Ed_Haynes

Very nice! Marvelous stuff.

These medals are sold?

Well, I purchased them several years back. They are now in my collection. They are not for sale, though some day I may sort out duplicates when they will be listed in the appropriate sub-section of the forum.

Even someone "outside The Club" would be interested in this!!

And in the days before Excel!!

The likelihood of an additional clasp is very slim. As for making sense of the logic behind ribbons clasps and rosettes on the various OSMs? Don't bother. It was designed by a committee who made it up as they went along in between rounds of golf.

Which medals haven't been designed by "committees"???

?Viva la muerte...abajo inteligencia!: a young soldier of the Blue Division with the Falange badge and a Luftwaffe 'gull' on his ski-cap. At least these men had a valid reason to be in German uniform, unlike the Azad Hind renegades, for instance, who were never committed to battle, even when the Germans were really scraping the barrel. A further point of interest is the Portuguese contingent within the Blue Division.

PK

Yet you do not wish to attribute an ideological motivation .... Valid? Off to my dictionary ....

Won't even try to discuss the AHF here. If for no other reasoin, . They had their agenda, which wasn't Hitler's. And after Stalingrad it was moot. (Hitler lost there.)

Thanks. I am just far more familiar with the compliacted debates over the status and conditions of service regarding the Free Indian Army (Azad Hind Fauj). Somehow, I had assumed Franco might have played the same defensive game that Bose did. Maybe I overestimated Franco.

Ah . . . these "Azul" people were part of the Wehrmacht, not the Spanish Army (the wore their breast eagle, after all). This would make a difference, as they served in a foreign army (unless some serious diplomacy was involved).

Maybe the legend would help? But most of our Russian readers have vanished. Let me ask off-forum.

Once in my previous college - which did a lot of adult education - I noticed an older lady wearing a 1914-20 British War Medal (no ribbon) on a chain round her neck. I asked her about it and she told me that it was her father's - he'd had 3 daughters and each had one of his 'Pip, Squeak and Wilfred' to wear in his memory.

Part of me squealed at breaking up a family group, but the rest of me applauded the way in which the girls had chosen to keep his memory alive.

At least she wasn't wearing it as a medal, claiming it as hers.

There is, of course, the old tradition of Victorian campaign medals being transformed by relatives and recipients into brooch pins, napkin rings, watch-fobs, necvktie pins, and even in an earlier era scarf rings. Many "helpful" dealers have re-transformed them into medals in recent decades.

The ethical and phaleristic complexities here are numerous.

Ah, yes. Possibly. Why would folks pose around it? Just something vertical to focus attention? (Be quiet, Dr. Freud . . . .)

Pencil legend on the reverse (enhanced for legibility).

Thanks in advance!

As time and stamina allow, I am going through my collection and working on the cataloging (my wife calls it "playing with my collection", but she must be wrong?). The Tolkachev group -- see http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=5053 -- has a number of photos, mostly from April and May 1945. This shows a group of Tolkachev's buddied in front of a monument.

Any bells ring, anyone?

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Last one.

Thanks for all the help!

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It is legitimate here though.

Won't quibble over words. It is allowed by regulations.

What is done in Australia if three grandchildren all want to wear grandad's gongs, do they all go out and have "replica" groups concocted?

I agree 110% with Megan here.

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Not much left.

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Over there beyond the bridge.

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As time and stamina allow, I am going through my collection and working on the cataloging (my wife calls it "playing with my collection", but she must be wrong?). The Tolkachev group -- see http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=5053 -- has a number of photos, mostly from April and May 1945 that show destroyed tanks, presumably German. I know absolutely nothing about armor (or even armour) and need help. And and all comments will help to educate me.

Tanks in advance!

. . . and of course the right to wear their husbans/son/fathers medals at official services on the left breast. Which still applies.

People, these days, say this a lot, but no one has ever presented any evidence supporting this (sad) policy and it seems to be not at all true. Only the recipient has any right to wear his (her) medals. You wonder where this myth came from?

It is commonly done in Australia, for example. Doesn't make it legitimate, though.

According to their catalogue (Lot 802 in their 12 December 2008 sale), the non-British awards are:

. . . Russia, Order of St. Vladimir, in silver-gilt and enamels; Norway, War Cross 1940; Greece, Cross of Valour, in silver-gilt and enamels; France, Croix de Guerre, with palm leaf on riband; United States of America, European-African-Middle East Campaign.

That is indeed what it seems to be. You, being dead, will have no opportunity to wear a medal. And your next-of-kin won't either, so why not a table ornament?

While it is this is the "short group" of miniatures of George VI, as sold by Morton & Eden (with reasonably solid attribution and provenence) in their December 2008 sale. Several oddities there.