog!)

Not quite sure what you are asking? THere is nothing wrong with this. Why spoil it?

Good work, Leigh!

The amount of research that can be done on named medals is amazing. And if you go to the archives, even better! This turns them from pretty pieces of metal and cloth into HISTORY.

Full-sized medals would have been worn and re-medaling this one would cost a mint. My guess is that his medals were sold long since. If at DNW there's a hope of finding them.

There is, more rationally, the possibility (rather dinished now?) of research for these things plus the appearance of high-quality reference books in English. Add research and references and prices will rise legitimately.