Ribbon included in cased medals

[daskrieg]

What is the purpose or meaning of the length of ribbon included with some cased medals. I do not mean the ribbon bar but the 1-2 inch extra piece of ribbon commonly found with Purple Hearts.

[Indexred]

Good question. I was wondering about that last week. I have a couple ideas, but theyre just speculation. It would be great to hear from somebody who knows for certain.

[Allan H.]

Early ribbon bars were made by taking lengths of ribbon and sewing them to bars. Those bars would then be sewn or pinned to the uniform. The length of ribbon was to make it handy for the recipient to add the award to his ribbon rack.

 

Allan

[daskrieg]

So why then include them in with a ribbon bar also.

[Bluehawk]

So why then include them in with a ribbon bar also.

Guessing, because a troop would likely have more than one uniform to display the ribbon on?

[hirsca]

What I have heard is that since most medal sets included a lapel button for gents to wear on their suit jackets or sport coats, the ribbons were included for the ladies to wear on their clothing, since most did not have a button hole. Just something that I read way back, so I'll let the medal experts chime in.

 

Thanks,

 

Al

[Dave]

The actual story is what Allan said...the ribbon length was for people to sew the ribbon to their rack, as needed. Why include it with a standard ribbon bar? Because many people didn't wear pinback ribbons as the multi-place mounts for those are far less common from the WW2 time period than sewn-together racks that could be done in barracks or by a tailor. The question has come up before as to why the lengths were included with posthumous awards. This was because many officially engraved awards were given to WIA and not just KIA and thus it was easier to have a standard "kit" to send with the medal to the recipient (the actual soldier or NOK) than to keep everything separate. Keep in mind that the medals arrived separately, as did the boxes, lapel pins, ribbon bars, ribbon lengths, and white outer boxes. Once the medals were engraved, they would be assembled with all of the required "parts" to create the "boxed medal" as we know it and then mailed for eventual presentation.

 

Hope that helps!

Dave