MEET THE AUTHORS

Robert W. Bergstrom was born in Ogden, Utah as a "Navy Brat" and lived in different duty stations until his dad retired. He grew up in Inglewood, Washington (close to Seattle) and graduated with a Forest Management degree from Washington State University in Pullman, Washington in 1982. He is married and has two teenage sons in Vancouver, Washington where he works for the Bonneville Power Administration as a Contracting Officer. While working for the United States Forest Service he fought forest fires and was a forester. Once he was treed by a bear with three cubs for five hours. Bob really became interested in medals after he went through the long process of obtaining his father’s medals from the Navy.

Lonny Borts graduated from the NYU College of

Engineering and attended Rennselear Polytechnic

Institute for graduate studies. He worked for the

Grumman Corporation for 33 years, retiring as an

Engineering Specialist in Airborne Surveillance Systems.

His interest in ribbons dates from World War II, and he is an active lecturer and author, having written three books

as well as numerous articles for the OMRS Journal and

JOMSA (including its predecessor, The Medal Collector).

He has lectured and presented competitive displays

at previous OMSA Conventions, winning a Bronze

Display Medal in 2007. Lonny serves as consultant to

the three Naval Services, is Awards Program Director

of Vanguard Industries, the major supplier of military

uniform accessories, and is Curator of Awards and

Decorations at the Liberty Bell Military Museum in

Melbourne, Florida. Highlighting these activities were

his efforts in designing the Coast Guard "E" Ribbon and

Kosovo Campaign Medal. He has also created displays

of military ribbons for museums, military bases and naval

facilities. For these efforts, Lormy has been decorated by

OMSA and the Royal Life Saving Society of Canada for

distinguished services in researching and cataloguing

worldwide ribbons.

Ed Emering is a Chicago-based author, researcher

and collector. He is a frequent contributor to JOMSA

on a wide variety of topics and last year received

two OMSA Commendation Medals for his OMSA

monographs. Ed also maintains the free research site

(www.themedalhound.com), which welcomes comments

and submissions.

James K. Hitch is a retired Army officer with a logistics

specialty and is currently employed in a family agricultural

business. He has been a member of OMSA for 50 years

and presently serves the Society as its Treasurer. His

collecting interests are British regimental, Army Service

Corps and its predecessors, and British animal life saving

medals. He has presented Convention seminars on both

of these collecting interests.

Owain Raw-Rees was born in Aberystwyth, Wales,

educated at Christ College, Brecon, and read theology

at Worchester College, Oxford. Subsequently he was

commissioned into the Royal Welch Fusiliers. On leaving

the Army he has pursued a career in insurance and has

lived in the Middle East since 1989. His interest in awards

began during his military service and upon moving

to the Middle East he specialized in the awards of the

Arab world. He has had a number of articles published

in The Journal of the Orders and Medals Research

Society of Great Britain and the Journal of the Orders

and Medals Society of America and has been awarded

six Literary Medals by the latter. He is a holder of the

Qu’aiti Sultanate’s Order of Excellence; an Honorary

Life Member of the Association of Round Tables; and Chairman of the Riyadh Group for British Business.

Glenn "Marty" Stein has researched and written about

polar history and worldwide polar awards over the last

25 years. His primary objective has been to interest and

educate the public in polar history- which he sees as vital

if people of today and the future are going to appreciate

and preserve not only human cultural and historical

sites, but the vast variety of plant and animal life in

the polar regions. He is a life member of the American

Polar Society, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society,

and Orders and Medals Research Society. A regular

contributor to specialist journals, in 2006 Stein became

the Polar Historian for the International Polar Year 2007-

2008 website (www.ipy.org).

OMSA CONVENTION 2009

August 13-August 16, 2009.

Amway Grand Plaza Hotel

and the

Devoss Place Convention Center

187 Monroe NW

Grand Rapids, Michigan

616-776-6400

2 JOMSA

UNITED STATES AWARDS OF WOI~)LD WAI( II TI-IA"F NEVEl~ HAPPENED

LONNY BORTS

Introduction

This article is the result of two trips made by the author

to The Institute of Heraldry and the Navy’s Awards and

Special Projects Branch in Washington a number of years

ago. It was originally part of a much larger presentation

made at a recent OMSA Convention in Philadelphia

and is presented here for the information (and possible

amusement) of the OMSA membership as a whole.

the Purple Heart and Silver Star medals for use by all the

Naval Services and countless awards to civilians. But, as

revealed during the author’s research into the Navy and

The Institute of Heraldry archives, many other forces

were at work behind the scenes during World War II

to further reward military participants for their actions

and services. In the following pages, a number of these

activities, most of which never saw the light of day, will

be described and discussed below:

Through World War II, the rationale behind the creation

of new awards for the United States military was usually

quite clear as evidenced by the establishment of the

following decorations and service ribbons during and

immediately after that conflict:

Legion of Merit Navy and Marine Corps Medal

Bronze Star

Air Medal Army Commendation Ribbon (later Medal)

Navy Commendation Ribbon (later Medal) Army Good Conduct Medal Reserve Special Commendation Ribbon

Navy Presidential Unit Citation

Army Distinguished Unit Badge (later Presidential

Unit Citation) Navy Unit Commendation Army Meritorious Unit Commendation (sleeve

insignia only, later issued in ribbon form)

American Defense Service Medal Women’s Army Corps Service Medal American Campaign Medal Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal

European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal

World War II Victory Medal Army of Occupation Medal

Navy Occupation Service Medal Marine Corps Reserve Ribbon

It should be noted that this list excludes three medals

issued for service in the years prior to the war, ten awards

of the United States Merchant Marine, the extension of

A FOURTH Area Campaign Medal

Let’s start with an illustration of how a seemingly obscure

item can lead to an interesting revelation. In this instance,

it was the lowly comma that started the ball rolling in a

confidential War Department merno that first promulgated

the World War II "Theater Campaign" ribbons (Figures

1 and 2). In at least three places the text refers to the

"African-Middle Eastern" and "European" Theaters

separated by the magic comma, leading to the suspicion

that the memo had actually authorized TWO ribbons

where only one was known before. This was later verified

when lists of the areas bounded by each campaign ribbon

(Figure 3), a map of the affected areas (Figure 4) and

descriptions of the campaign ribbons themselves (Figure

5) were uncovered in both Navy and TIOH archives.

The ribbon configurations are very familiar with

the obvious use of predominantly green and brown

colorations to represent Europe and Africa/Middle-East

areas respectively.

But in spite of all of the documentation found, the two

ribbons were combined and replaced almost immediately

by the now-familiar European-African-Middle Eastern

Campaign ribbon before the end of 1942. However, no

written rationale was ever found to explain the change

nor the reversal of the near-edge stripes representing

the German (white-black-white) and Italian (red-white-

green) flag colors in the final ribbon design.

Vol. 60, No. 1 3

ooP’[

Disposition

Personnel D1vi$1on,

American, L~ropean, African Middle ~st ~ Asiatic Pacific theater campaign medal ribbons. Date: September i0, 1942.

FOR:

(Col. Minus, Oloth& Equip. Sec.)

S/W di~pcts:

IIIiIIIII

=See Enlarged

J Area Below

I~I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I III I

di=tributton en app.~oprlate number of ~nertcau, ~ropean, Afrtcau-~dle .e East and Aslatlo-Pa~fic theater campaign me~al ribbons of the deslga and~ in the colors, outli~ed in the attached sketch (Tab A). ¯

11. That these~rib~one be procured and distributed in the follo~- _m

i~g order of priori~: Asta~io-~acific, African-Middle ~aet, R~ropean American theaters, rmespectivel¥~ I

¯

111. That withowt dela~ an appropri~te numbe~’ of these ribbons be forwarded, without ~quest, to the 0omm~der-in-Chief, Southwest Pacific and the Conm~mdin~ .~enerals, European, Ohi~a-Buz~a-In&la~ Afrlca-Middle ~ast, South Pacific ~heaters, the F~stern, Western and Caribbean Defense

¯

¯

IIiIIIIIIiIIIIIIIiIiIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Figure 1: War Department inetno of September 10, 1942 directing the distribution of the four area campaign ribbons. The part enclosed with in the red dotted lines is enlarged in Figure 2.

in the foll urop,

Figure 2: Enlarged portion of War Department memo of September 10, 1942 highlighting the all-important commas.

4 JOMSA