I'm in the process of reading Robert Massie's terrific history of Germany's and Britain's Great War at sea, Castles of Steel, and ran across this amusing info about German medal ribbons and Rear Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock:
"Kit Cradock had joined the navy at thirteen and had served afloat and ashore for forty years. In 1900, as an officer in the China Squadron, Cradock was playing polo in Hong Kong with his friends Beatty and Keyes when the Boxer Rebellion broke out. He went ashore with the British naval brigade to capture the Taku forts, and under heavy fire, led a company of British, German, and Japanese sailors across a sunbaked mud flat to storm the west gate of a fort. For this, the kaiser gave him the Prussian Order of the Crown with Swords.
"By 1914 when he went to war, Cradock was one of the Royal Navy's most decorated admirals. Among the three rows of ribbons on the left breast of his jacket, however, one was stained with ink. 'That ribbon,' he told the governor's aide at Port Stanley, 'belongs to the First Class Order of the Blue Ape, or something, that the kaiser gave me. I couldn't tear it out without ruining all the others; so I got an ink bottle and made it look as unpleasant as possible.' "
Outgunned by a superior German force that included the original Scharnhorst and Gneisenau Admiral Cradock was lost in the Battle of Coronel off the southwestern coast of South American in November 1914.
"Kit Cradock had joined the navy at thirteen and had served afloat and ashore for forty years. In 1900, as an officer in the China Squadron, Cradock was playing polo in Hong Kong with his friends Beatty and Keyes when the Boxer Rebellion broke out. He went ashore with the British naval brigade to capture the Taku forts, and under heavy fire, led a company of British, German, and Japanese sailors across a sunbaked mud flat to storm the west gate of a fort. For this, the kaiser gave him the Prussian Order of the Crown with Swords.
"By 1914 when he went to war, Cradock was one of the Royal Navy's most decorated admirals. Among the three rows of ribbons on the left breast of his jacket, however, one was stained with ink. 'That ribbon,' he told the governor's aide at Port Stanley, 'belongs to the First Class Order of the Blue Ape, or something, that the kaiser gave me. I couldn't tear it out without ruining all the others; so I got an ink bottle and made it look as unpleasant as possible.' "
Outgunned by a superior German force that included the original Scharnhorst and Gneisenau Admiral Cradock was lost in the Battle of Coronel off the southwestern coast of South American in November 1914.
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