When Eyewitnesses To History Got It Wrong….

[Paul C]

From Rickie:

Here we have among the final entries for Saxe-Meiningen’s War Merit Medals—from 15 January 1919—two unnoted and uncorrected mistakes

[Paul C]

You see two OFFICERS listed as recipients of a Medal given only to NCOs and ENLISTED ranks!!!!

Hauptmann iG Graf von Westarp was 1st General Staff Officer of the 51st Reserve Division, and Rittmeister Freiherr von Schlotheim was Commander of the Headquarters of the 51st Reserve Division.

Typically, neither had their given names entered—which at least in the latter’s case, is a problem since both were large military families.

In fact, ANOTHER Count Westarp and ANOTHER Baron Schlotheim had received the CORRECT Meiningen award—the War Merit Cross (“SMK”) in 1915.

Which is why the Research Collective’s work is never, ever done. We must wade through a vast number of additional references, trying to sort out errors like these two 1919 entries.

[Paul C]

Presumably, somebody noticed and sent the two 1919 officers SMKs but they may actually have received entirely inappropriate and incorrect SMMs. There are no marginal notes to clarify that. Schlotheim certainly returned his acknowledgement receipt, as indicated by the checkmark before his name. Perhaps, in 1919, nobody cared about zinky trinkets. But they SHOULD have received SMKs and NOT the SMMs listed in the original Roll, so please at least pencil them in against the SMK recipients for those of you who have our Combined Ernestine Duchies WW1 Award Rolls volume published in 2008 and add 2 to the total number which SHOULD have been awarded.

At least we know which Count Westarp the 1919 “SMM” (SIC!!!) was—

because the Honor Rank List 1914-1918 confirms that Eberhard Joachim Graf von Westarp, formerly in 1st Guard Field Artillery Regiment was the officer in question. He had received an EH3aX earlier in the war from Coburg. EH3aX or EH3bX PAIRS with an SMK were quite unusual. Pencil that into your Combined Ernestines, too.

It only took 91 years to fix these mistakes….

My thanks to Paul for posting this for me since I am not online. Rick Research.

[Chris Boonzaier]

In fact, ANOTHER Count Westarp and ANOTHER Baron Schlotheim had received the CORRECT Meiningen award—the War Merit Cross (“SMK”) in 1915.

My mother always said, never trust anyone named Westarp or Schlotheim! This just goes to prove it...

EH3aX or EH3bX were my sign ins for bigandbouncy.com, I paid the years subscription but could never get in... :-(