Citations.

[Brian]

After looking through numerous citations that I have for some of my WWII groupings, I started to create a large spreadsheet to compile all of the relevent details for each award (citation date, award date, actions awarded award for, my purchase information, etc.). I decided to keep track of what award the person was originally recommended for in the citation and if the recommendation changed as it went up the command chain.

I found it quite interesting that most all of the awards that I found that were different then those that were in the original citation were orignally put in for a Red Star (about 80%). I have examples of them being changed to OGPW's, Red Banners, Medals for Valor, Medals for Military Merit.

Now I don't have enough citations that were changed to confirm that most awards were changed from Red Stars, so I was wondering if other people had noticed this same trend. If most changed awards were changed from Red Stars is the reason mainly that the Red Star was given out in such quantity during the war. Or is it perhaps that it could be awarded for such a wide variety of actions that it was often recommended and higher ranking people would change it to a more narrowly defined award.

Anyway, I was just curious as to what other people have seen and to what may be the theories as to why that most "changed" awards started out as an Order of the Red Star.

Brian