Hi everyone,

Having owned a few Medal of Honors over my collecting life, I have always being fasinated with the differences in engraving styles. Could we perhaps start a thread that would catalogue pics of the reverses of Medal of Honors? I would love to see as many as I could.

Thanks.

Sam.

Unfortunately I have nothing to add, but that is a gorgeous engraving...I've never seen an engraved MoH before, so thanks for sharing!

Rob

Ditto



Jon B.
Newaygo MI

Here are some photos of US NAVY MOH's that are in the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola. These images came from their website :

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Notice the engraving on William Moffett's MOH is very similar to US Navy Good Conduct medal engraving from the same time period. I am sure the same engravers did them all.

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Interesting in a couple ways...

I have always wondered about some of the more well known Medal of Honor recipients, where their awards ended up, I see Kenneth Walsh appears to have donated his original to them.

Also quite interesting to see the engraving format on the Vietnam award as well.

MW

A great start MW, thanks!

I'm sure there are others out there who can also contribute?

Here are a few more pics I have so far.

A few more.

And a few more.

The only MOH awarded to a CoastGuardsman - Guadalcanal - Sept 27, 1942. He was a Canadian by birth.

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Here's William "Buffalo Bill" Cody's Medal of Honor, which is located at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center at Cody, WY. He was awarded the medal as a civilian scout.

1904 style Army Medal of Honor awarded to Joshua Chamberlain for his actions at the battle of Gettysburg.

The Blume Medal of Honor, which got Edward Fedora in trouble with the feds when he tried to sell it on eBay in 2003.

The reverse engraving of Donald Gary's Medal of Honor is a work of art!

I would love to see some more WWII and Vietnam Era MOH's if possible.

I am surprised that there isn't a thread dedicated to pictures of Medal of Honor's and the recipients. It might be worth starting one?

It is noteworthy that the engraving on Gary's MOH is very similar to US Navy DFC multi line engraving from the same time period.

Kurt

I thought the same thing when I saw that engraving - art!

I wonder if the engravers came from that sort of "community", i.e. jewelers, or did they just do engraving for a living?? The bios on some of them would be interesting...

Kurt, do you know if anyone has ever tried to track any of them down, or does anyone even know who they were?

MW

Thr Tiffany model

I was going to post up my scan of Gary's MOH, but it looks like someone else already posted my picture!

I'll see if I have a better one that's unedited. At the time I scanned it, I didn't think about making 1200 dpi scans...now I know better.

Can you imagine that I rescued that MOH from potentially being thrown out?

Dave

Oscar Schmidt, Jr. Navy diver.

Interesting. What's the rest of the story?
Bobgee

This MoH is notable because it is one of the infamous 27th Maine Vol. Infantry Medals of Honor.
You need to read "A Shower of Stars", by John J. Pullen.
-dan

I recall reading your story on the website where I found the photo a few years ago. Very interesting! I've forgotten some of the details, but if I remember correctly, the medal has a post-1964 large cravet pad. Was it re-ribboned? I don't want to hijack this thread, but I'd enjoy hearing the story again if you get the chance (I'm sure others would, too).

Some nice pics of MOH's Perhap we should start a thread on why we collect these and why it should be legal to buy, sell or trade them. Its a shame that they are going overseas.

Its the same old story good intention just seem to muck things up.

I tried to repatriate this medal back to the United States a few years ago. It was in a European auction and I failed to be the high bidder. It belonged to Frederick Bergendahl.

BERGERNDAHL, FREDERICK

Rank and organization: Private, Band, 4th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Staked Plains, Tex., 8 December 1874. Entered service at: ------. Birth: Sweden. Date of issue: 13 October 1875. Citation: Gallantry in a long chase after Indians.

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Kevin

This one is coming up for auction somewhere in Europe.

Is there a set standard (style) of the engraved lettering on the reverse of each MoH as they are presented today?

Are all the lettering on the MoH presented today "hand-engraved" are are there some that are "machine-engraved"?

Also, some awards are given as replacements so the original award can be kept in a safe place, are these medals machined engraved, or the exact same engraving and wording as was on the original medal presented by the President of the United States?

Thank you.

Johnny R.

Does anyone know what department of the Government actually does the engraving on Military medals (including the MoH) and by what standards (if any) they use for this engraving process.

Wonder if there is a set U. S. regulation pertaining to the engraving of military awards?

Johnny R.

Here is a link to a "fantastic site" that honors certain the Medal of Honor recipients. I'm never seen a site like this one before. Hope my Forum friends will like it.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=htt...l%3Den%26sa%3DG

Johnny R.

Ps:

This is an intro message from this great site:

These half-hour long radio dramas about Medal of Honor recipients from the Korean War were originally produced by the Armed Forces Radio Service between 1951 and 1953. The original recordings are kept in the National Archives. Now digitally remastered by the production staff of the Pritzker Military Library, these incredible stories can be heard online.


Master Sgt. Stanley T. Adams - U.S. Army, 1951
The Man They Couldn't Kill

Pfc. Melvin L. Brown - U.S. Army, 1950
What Calls Beyond

Maj. Gen. William F. Dean - U.S. Army, 1950
The Many Sons of General Dean

Lt. j.g. Thomas J. Hudner Jr. - U.S. Navy, 1950
The Long Chance

Sgt. William R. Jecelin - U.S. Army, 1950
Combat Rifleman

Master Sgt. Ernest R. Kouma - U.S. Army, 1950
The Highest Credit

Sgt. John A. Pittman - U.S. Army, 1950
A Letter for the Sergeant

Cpl. Mitchell Red Cloud Jr. - U.S. Army, 1950
Honor for the Brave

Maj. Louis J. Sebille - U.S. Air Force, 1950
Save Your Sorrows

Sgt. 1st Class Charles W. Turner - U.S. Army, 1950
The Way to Glory

Master Sgt. Travis E. Watkins - U.S. Army, 1950
That's an Order

I would be very surprised to find any current regulation that requires hand-engraving for officially named medals. Here are two machine-engraved examples that were among those stolen in 2004 from the Medal of Honor museum on the USS Yorktown. Note that Truesdell's medal is also engraved "DUPLICATE".






There is also an example in the OMSA medal database of a machine-engraved Army MoH awarded for an action in Korea.

http://www.omsa.org/photopost/showphoto.ph...ze=big&cat=

Thanks "FrankEaton01" for the posting/information—this is very informative. I have also got a image from my research image files of the reverse of the (Korean) John A. Pittman MoH it looks close if not exact to the bottom/reverse image of your known OMSA Pfc. Leslie A. Bellrichard Korean MoH.

Any other input would be welcomed.

Thank you,

Johnny R.

Also, I have attached an image of the Pittman MoH (front).

Also, I have attached an image of the Pittman MoH (front).
[/quote]


Johnny R.

I believe the HLP contract for the MOH is from much later than the Korean War too. I believe that one dates to the 60's or 70's. The engraving on that medal just seems odd to me.

Kurt

It's definitely has the HLP hallmark, I don't know to much about the specific span of the manufacturing dates from the government contracted suppliers for the MoH. But any information would be interesting on the subject.

There must be a post somewhere on this Forum for the Government manufacturing companies (over the years, civil war to the present) that would have the manufacturers of the MoH and their time span. If anyone knows of a post on this specific subject please post in on this thread.

Thanks Kurt...

Johnny R.

For action on March 1971 First Lieutenant, U.S. Army, Battery A, 1st Battalion, 92d Artillery, Brian Thacker was awarded the MoH.

Here is a posting of the reverse of his MoH. Please note that the hallmark on the reverse of his MoH is the pre-1964 mark for His Lordship Products, Inc., New York, New York. If he received the award for his actions in 1971 it shows that the Government was still using "pre-1964" Lordship produced hallmarked stock for the Government MoH awards. Any thoughts on this discovery? Am I correct on my thinking here?


Citation for:

THACKER, BRIAN MILES

Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, U.S. Army, Battery A, 1st Battalion, 92d Artillery. Place and date: Kontum Province, Republic of Vietnam, 31 March 1971. Entered service at: Salt Lake City, Utah. Born: 25 April 1945, Columbus, Ohio. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. 1st Lt. Thacker, Field Artillery, Battery A, distinguished himself while serving as the team leader of an Integrated Observation System collocated with elements of 2 Army of the Republic of Vietnam units at Fire Base 6. A numerically superior North Vietnamese Army force launched a well-planned, dawn attack on the small, isolated, hilltop fire base. Employing rockets, grenades, flame-throwers, and automatic weapons, the enemy forces penetrated the perimeter defenses and engaged the defenders in hand-to-hand combat. Throughout the morning and early afternoon, 1st Lt. Thacker rallied and encouraged the U.S. and Republic of Vietnam soldiers in heroic efforts to repulse the enemy. He occupied a dangerously exposed observation position for a period of 4 hours while directing friendly air strikes and artillery fire against the assaulting enemy forces. His personal bravery and inspired leadership enabled the outnumbered friendly forces to inflict a maximum of casualties on the attacking enemy forces and prevented the base from being overrun. By late afternoon, the situation had become untenable. 1st Lt. Thacker organized and directed the withdrawal of the remaining friendly forces. With complete disregard for his personal safety, he remained inside the perimeter alone to provide covering fire with his M-16 rifle until all other friendly forces had escaped from the besieged fire base. Then, in an act of supreme courage, he called for friendly artillery fire on his own position to allow his comrades more time to withdraw safely from the area and, at the same time, inflict even greater casualties on the enemy forces. Although wounded and unable to escape from the area himself, he successfully eluded the enemy forces for 8 days until friendly forces regained control of the fire base. The extraordinary courage and selflessness displayed by 1st Lt. Thacker were an inspiration to his comrades and are in the highest traditions of the military service.

I'm apologize if my earlier post caused any confusion. Since the Pittman MoH you posted has the pre-1964 smaller cravat pad, it simply shows that the HLP NYC hallmark was used in 1963 or earlier. However, HLP could certainly have been using the same hallmark after the 1964 change in the size of the cravat pad. I believe a photo of Drew Dix's MoH has been previously posted on this forum. He received the MoH in 1969, and his medal has the HLP GI hallmark, so perhaps the hallmarks were actually issued concurrently. If I remember correctly, the "GI" didn't start showing up on medal hallmarks until about the mid-1960's, so I'm still of the opinion that it's the later hallmark of the two. Still, I don't have any official information about MoH hallmark usage, it's just speculation on my part.

That Pittman medal is BAAAAD. Without going into it too much, I've seen that medal before, or at least an identically engraved one. It was my understanding that there were more than one of them floating around a good number of years ago. Last one I saw was for sale in Australia several years ago. There was also at least one named to Maj. Henry Courtney other than the original. Someone, I think, was going around gathering these unnamed pieces and engraving them for some reason. Then came the ban, and god knows what happened to them all but so far as I recall, none of them were good.

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This one was in the Hermann Historica Auction from October 5th to 9th, they are in Germany.

From what I can gather looking at their catalog, the estimate on it was 14,000 EURO - at today's exchange rate that is equal to $21,133.38 in U.S. dollars.

It did not sell - it is available at that estimated price of 14,000 EURO's tho!

Here is a link to the listing, it is lot number 726 in catalog #58.

http://www.hermann-historica.de/gb/index_58_auktion.htm

Pretty nice engraving on it though - interesting since its a Navy version from the Civil War - nice to be able to see how theirs were engraved.

MW

Sam,
Where did you find the pic of Gunnery Sgt. Stockham's medal? Do you have any additional pics? I am particularly interested in him because I have a M1911 Colt that was brought back by the fella he saved who was also instrumental in getting the award for Stockham. I'd like to believe that the gun was originally Stockhams, but unfortunately, records do not exist that could prove it.
A friend of mine was trying to research it a while back and ran into a dead end. He did however come across a Marine historian who was very interested in purchasing the gun.
Here is the only known pic of Stockham

This was just posted in the medal section with Tiffany box, 1896-1904 model for CW action. Dexter

Pitman had many reissued to him which he sold years ago.One was sold by Pittman to a friend of mine..then later he found out that the same medal was sold to 5 different people but he was the one that recieved the medal in the mail from Pittman.The rest were out there money.
.

Very nice!!

I photographed this at the American Numismatic Society Museum in New York.

At the American Numismatic Society Museum in New York.

Full reverse of previous photo.

At the American Numismatic Society Museum in New York.

Full reverse of previous photo.