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

[Dave]

Originally posted by slava1stclass
Are you absolutely certain, however, that each one of them is wearing the Chief Commander and not the Commander degree?

Aha- now I see I have shot my dependability at ID'ing awards with the miss-ID'ing of the KBE! ;)

I am absolutely positive that the ones I've seen are Chief Commanders on the MSU's I listed above. I do have a photo of Konev that is quite interesting... The neck cravat for his Commander of the LOM being tied almost in a 'bow', and then that being used as a ribbon to attach the award on his uniform. Rather interesting.

According to my records here on LOM awards to Soviets, only Govorov (though listed as a Col... Is it the same guy?) awarded the LOM by the 45th Infantry Divison, is mentioned. None of the others (Eremenko, Vasilevski, Meretskov) are listed. Strange.

We've seen pictures of them wearing the awards, so there is obviously a resource that isn't getting tapped for Soviet citations. (Or a lot of them were lost!) Perhaps the Department of State conferred (they couldn't award, but perhaps they were placed in custody of the paperwork???) LOMs to senior officers, via a channel other than the War Department or MMM?

Quite an interesting hunt....

Dave