Bob Hudson Posted December 1, 2012 Share #1 Posted December 1, 2012 Picked this up at an estate sale today and don't know anything about it except that the 5th Engineer Special Brigade landed on D-Day as far as I can tell... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dhcoleterracina Posted December 1, 2012 Share #2 Posted December 1, 2012 Great piece, I've never seen one before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Hudson Posted December 1, 2012 Author Share #3 Posted December 1, 2012 Me neither. The estate sale price was pretty high, but I' just couldn't pass it by. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Hudson Posted December 1, 2012 Author Share #4 Posted December 1, 2012 I have been looking around on line and cannot find another Croix de Guerre certificate/citation that looks like this one. Would this have been printed by his unit? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kadet Posted December 1, 2012 Share #5 Posted December 1, 2012 Better quality photos are needed to properly analyze this document... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Hudson Posted December 1, 2012 Author Share #6 Posted December 1, 2012 Better quality photos are needed to properly analyze this document... Those were cell phone photos. Here's some scans: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Hudson Posted December 1, 2012 Author Share #7 Posted December 1, 2012 --- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kadet Posted December 1, 2012 Share #8 Posted December 1, 2012 Much better! Very nice original document IMO...the combination of French and English is interesting..but I would say that this is a US unit-issued document, and fairly scarce. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Hudson Posted December 1, 2012 Author Share #9 Posted December 1, 2012 Looks like his unit was responsible for DUKW's: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Baker Posted December 1, 2012 Share #10 Posted December 1, 2012 Nice. I'd love to see one of these to an Armored Unit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack's Son Posted December 1, 2012 Share #11 Posted December 1, 2012 My alarm bells goes off because we haven't seen these before. If issued on D-day, why has only one surfaced to date. I'm sure a lot of units would have received these, along with the units commending officers......those guys saved everything! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
norwegian blue Posted December 1, 2012 Share #12 Posted December 1, 2012 Hello I wish I had more knowledge of such documents but as far I know the original French document accompanying the award of the Croix de guerre were plain typewritten sheets this is obviously, as Kadet thinks, a US Army issued document, as per the several typos in the French text (i.e 'assault' instead of 'assault' I should also stress that although the document is named to specific soldier, this Croix de guerre is a unit award, the 5th ESB earned a citation which entails wearing a fourragere in the colors of the croix de guerre, and not the CdG ribbon as would be the case for an individual award for bravery Hope this makes sense Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KASTAUFFER Posted December 1, 2012 Share #13 Posted December 1, 2012 Regardless of the circumstances of how this document came to be, it looks like a 1945 vintage document to me. Kurt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bugme Posted December 1, 2012 Share #14 Posted December 1, 2012 One of my WWI groupings belonged to an officer of the 32nd Infantry Division. The original was long gone however, the French Government does do reissues, and I have a reissue CdG certificate from several years ago, everything is written in French on mine, not in English. So, I find it odd that yours is in English. Note: While I find it odd, I am not by any means discrediting this one since I know little to none about these. I hope that your is legit Bob. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kadet Posted December 1, 2012 Share #15 Posted December 1, 2012 My alarm bells goes off because we haven't seen these before. If issued on D-day, why has only one surfaced to date. I'm sure a lot of units would have received these, along with the units commending officers......those guys saved everything! Why does this cause"alarm bells"? This document was issued by the 5th ESB to commemorate their unit award of the CdG. It would have been given only to the members of a rather obscure unit, and is thus scarce. Not all units that received the CdG chose to issue a document, in the same way that some units presented silver and bronze star citations and others didn't. Nothing suspicious about this at all. Again, IMO this is a US document. I'll bet some research would reveal that col Bridges was the 5th ESB commander in 1945. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeeper704 Posted December 1, 2012 Share #16 Posted December 1, 2012 It just states that at the time of the award being presented this particular soldier was part of the 5th Engineer Special Brigade (as Kadet states too). Not that he got it or the unit got it at the time this document was made. To me this looks ok. Erwin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kadet Posted December 1, 2012 Share #17 Posted December 1, 2012 Yes, it is a Google search away. Col WD Bridges was the 5th ESB Commander.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garth Thompson Posted December 2, 2012 Share #18 Posted December 2, 2012 My alarm bells goes off because we haven't seen these before. If issued on D-day, why has only one surfaced to date. I'm sure a lot of units would have received these, along with the units commending officers......those guys saved everything! Turn your alarm bells off. This is a perfectly good WW2 CdG document. I had one just like it to an Engineer Colonel for service at the Cherbourg harbor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack's Son Posted December 2, 2012 Share #19 Posted December 2, 2012 Turn your alarm bells off. This is a perfectly good WW2 CdG document. BELLS OFF...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jgawne Posted December 2, 2012 Share #20 Posted December 2, 2012 Thisn is one of the mosty confusing things to people- how the CdG worked. This is for it as a UNIT award. so the guy woudl not be allowed to wear the ribbon and would not have gotten the medal, just allowed ot have the ribbon on the unit flag. As the medal can be both a unit and individual award, a lot of vets and/or familes see it mentioned and go out and buy a Cdg Ribbon to wear (which is for individual awards), or try to get the medal. I tried to get an individual medal replaced once from a contact in the Frenchg Govt. He told me in many cases they did not give the guys the medal, just "award" it to him as they did not have them, and it would be too expensive. Being impossible to actually get one issued, he just went out and bought one for the guy. I am kind of surprised more of these are not around, and i suspect that someday (soon?) someone will print them up and start selling fakes to the big name units. Actually, I personally would love to be able to get a good production (marked as such in tiny letters) for some guys in Beach Battalion units I know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Hudson Posted December 2, 2012 Author Share #21 Posted December 2, 2012 --- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZeketheAwesome Posted December 2, 2012 Share #22 Posted December 2, 2012 --- Now what in the heck is that?!? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Hudson Posted December 2, 2012 Author Share #23 Posted December 2, 2012 Now what in the heck is that?!? That's the monument at Omaha Beach for this unit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NebrPatch Posted December 3, 2012 Share #24 Posted December 3, 2012 Turn your alarm bells off. This is a perfectly good WW2 CdG document. I had one just like it to an Engineer Colonel for service at the Cherbourg harbor. Garth, Do you remember the name of the Colonel? Tom Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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