Medals That Bug Me

After WWI a group of veterans with a sense of humor founded a veterans society that they named “The Order Of The Cootie.” “Cooties’ as most of us know are lice and the WWI trenches were infested with them. Anyone who had to spend any time in the trenches was soon a living host to hoards of them. It is not hard to understand the reasoning behind this group name or the design of their logo and medal featuring a big fat louse or “cootie.”

Not to be out done by the Americans, in 1926 the Prussian Guard Fusiliers Regiment veterans issued a medal honoring the unit’s centennial featuring a big fat cockroach!

Why a roach? Roaches are; hard to kill, prolific and do their best work at night.

I am not sure why, but maybe someone with an even stranger sense of humor thought that these were military virtues which had served them well from battlefield to bar room.

If you know the true story behind this one please share it with us.

The Ubiquitous GAR Medal

Unlike modern times there was a time when the US government did not issue military service medals. Veterans of the Revolutionary War through the Civil War had to join veterans societies to get wearable membership medals denoting their military service. It wasn’t until 1905, forty years after the end of the Civil War that the Federal government issued the first Civil War service medal. Until that time the only medallic recognition that could be worn were a few state issued medals and the very popular Grand Army of the Republic membership medal, similar in design the Medal of Honor. (Confederate veterans only had the privately issued and funded Southern Cross of Honor.) Look through any of the pre-1900 state blue books and look at the pictures of the elected state senators and assembly men; almost every one of them is sporting a GAR member medal or lapel button. Even though it is just a veterans group medal one can not over estimate it’s importance as the semi-official campaign medal of it‘s era.

Now here is one you will not see too often. This is the Medal of the Order of Resistance for resisting the WWII German occupation. Exactly what one had to do is unknown to me but in a small country like the Grand Duchy which only had a tiny 500 man armed force I’m sure resistance to the occupation was the only option. The obverse of the medal has Grand Duchess Charlotte’s portrait. The reverse has the Crowned Arms of Luxembourg within a double legend which roughly translates “The People of Luxembourg are grateful to their liberators.” and the inner legend, “We will remain what we are, Luxembourg.”

Researching this medal really brings out how much better coin collectors have it than military medal collectors do when it comes to available books and information. For U.S., British and Germany medals there are plenty of good books but try to find anything off the beaten track like Luxembourg. I sure wish there was a Standard Catalog of World Military Medals.