Jump to content
News Ticker
  • I am now accepting the following payment methods: Card Payments, Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal
  • Latest News

    Recommended Posts

    Posted

    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

    Posted

    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.

    Posted

    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.

    Posted

    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... :-(

    Create an account or sign in to comment

    You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

    Create an account

    Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

    Register a new account

    Sign in

    Already have an account? Sign in here.

    Sign In Now
    ×
    ×
    • Create New...

    Important Information

    We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.