Order of the partriotic war 1st class #8842

[Markus Bodeux]

Hello gentlemen,

i want to show you an order of the patriotic war 1st class, just added to my collection.
This decoration is the second variation of the 1st type on rectangular suspension, but without the additional pin on reverse.
Something happened to this decoration in the past, the upper and lower star and also hammer & sickle were separated and then reassembled.
We see some traces of solder on the reverse and small areas of the enamel avers have lost the surface gloss, i think by heat when the parts were soldered.
And we see a struck letter "Д" on the reverse of the upper ray.
The engraved number 8842 indicates production and award in late summer/harvest 1943.


In spite of the remarkable repairs i decided to buy this order, all in all a very decorative item and all parts are original. The letter "Д" is in opinion of some experts ( f.e. sovietorders.com ) in this case a manufacturing mark, not a sign for a duplicate.



After i received the order i requested a research of the serial number to find out when and whom this order was awarded.

.... and the surprise:
This order was awarded posthumosly to Junior-Lieutenant Semyon Ivanovich Naumenko, platoon-leader in the 155th rifle regiment/14th rifle division/131 rifle corps for combat on the karelian front near Petsamo on November 3rd 1944 !

Citation:

"During the period of 11-12 October 1944, the platoon under his skilled
command continuously fended off the enemy counter attacks firmly holding its
line. His brave and decisive conduct inspired his subordinates for striving to
achieve the combat objective. By the fire of his personal submachine gun, he
exterminated 15 German soldiers during the course of the 2 days long combat
engagements in the area of the main road Titovka - Petsamo. On 14 October
(1944), he sustained a sever wound, but remained in command of his unit
engaged in a combat engagement. His second wound was mortal and he died the
death of the brave on the approaches to the town Petsamo."

More than a year that wearing on suspension was changed to wear with a screwback !

Other collector told me that was not unique in that time and especialy for units of the karelian front. And so the screenshot from the award protocoll i got from the archives shows above and below also awardings of the OPWI to members of the 131. rifle corps with absolute too low numbers for that time.



The next related person in the documents was his wife, Milja Pavlovna Naumenko, and i guess the decoration was handed over to her.

A least for me a very nice and also historic interesting decoration.
Any comments and remarks are welcome, especialy all knowledge about those awards with numbers out of the normal serial range and awards of a type that was abolished more than one year ago, on june 19th 1943.

Sorry for my simple english, thanks for reading
and kind regards
Markus

[Marcel Banziger]

It has a well worn look to it with even some repairs.....which strikes me as odd for a posthumously awarded order. So far the posthumously awarded orders I have seen all looked rather new to completely mint. I am not saying this is a bad thing or there is something wrong here. I am just saying it's odd.

Edit: I do agree that the D on the top arm is a makermark and has nothing to do with duplicates.

[Markus Bodeux]

Yes Marcel,
the big questionmark is the condition of this order what happened to it in the last 80 years ?
From my own experience i can say that decorations sometimes had more to "suffer" at home than on the front.
The decorations of my grandfather from WWI were stored in a kitchen-scabbard, together with scissors, bottle-opener and other tools. They slided around amoung this stuff over decades - and than came i an polished them up. They looked like worn during the complete battles of Verdun.
May be the parts of this OPWI were seperated sometimes whith the plan to sell the gold, and years later a collector or dealer reassembled them. It is of cause not shure that this suspension belongs original to the decoration, no one can proof that.
But all in all it is "homogen" and if i compare it with my OPWII 1st type i have no doubt that all parts were made period, even the number (look on the 4) looks like engraved by the same hand.



In the archives is also a copy of the temporary certificate, i dont know if the original was handed out to the widow or if it still rests in archive.



And at least still the question why these decorations with low numbers were awarded so late. May be problems to supply the Karelian front with new decorations in late 1944 ? And so resting obsolete or even repaired decorations from stock were used for posthumous awards ? Hypothetic, who knows ?

Still all opinios are welcome ......

Kind regards
Markus

[Marcel Banziger]

From what I understood is that every front, army etc got their own batch of awards. So a certain batch of award with a certain serial number range is supplied to front X, another batch with another serial number range to front Y and again another batch with another serial number range to front Z. On some fronts more awards were handed out than on other fronts. So a front with many awardees will reach a higher number faster and a front with less awardees with will take more time. From what I understood the Karelian front indeed has less awardees so even later in the war they were still handing out the lower numbered awards.
Furthermore when a front or army with a lot of awardees had run out of their batch of awards they could get a bunch from a front or army which had lesser awardees. So a batch which was not handed out yet was given to a front which ran out of their awards. This could result in mixed serial number ranges and also lower numbers on the awards, even though it was already later in the war.

Back to this OPWI; if I look at the connecting ring which is bend plus the ring on the top arm of the award which is bend backwards these are imo clear signs of actually being worn instead of being handled rough postwar. That's why I think it's very odd for a posthumous award order.