Bandmaster Captain Ye. I. Bokanev had every reason to look unhappy. It isFebruary 1960, and Nikita Khruschev has just announced the immediate sacking of 2.5 million Soviet career military personnel. Note that he has stuck his 20 Years Service Medal neatly in ahead (out of proper order) of his five medal bar.
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No, this isn't Boris Karlov! Major General of the General Staff G. P. Artemiev's glum pic was snapped that same month, and all those medals may not have done him any more good than the band leader's. Correct inside-senior precedence wear on both sides. Check out that ten medal bar! -
Youthful Rush Limbaugh-clone Major General P. P. Puzik seems a lot more cheerful in December 1963-- maybe he made it through the "budgetary purge" of 1960. Inward senior precedence, but note that rather than one looooooooooooong medal bar, he is wearing two-- and that he is NOT wearing 1948 or 1958 Jubilee Medals, or any Long Service Medal(s)--and he certainly looks too young to have been "retired" in this rank BEFORE 1948! He is wearing his WW2 campaign medals in the way they were worn only into the early 1950s, with Capture of Berlin Medal etc in chronological precedence BEFORE the WW2 VOG Medal, instead of AFTER the Victory as was regulation after 1950 or so... so maybe he DID retire before 1948 after all! ???
His M1954 Generals' dress tunic has what looks like a great nasty scarecrow patch all around the screwback Orders. Since round felt rubbing cloth disks are sometimes found behind those awards, perhaps this was something that didn't look quite as horribly ragged "in the flesh" as it does in this B&W photo.Comment
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Hi Rick,
a question about the Red Banner, normally additional awards are denoted by the numbers on the bottom of the badge, but I see some 2nd Red Banners mounted on bars without the numbers. How comes?
Best regards
Daniel
P.S. please continue! Exellent threads!Comment
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Very few of the repeat awards made during the war seem to have had the correct number shield on front. Aces and those sorts of "celebrities" got them, but ordinary unit officers usually just got more "first" award types handed out of a box. I've seen as many as THREE "first" award Red Banners in documented groups. Somewhere in this Forum I had a thread about a siege of Leningrad Colonel who got two "first" award Red Banners a couple of numbers apart, only a couple of days apart--and the higher number was the one he got first. Just whatever came out of the box!Comment
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