? Czech (or Slovak?) Medal 1938

[Guest Rick Research]

I've been asked about this medal. If my dim memory serves, it was one of--if not the--last medal created by the independent Czechoslovak Republic, and was for "Freikorps"-type border fighting in 1918.

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Or was it Slovak and for something else?

And what does the ribbon device signify?

[Dave Danner]

Pametn? Medal "Za Vernost a Brannost", or Commemorative Medal for Loyalty and Military Ability (not the smoothest translation). Established in 1945-46, for members of the Slovakian Federation of Volunteer Combatants of 1918-19. Medal is backward; the chick should be the obverse. Not sure of the device's significance; my reference describes it, but not its purpose - "Na stuhu se upevnuje bronzov? ?t?tek slovensk?ho znaku podlozen? zkr?zen?mi meci a lipov?mi listy" or "On the ribbon is set a bronze device of the Slovak insignia underlaid with crossed swords and linden leaves" (some of the diacritical marks don't show up). Edited June 8, 2006 by Dave Danner

[Guest Rick Research]

My font options can't handle those marks either!

So, this was an EXILE award then, for displaced Slovaks? NOT anything to do with the short-lived and theoretically "independent" Czechoslovak 2nd Republic of 1945-48?

[Dave Danner]

With all these WW1 and immediate post-war commemoratives, I have no idea what is "official" for Czechoslovakia. As far as I know this was authorized by that short-lived government before the Communist takeover in 1948.

[Guest Rick Research]

These are not uncommon, so I wonder if these were made in exile?

[Stogieman]

Ahem.... Slovakia, is NOT Czechoslovakia......... Ahem!

(My Slovak relatives are rolling in their respective places of internment as I read this!)

[Guest Rick Research]

As one immediately adjacent to a "Monsignor Tiso town" where as late as the late 1970s, Americans born after the war were denied entrance visas to Communist Czechoslovakia because church collections had been made for the Half-Republic 1939-41, am well aware of the 1938-45 original split--

but if this is a 1945-46 award, it was of the Czechoslovak 2nd Republic (the one ended when my cousin was tossed out his office window)-- there was no independent Slovakia then.