Red Banner for forced crossing of Oder in Jan 1945

[polishpotato]

Wow nice and the history really makes it special.

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[Adrian Stevenson]

Excellent and very nicely presented. Well done.

[medalman90]

Egorka, I have never seen the volume of research behind any Soviet award in my life. I'm sure you put great time and effort into this and I personally am happy that what you shared with us is the result. Thank you for sharing this epic story and beautiful medal with us.

[Auke]

I agree, Egorka researched it thoroughly and presented it very nicely! But let's not forget - and I don't mean to diminish Egorka's research - that many superb resources, such as Podvig Naroda, Pamyat Naroda, OBD Memorial, and even just Google Maps and Street View, are out there for anybody to use. Everybody can dig through war diaries, after action reports, casualty reports, award citations, maps, orders, reconnaissance reports, operational plans, and all sorts of correspondence. I have several awards for which I have accumulated hundreds of pages of relevant research, simply through online search queries. All one needs to do is put the time and effort into it (and you need to speak Russian or know somebody who does). For some reason most people simply don't take that step.

[Egorka]

I am in accord with Auke.
Most of the sources in my researches (not all though) are online. It is possible these days.
But just to balance a bit the information here. It is not as easy as it might appear, and in many cases it is quite a challenge to assemble proper research. F.ex, the information in the documents is not searchable by the content, but only by the headlines, which which were typed in by the people who scanned the documents. In quite a few cases these headlines are meaningless and not representative of the content.
There are numerous other scenarios where finding proper information is a tricky business.
But that is why it is so rewarding when you do find it. It is an exciting journey every time!!!