Shoulder boards for that uniform looks like these, in your case they should be like one to the right, but with single golden stripe indicating rank of gefreiter. Gefreiter rank was not very popular among enlisted men. Well known jock was saying “It’s better to have a daughter as prostitute than son as a gefreiter”. Collar tabs should looks like the ones at the bottom with azure color and golden stripe in the middle.
Sounds like after he was discharged from the service he enrolled in aviation technical specialist school and upon completion was given junior lieutenant rank. He was probably among the last ones, because from 1972 those schools start giving rank of proporshik instead of junior lieutenant.
This man's biography is fascinating. Full St. George Cross cavalier in WWI who fought on both sides during the Civil War, purged in the 1930's, Nedorubov volunteered for service during GPW at age 51. For leading daring cavalry raids, this brave kazak became HSU in 1943.
What an inspirational figure. :thumbsup I was reading about him recently. Also it was an interesting practice to allow the wearing of St George crosses alongside Soviet awards. According to the Russian wiki article on St. George crosses, the authorities did not give explicit permission for the wearing of any czarist awards, but looked the other way in the patriotic thaw of '44-'48.
Interestingly, Budenny was a cavalier of 4 St. George crosses too, but he never wore them. Guess he had enough bling on his chest, or equally likely was afraid to fall into disfavor with The Boss...
Pobeda45 Wrote:Also it was an interesting practice to allow the wearing of St George crosses alongside Soviet awards. According to the Russian wiki article on St. George crosses, the authorities did not give explicit permission for the wearing of any czarist awards, but looked the other way in the patriotic thaw of '44-'48.
Supreme Soviet even drafted a bill to equate full St. George Cross cavaliers who earned crosses during WWI to those who were awarded order of Glory 1st class. The bill was never made into a law.
Pobeda45 Wrote:Interestingly, Budenny was a cavalier of 4 St. George crosses too, but he never wore them. Guess he had enough bling on his chest, or equally likely was afraid to fall into disfavor with The Boss...
George
Budenny was awarded St. George Cross 5 times. His first cross was taken away from him for insubordination. Then, he earned 4 more. :)
Pobeda45 Wrote:Interestingly, Budenny was a cavalier of 4 St. George crosses too, but he never wore them.
George
Budenniy was awarded St.George cross 4th class № 643701 in 1916 and 3rd class № 203480 in 1917. Story about him being a cavalier of 4 St. George crosses was made up in 1944 to boost his faded image. These late 1940-es paintings to support that claim were made by an artist who had very vague idea about imperial army uniforms.
He never wore them, because he never had them.
He admitted himself that he shows modern replicas.
