Posted 13 years ago
VikingFan82
(373 items)
You military men might be able to help me. I think the ID card is his first VFW card. It is dated 1944. The top and some of the side has deteriorated away. I actually found it in a bag to be thrown out when they sold their cabin. The second picture is my grandfather and some of his medals. His medals are The American Campaign medal and ribbon, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign. He has many more...this is just "sampling" he said. The big one is his Purple Heart and ribbon. The third picture are my father's medals from the Vietnam War. My father's medals are the Army infantry pin, the Armed Forces Expeditionary medal and ribbon, the National Defense Ribbon, and an Expert Marksman badge with a rifle, pistol and mortar bar.
Very interesting items. We see items like this often and are in fact putting together a WWI and WWII auction catalog currently with many ephemera items and uniforms. That catalog will be available to browse in February.
This site for ribbons does not list a variation of the The American Campaign ribbon. I think that perhaps if you turned the top ribbon upside down it would line up with the bottom ribbon (the red, white, and blue center line
would match although the blue looks very faded).
http://www.gruntsmilitary.com/navyribs.php
I looked at that site too. It has yellow blue and white stripes in the middle instead of red white and blue in the center.
Bear with me...Flip the top one over. The bottom one is correctly oriented,blue,white, red, because it matches the ribbon. The top one if flipped over would be fadedblue,white, and yellow (red fades to orange to yellow).
I removed the ribbon, looked at it closer, the middle has two stripes, white and yellow, no blue. I looked at the back as it was less exposed over the years....bright light blue, bright white and bright yellow. I am attaching a close up.
Here is another site you might enjoy. Passing on what I have learned the ribbons are assigned a pecking order as it were. The highest to the lowest. They are worn with the most important at the top and toward the midline of the chest, the next toward the left arm and so on. Your grandfathers ribbons are correct. In the last photo the whole rack should be flipped over because the expeditionary ribbon is more important than the national defense ribbon.
what site?
Sorry, i forgot to add it. try this...
http://www.infobarrel.com/Military_Ribbons
system must be down.it won't register
The National Defense ribbon comes before the Armed Forces Expeditionary ribbon. Per the Department of Defense book on Armed Forces Decorations an Awards.
You are absolutely correct. At the last minute Iconfused it with another ribbon.
Your father's "infantry pin" is enlisted Infantry branch insignia. Infantry branch is the only branch with a backing disk (Infantry blue in color).
Scott