What is the 3rd to last medal?

[Gary B]

Hi,

Not being an Imperial collector, I am not familiar with the Bvn Award award (3rd to last - I assume it is a LS award but for how many years? Civ or military?). Can someone ID it for me?

Thanks in advance.

Gary B

[Stogieman]

Should be a IX on the back of that one denoting 9 years Long Service from Bavaria...

[David Gregory]

Hi,

Not being an Imperial collector, I am not familiar with the Bvn Award award (3rd to last - I assume it is a LS award but for how many years? Civ or military?). Can someone ID it for me?

Thanks in advance.

Gary B

Gary,

Its the award for 9 years of military service.

David

[Stogieman]

PS: Military!

[Gary B]

Thanks all.

Gary B

[Guest Rick Research]

Instant biographical information too:

Regulars recieved long service awards at "double time" for the war. Prussia and the navy suspended awards "for the duration," but Bavaria and W?rttemberg (I have sadly never been able to come across ANY Saxon long service paperwork, so simply don't know what THEY did) continued processing throughout.

1914 to 1918, 5 calendar years, counted as "10 years" towards military long service awards (left over from 19th century regulations), and with most personnel hanging around on the payroll until the mass demobilization of March-April 1920, an August 1914 War Volunteer who was retroactively regularized in the 1919 Provisional army would have gotten an XII on dismissal in 1920.

So: this man either joined in 1915 and was discharged in 1920, or volunteered in 1914 and left voluntarily in 1919.

The Bavarian MVK3X was given as an initial award to ranks from private to Unteroffizier, which fits the length of wartime service with that IX.

The Third Reich 25 Years Civil Service "double dipped" for military service, counting those years as well-- but only once, no doubling. So that dates 1939/40.

As the civil KVK2 and KVM confirm, this man remained in a non-Wehrmacht service during WW2. Old soldiers called back up exchanged wear of their imperial military long services for the "current" Wehrmacht type, even though they had never served in the career Wehrmacht before the war.

All seemingly complicated,

but every bar is a "book" on the wearer's lifetime career.

This was somebody with a uniform to WEAR these medals on... whether he was Railways or Post Office or any of the other possibilities. Opportunities for civilians to wear "fancy dress' during the war were so limited that it is always nice to see a WW2 medal bar to one. Maybe seems to be less "exciting" than frontline awards--

but far, far rarer.

[Stogieman]

Not to mention the fabulous condition! Yeah, I know, I'm "biased" but hey, it never hurts to blow one's own horn albeit ever so softly! ;>)

[Bob Hunter]

Rooty, toot, toot, Rick!

[Gary B]

Thanks for the comments, especially to both of the Ricks!

Gary B