Service Merit Medal.

[Dennie B]

Medal for Meritorious (Military) Service, with ribbon and award case.

Dennis

[roy]

Nice medal, Dennis! :thumbsup Hungarian medals certainly have character all their own. When I got my first Hungarian award, I was just going to allow myself just one award to represent Hungary in my Warsaw Pact collection.

That plan did'nt work out, and now I've got around 10-12 Hungarian medals, and am looking for more! :)

[Taz]

Welcome to the forum Dennis :)

Nice medal, certainly one of the more attractive Hungarian awards :thumbsup

Eddie.

[Greg Collins]

Thought I'd post some awards with their documents. The docs I currently have are all from the Kadar (post 1957) period. I've included the medal with the doc for reference.

This first one is a Meritorious Service Medal document from 1963:

[Greg Collins]

Now to the '54 Medal of Service (also called a Meritorious Service Medal). This is a bit easier to distinguish as far as period because, on the Rakosi period medal, there is the Rakosi arms and no miniature on the ribbon bar. The Kadar period has, in turn, the Kadar arms and and a miniature on the ribbon bar.

First, the Rakosi period medal...

[Greg Collins]

And now to the Kadar period medal. On a final note, the backs of both of these awards looks the same as the medal in post #1.

[medals73]

Yes, these are nice. The lovely Robin's-egg blue of the enamel never ever scans quite right, though. You just have to SEE them.

:thumbsup

Meritorious Service Medal /Szolgálati Érdemérem

The 1957 variety, 37,619 awarded.

[CtahhR]

Here is a Cased Type 2 Service Merit Medal.

[CtahhR]

This was obviously awarded to a smoker as it is cankered in muck.

[CtahhR]

The misaligned Ribbon Bar.