Unique, Previously Unknown WW1 Award Discovered

[Guest Rick Research]

4PM Tuesday 9 January 2007. Transcribing Volume 2 of the unpublished SMK Roll, what do my astonished eyes uncover but THIS:

[Guest Rick Research]

Without any statutory authorization, what seems to be a completely, literally UNIQUE award of a BAR to the War Merit Cross

Flipping forward from this, the 2,161st award listed on the Roll, I do not see another such example listed. This is IT, apparently.

Since the SMK at this time was lovely chocolate bronze, presumably this "one-off" Spange would also have been in that material to match.

Add a new one to German 1914-18 rarities...

because it doesn't get rarer than ONE.

[Ulsterman]

A transcription mistake surely?

[Guest Rick Research]

Can not be anything but fully intentional. Meiningen had no Carl Eduard Medal for date bars. Indeed, they had NOTHING for date bars. This Roll is purely and entirely the SMK alone. Whyever they did this, they meant it!!!!

[Ulsterman]

wow- must've been custom made. I wonder if anyone has Lieutnant dR Kleins' papers out there-or better yet, his medals?

[Schießplatzmeister]

WOW!!!!

Now I have something else to look for!

Nice work Rick!

Best regards,

"SPM"

[Ed_Haynes]

Wow (indeed)!

However marginal to my "core interests", I always enjoy learning new things.

[dond]

There will be one on ebay within a week.

[Chris Boonzaier]

I already have 8th and 10th of July clasps... have been looking for a 9th of july clasp for ages.... ;-)

[Guest Rick Research]

Ahhhh, but I have the Roll, so nobody will be able to slip one by moi. Crime shall NOT pay!

RIR 71 was in 22nd Reserve Division. All I can find is that after losing 90 percent of its infantry at Verdun between March and June 1916, the division was flung into the Somme on 2 July around Biaches-Belloy

and by the time it was pulled out of the line on 10 July, had given up 1,500 prisoners.

Lt dR Ferdinand Klein did not get an Ernestine from Altenburg or Coburg. I'll get to Meiningen after the SMK roll is done.*** Nothing from Weimar or Saxony. Presumably he got something from Schwarzburg. Can't tell if he ended up getting an HHOX since the Prussian Milit?r Wochenblatt lists multiple reserve Lieutenants Klein with no first names or units.

What on earth could have resulted in his singular, personalized distinction?????????????????????????

*** I'm back after having an advance look through Meiningen's Ernestine Rolls. Quite oddly, there is not a single Knight 2nd X--none at all-- to Meiningen "Inl?nder." They are all to "Ausl?nder"--

and sure enough, there is Lt dR Klein getting his HSH3bX (S-M) in RIR 71 on page 98, 8 January 1915 three months before the SMKs started being handed out.

[Gilles]

Rick,

What a good start in the year!

It shows that there is still much work to be done, even almost 100 years after WWI.

To make it short: great work brings great finds!

(don't you read "mit besonderem Erfolg (u.?) erwiesener Tapferkeit"?)

Gilles

Edited January 10, 2007 by Gilles

[Guest Rick Research]

You may be right, Gilles! The original is TINY, with the ink in the letters blurred and run together. I still cannot be sure there is a "b" there under the "h" in "Gefechte" above and the bottom line is all just mmmmmmmmmmm tiny squashed letters. What you see above is IMPROVED and ENLARGED over the original.

I am obliged to Wild Card for immediately remembering that our late friend Neal O'Connor DID spot this unique entry and make note of it in his Volume V "The Aviation Awards of the Eight Thuringian States and the Duchy of Anhalt" in 1998.