Ed_Haynes

I love seeing stuff I never knew existed!

On several occasions Dr B had the serial number, of the items shown in his book, changed (Photoshop)

This is the case also with n?115 wich is in reality presumably n? 315 or 415

Jan

Also, if you look closely, some of the other imaged are "doctored" -- see, for example, p. 47.

Do not worry. Those messages are very confusing even to native speakers of English! Just try making the image smaller and be sure to save it under a new name (image1aa....) as the forum seems to have some memory of old images with large sizes and ignores that they may have gotten smaller. Many use image editing programs that show the image size and allow you to make the image just the size you want. Their advice -- on other threads -- is based on this. I don't have that skill (using mostly Paint Shop Pro) so there must be a series of experiments to get the image small enough.

Maybe we need a single, one-size-fits-all, thread with a tutorial on image sizing? This advice is currently spread all over. A new thread, pinned, makes sense to me.

You need to resize your scans a great deal. This can be a problem when you prefer to post high quality scans. (And yours are lovely!) There are some threads here with advice on resizing and posting.

Try these:

http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=927

http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=4545

There are others.

And, yes, paying will help, see:

http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=3775

but so will begging the management for an upgrade to regular member.

Thanks for your fascintaing posts on a generally unknown area of phaleristics!

Not to complain, eitze. Thanks for these postings. But your images would be much easier and faster to see if you posted them on the forum (within our size limitations) rather than linked them to a very slow server. Thanks.

How many have died and keep dying from that incident? Greenpeace says about 100.000, but I guess it's almost impossible to know exactly the dimension of this tragic event!

Hard to say. Like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we'll be counting for number of generations, including some yet to come.

I thought it was the 26. April 1986 when the accident occured.

Oh, yes, of course. Thread heading suitably altered.

Still . . . .

A reminder.

Nice thread, thanks. So much more interesting than those BORING Nazi things!

Yes, but there was no eBay after the war with Argentina.

Lucky bustard.

From what I have seen in the press, a fair number of British veterans of the Iraq invasion are selling their medals as a modest form of protest against this very unpopular deployment. Supply and demand has worked to keep prices high, for now, but as more Iraq medals are coming to market the prices are sure to drop.

No, Chuck, give it to us here. We can take it. (Grrrr.) "Take it", and we hope "answer it". Do we get points for effort??

The research would be awesome to behold!

For what it is, I'm not sure the price is unreasonable. For this, I think you look into selling family members.

Welcome aboard, Alexei! Good to see you here. You'll see some familiar goodies on various threads, I'm sure.

Ed

Actually, I found them. Fax off tomorrow.

Bob,

Do you happen to have their address and fax number? By PM if preferred . . . ???

Ed

I have only two Videsh Seva Medals:

Bar UAR to 9th Dogra (Rakhsha Medal, Videsh Seva, UNEF)

Bar Congo to 3/1 Gorkha Rifles (who won a Param Vir Chakra there - Capt. Gurbachan Singh Salaria - posthumous). About 20 years ago Mark Sellar had a few groups and singles, but they were "common" bars.

Good start, 2 down, 52 (at last count) to go!

Mine are on other threads here or over at:

http://sagongs.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=70

I only ("only") have 45 to add!

All I have for comparison is a Bulgarian Hero of Socialist Labor / Geroj na sotsialistitjeskija trud. See over at:

http://www.omsa.org/photopost/showphoto.ph...oto=287&cat=548

Came cased together with the Order of Georgi Dimitrov / Orden Georgi Dimitrov and document. But I can't guarantee they're 100% genuine. Guess nothing is certain in these days?

The pair (?) can be seen at

http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=3778

I have also run across references to the Indian Grenadiers serving with the I.C.S.C. I wonder if they might have been less likely to have spent time in J-K than the Dogras, and thus no Sainya Seva Medal. Certainly if he was an OR or JCO I would expect a 9 Year Long Service.

"The Book" will have the full rundown on what Indian regiments served in the ICSC in Vietnam, in Laos, and in Cambodia.

Usually, only an officer would have any reason to wear miniatures, an officer or maybe a mess servant.

The long service medals didn't come in until 1971, by which time he'd have acquired several others.

Almost everyone in the Indian military gets a Sainya Seva whether they want one or not. Until the "Andaman and Nicobar" clasp came along, the standing joke was that the only way to avoid the medal was to join the navy.

Yes, I would dearly love to have the full-size group, but I couldn't afford it!

I have never seen a complete group (except with recipients). Even single ICSC medals are scarce, same for the Videsh Seva with "Hindchin" clasp; I've never seen even a pair in close on to 30 (!) years.

[attachmentid=35255]

Here is a miniature group from India, for a serviceman who served in the I.C.S.C. as well.

It is interesting because of a number of anomalies:

The clasps on the Samanya Seva Medal and Videsh Seva Medal are in English, not Hindi. This might indicate that the recipient was not a native Hindi speaker, perhaps from South India. There was a lot of resentment at the Indian government's attempt to make Hindi the one official language.

There is no "Pakistan 1965" clasp to the Samanya Seva Medal. It is probably the "Kutch-Kargil 1965" clasp (see Ed's site Kutch Kargil 1965 for the full-size bar.)

The Videsh Seva Medal should have the Lions of Ashoka on the obverse. This one has three waves and what looks like a life preserver - hardly auspicious for the "Overseas" Medal!

He also served in the 1965 war with Pakistan (Samar Seva Star and Rakhsha Medal).

The I.C.S.C. Medal ends the group.

Miniatures and the clasps that go with them are manufactured by the military tailors with not much concern over official designs (even though there are official "sealed patterns" for miniatures held in the Ministry of Defence Medal Office). In fact, I can look at these and tell you who made and mounted them (Army Equippers, Connaught Place, New Delhi).

The language of the miniature clasps means nothing. They are seen in Hindi, in English, interchangably, and with random claps (like "PAKISTAN 1965" that never existed -- though I have seen this one more commonly on the Samar Seva Star where it REALLY doesn't belong). To reiterate: there is NO political message at all in the English clasps. Rarely do the legends on any clasps match the real clasps on the full-sized medals. And I have NEVER seen a miniature Videsh Seva Medal with the correct design.

Yes, this rogue miniature clasp probably represents "Kachh-Kargil" on the Samanya Seva Medal.

Miniatures (in any country) are, after all, only unofficial things and represent the myriad fantasies of the manufacturers and marketers.

This is an interesting little Indian miniature group, with no more than normal deviance, for someone who served in the ICSC (a fascinating and relatively scarce entitlement) and then in the pre-war and wartime conflicts in the 1965 war with Pakistan. I'd bet we are seeing a group for a junior officer (captain, maybe?), perhaps in the Dogra Regiment. The only surprising thing about the group is that he somehow avoided a Sainya Seva Medal!

Now: Where are the real medals that these miniatures try to represent???

(PS- I have intentionally stopped ANY updating on my website on Indian medals -- http://faculty.winthrop.edu/haynese/india/medals/INDMED.html -- in part because a book is due out "soon" but also because this material -- and material from my other websites -- has been blantantly and freely stolen for others' use -- including publication in major phaleristic journals -- and I have no intent to feed the thieves any more!)

So many of the sites out there may have nice images, but are incredibly short on information. Even Megan's site has little, and we are left going back to Dorling and Wehrlich. Dave's sites (thank you!) are the exception to the rule, but their focus is where their focus is.

And (apologies), how could I forget Yuri Yashnev's superb site (well, it was down the last time I looked, maybe that's why):

http://www.netdialogue.com/yy/Africa/AfricaMain.htm

We do need a good and carefully researched book on African awards.

Yes, I'd assume that most would have gone to friendly Warsaw Pact countries or to places like North Korea and, thereby, vanished because no one knew or cared what they were. Ever worse for the documents, I fear. A few probably would have gone to Mongolians involved in international relations (though, on quick glance, I can't find any in Battushig).

As I understand it, the Medal of Brotherhood in Arms (# A 59, sorry I don't know the Mongolian name) was awarded on a more balanced basis.

PS: We also have a few (but mainly North African) over at the OMSA site:

http://www.omsa.org/photopost/showgallery.php?cat=679

"Faked"? Hard word to define. They are, as I think I said, readily available ready-made with military tailors all over Bangkok.

You walk in and buy a ribbon bar that matches your entitlement, or one you'd like to have in your collection, or one you'd like to flog on eBay.

Maybe the question to ask is whether anyone has ever worn these ribbon bars? Short of a DNA test, I'd suggest "no".