M.M. to a French soldier...

[Chris Boonzaier]

How rare is this!!!

[deptfordboy]

Very interesting! I wonder how many MM's were issued to foreigners? Does anyone have an idea?

Chris, have you checked this aginst the UK research sources (London Gazette etc)?

Cheers

Gilbert

[Ed_Haynes]

Most honorary (foreign) awards were not listed in the LG and tracing them is much more difficult.

Let me see if I can find anything. As I recall, A&T have some data on the numbers of honorary awards. Maybe not.

[Ed_Haynes]

Abbot and Tamplin (2nd ed., p. 227) list 5,688 honorary MM awards for WWI (and freely admit their list is incomplete). By country:

France - 2,472

Italy - 1,320

Belgium - 442

U.S.A. - 413

Czechoslovakia - 320

Rumania - 259

Serbia - 171

Greece - 149

Portugal - 76

Japn - 68

Russia - 7

For comparison, for WWII, there were only 660 honorary awards.

Edited March 31, 2007 by Ed_Haynes

[peter monahan]

The difference between WWI & WWII is quite interesting. The various Allied powers seem to have given out decorations to each others' soldiers pretty freely in the Great War.

I once owned a group to a British Officer of Indian Cavalry (Capt. Branfoot, 30th Lcrs) who had received the Rumanina Order of the Corwn, one of the nicest looking decorations I've ever owned. ASs far as I can tell he may not have known where Rumania was and certainly never served with any, but a former messmate remarked (somewhat cynically perhaps) that "Branny" wasn't quite good enough for an MC and so got the Rumanian gong "which they sent around by the basketful at Christmas time". Makes a good story anyway!

Peter

[Ed_Haynes]

Since I still have A&T out, even at the risk of getting , here are the WWII honorary MMs:

U.S.A. - 310

Free French - 185

Poland - 63

Belgium - 24

Greece - 24

Norway - 23

Czechoslovakia - 18

Netherlands - 9

U.S.S.R. - 4

And, as with WWI, these numbers may be low and incomplete.

[Igor Ostapenko]

Abbot and Tamplin (2nd ed., p. 227) list 5,688 honorary MM awards for WWI (and freely admit their list is incomplete). By country:

Russia - 7

For comparison, for WWII, there were only 660 honorary awards.

For Russians - 862

http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=16005

[Ed_Haynes]

For Russians - 862

http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=16005

Interesting. What is the source for this number? I know that A&T worked in the archives for years, though these honorary awards are notoriously hard to trace. I am, however, surprised at the great difference.

[Igor Ostapenko]

From "Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War 1914-1920"

and includes awards upto 15th May 1920