A couple of many bar Ethiopian medals...

[Chris Boonzaier]

Found these in Addis...

[Ulsterman]

Oh My God! 5 palms!!!! That is rare.

[Chris Boonzaier]

According to our taxi Driver the lower bar, left medal has a date (1935) and the other bars have the names of the emporers Children on them...

Is there a site listing the names/dates on the bars?

best

Chris

[Dave Danner]

Keep in mind the Ethiopian calendar is off by several years from the Western one. Mine here has three bars dated "1931", "1932" and "1933", which correspond to 1939, 1940 and 1941 on the Western calendar.

[Ulsterman]

There is no site-yet. We are it. there are a couple of books, both of which had mistakes in them and a quick snout round the images on the internet here and there shows that many senior NCOS and Imperial Guards had the multiple bars. The Ethiopian dates are easier to figure out than the "words". Did both medals belong to one person Chris?

[Jah-Jim]

Found these in Addis...

The Emperor In Exile Medal, the one on the left, was made in England by Mappin and Webb. We know that because the Ethiopian-made version of it had Emperor Haile Selassie I wearing ribbon bars on his jacket as opposed to none on the British made version. Yes, the calender is off by 7 years, 8 months, EARLIER so they celebrated Y2K in 2007. By the way, 9-11 is their New Years so HAPPY NEW YEARS TO ALL ETHIOPIANS and those that love them.

When buying these medals with bars, please take a magnifying glass with you as you won't be able to see, much less make out the writing on them otherwise. The point being, if you get and pay for one with five bars, you want five DIFFERENT dates on them. The one above with three has the last three years of hostilities of that war, so any others should represent 1935, 1936 and 1937 by reading 1928, 1929 and 1930 in Amharic. What you want to avoid is medals with the same date on two o more bars, because that can ONLY tell you someone added the bar afterwards, not knowing the rules and in hopes of getting more for the "enhanced" medal. That's VERY common in Ethiopia, and not unheard of in medal collecting in general. NONE have names of the Emperor's Children on them, lol., but now I've heard everything so thanks for that.

Lastly, the two top medals are unlikely to belong to the same person, because the blue ribbon one was specifically given to those who had to LEAVE while the red ribbon one and especially the White Ribbon Underground Patriot medals were awarded to those who stayed and fought throughout the occupation of the Italians. and as you see, it's difficult to be both in exile and in the country still fighting at the same time.

I'm glad to have helped, and as you can tell, I love the subject.

Jim

[Ulsterman]

well--you have logic on your side Jim, BUT there are dozens of photos and ribbon bars around showing that many old Ethiopian vets had BOTH the war medals. Have you seen the book on Resistor patriots by the way?

[Jah-Jim]

Actually what I meant to infer that it was unlikely to have both the white ribbon medal and the blue ribbon medal with five bars on each awarded officially to the same person. Indeed many had the red and white awarded, and some had all three such as the Emperor wore. Which book and author are you referring to? I may have it, but if I don't, naturally I want it. I'm approaching 1100 books on Ethiopia in English, plus the foreign language ones, plus the periodicals and booklets.

I note in the second group the red ribbon had 1 palm for years of fighting and the blue four for years of exile, perfectly appropriate. Hopefully all five denote different years.

Also many vets (and more sellers!) enhanced their awards after the fact, adding palm leaves willy nilly, even on many medals and orders that never had them to begin with.

[Jah-Jim]

I do have The Ethiopian Patriots, Forgotten Voices of the Italo-Ethiopian War 1935-1941 by Andrew Hilton Foreward by W. F. Deedes. Good book published in 2007.

[Ulsterman]

ah-that was it!