U.S. Army Decorations Awarded to Red Army Personnel in World War II

[Kirchgoens]

Here's an interesting one for you guys. This one just turned up in the Ferghana Valley in Uzbekistan. I got it from a guy who gets his stuff directly from "gypsies". They are not really gypsies, but instead the local term for people who go door to door in villages and provincial towns, asking if people want to sell things. Items found this way are only one or two steps from the houses of the original owners. From what I've seen, this is how a lot of lower-end Soviet stuff gets started on its journey to dealers (the ORSs, BMs, OG3s, CSMs, OPW2s, and campaign medals).

My guy said he received no docs (very common). He really had no idea what it was (as either a US award or as a possible award to a Soviet soldier from the GPW), and made no claims at all. In other words, it was just another oddity that he was having trouble selling since it wasn't clearly identifiable in the bazaar.

I'm a veteran of the US Army, but I don't know US medal types and variations anywhere near as well as I know the Soviet ODMs. Do any of you know what to look for in determining if this is actually a WWII-era Legion of Merit? I suspect it's the real thing belonging once to a field grade veteran, but the docs are long, long gone. All I know is that it probably lived within about a 50 mile radius of the city of Kokand for the past few decades.