PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE Dear Fellow OMSA (United States, British, International) are truly fabulous Members: and a great way to learn about our hobby. You won’t find these seminars anywhere else. Fourth, the camaraderie is Our Convention in infectious, ask anyone who attended the Thursday night Irvine. Our 55th Annual OMSA auction or the Saturday banquet. These are just Convention in Irvine plain fun events. Fifth and finally, you should attend to was a huge success. The support your Society. If the convention is to survive, then venue was superb and the OMSA members must attend. I’m not saying you need weather was excellent, an to come every year, but you should plan on attending on added bonus. Convention a regular basis. Bottom line: if you have not attended an co-chairs Adam Rohloff OMSA convention, then come to Atlanta. If you have and Nathan Weiss put attended in the past, come again on a regular basis. We on a virtually flawless look forward to seeing you. event. While there will be a lengthy article about the convention, I do want to Fifty-Year Members. Congratulations to our recent highlight the fact that Director Peter Lomdahl, exhibiting recipients of a “Fifty-Year Member” bar: Douglas M. for the first time, won a Gold Medal and “Best of Show.” Boyce, Adin Capron, William K. Emerson, Ernest J. Needless to say, Peter will be hard pressed to do better Fisher II, Peter Hlinka, Kenneth G. Hope, Robert J. in the future. Martin, Thomas O. Moffat, and Carl H. Sciortino. Doug Boyce, E.J. Fisher and Ken Hope were present at the Atlanta 2015. Plan to attend the August 6-9, 2015 event convention and received their bars in a public ceremony! in Atlanta. We will be at the Crowne Plaza Revinia. Our Treasurer, Tim Bartholow, is the man on-the-ground for Dues. Invoices for 2015 have been sent. Please send your this convention. He will be assisted by Director Nathan renewal to the Secretary now! Weiss. Changes of Address. To ensure uninterrupted delivery Why You Should Come to the OMSA Convention. On of your Journal, changes of address must be received by more than one occasion, I have heard a fellow member the Secretary prior to the first day of the month of issue, say: “I don’t need to come to the convention because I i.e. November 1st for the November-December issue. can buy medals for my collection on eBay or find them on a dealer’s website.” While the statement about eBay More Medals of Honor. For those of you who have and dealer websites arguably is true, I’ll explain shortly not kept up with the news, there are two more Medal of why that may not be accurate after all. In any event, Honor awardees: Command Sergeant Major (Ret) Bennie there are at least five reasons to attend our yearly get Adkins (living recipient) and Specialist Four Donald Sloat togethers. First, you will meet other OMSA members (posthumous). Both recipients were honored for their with your collecting interests and can share information extraordinary heroism during the Vietnam War. Adkins, (and perhaps medals) with them. This will only enhance now 80 years old and a retired Army command sergeant your collecting efforts. Second, the number of non-dealer major, was awarded the decoration for his courage and members selling medals at the bourse continues to grow, tenacity during a four-day battle and escape in March with an amazing amount of material being offered that 1966. Then 20-year-old Sloat died in January 1970 in you will never see on any website. Some of our members the Khe Sanh Valley, using his own body as a shield to only sell at the convention, so if you don’t attend, you save fellow soldiers from a grenade. The two Medals of will not see this material. I know for a fact that one of our Honor were presented by President Obama in a White members was looking for a named Royal Air Force group House ceremony on September 15, 2014. containing an Air Crew Europe Star, which he found in Irvine. Needless to say, this member was over-the-moon Please do not hesitate to contact me by email (or phone) with this find, especially when a little bit of research if you have any questions or concerns. revealed that the recipient of the group had been killed in action in an air raid over the island of Malta during Best to all, Fred World War II. Had this member not come to Irvine, he would not have found these medals. Third, the seminars

2 JOMSA MEET THE AUTHORS Frank Draskovic has been a coin collector since foreign colleagues. Ralph currently lives and works in 1949 and a professional numismatist specializing in the Washington, D.C. region. world coins 1500-1950 since 1963. He acquired his first order in 1967 and has collected them ever since. Gary Spencer lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with his Frank is the co-author of two editions of the Standard wife, Kirsten, and two children, Vivian and Jackson. A Price Guide to World Crowns & Talers, the standard graduate of The Citadel, Class of 1996, he began his work used worldwide for silver dollar-size coins of the career as General Manager for Borders Books. Once world. He has been elected to the Numismatic Literary that company closed its doors, Gary finally fulfilled his Guild; is a world coin authenticator; a cataloger for dream, and joined the North Carolina Army National major numismatic auction firms; an ANA member for Guard in which he is currently serving as a Sergeant and 45 years; and an OMSA member for 26 years. Frank gunner on an M1A1 SA Abrams tank in Delta Company, has been President of the Southern California Orders & 1/252nd Armor, 30th Armored Brigade Combat Team. Medals Society since 1995. Full time, he works as a technician in G-1 at the North Carolina Joint Force Headquarters. Additionally, he is Ed Haynes joined OMSA in 1966 (illegally young, at 17, assisting the State Command Historian in the founding as the late Jack Lelle always remarked) and later became of the new North Carolina National Guard Museum a life member. A retired university professor of modern tentatively set to open to the public in the fall of 2015. South Asian history (Ph.D. from Duke University and He is also a member of the Board of Directors for M.Phil. from Jawaharlal Nehru University), he is now the Camp Butner Society Museum. Gary, a lifelong focused on catching up on decades of research postponed collector of United States militaria, is an ardent student due to heavy teaching loads, including articles for of military history. Growing up with his grandparents, JOMSA. In addition to academic publications, he has he was surrounded by history, from a portrait of his published some 40 articles in JOMSA since his first in ancestor who signed the Mecklenburg Declaration 1970, has been a seminar presenter, and exhibitor at of Independence and artifacts from his Confederate several of the conventions and has been awarded the lineage, to captured rifles, swords and flags from his Commendation Medal and the Literary Medal. He is the grandfather’s service as a Marine in World War II. His coauthor, with Rana Chhina, of Medals and Decorations primary collecting interests are United States medals, of Independent India (2008). He is now focusing on the and 30th Infantry Division items. forthcoming From Izzat to Honour: Changing Modes of Representing Honor in Nineteenth- and Twentieth- Harry Waterson is a retired entertainment executive Century India and surveys of the awards of Pakistan who is active in medallic research. He recently published and other South Asian nations, as well as several a monograph entitled The Medal-Of-The-Month Club volumes on Arab awards. He suffers from a bad case Created by Felicity Buranelli with the help of a grant from of broad phaleristic interests. He was also the founder Central States Numismatic Society, this catalogue raisonné of the now defunct International Electronic Phaleristic won the bronze Mishler Exonumia Cataloging Award for Encyclopedia and today manages the online forum 2013 from the Token and Medal Society. He is a regular http://sagongs.ipbhost.com on South Asian medals. contributor to The Clarion, the tri-annual publication of the Pennsylvania Association of Numismatists (PAN). He Ralph Pickard is a published author and has been an won a 2nd place PAN Literary Award for his article “The OMSA member for a number of years. He has authored Coinage of the Frasers” in 2012. He recently wrote an two books related to East Germany’s Ministry for State article for that journal called “The Great Horace Heist” Security (MfS) from the Cold War; STASI Decorations about Rudyard Kipling’s input into the medal issued to and Memorabilia Volume I (2007) and Volume II commemorate the maiden voyage of the Queen Mary in 1936. This article was republished by the Kipling Society (2012). He has written a number of articles associated in the June 2014 issue of the Kipling Journal. Waterson with medals and award documents presented to MfS has been a member of SOCALOMS since 2002 and he personnel. In addition to acquiring an extensive MfS greatly values his membership in that phaleristic body. collection, he has carefully studied an MfS history, from Waterson’s abiding interest is in cataloguing the known its origins and evolution through the end of the Cold works of the sculptor Julio Kilenyi. This has been a work- War and its demise. He has highlighted how collectors in-progress for many years but he has set December 17th, can identify actual MfS award documents and other 2015 as the publication date for the catalog. Well, one has memorabilia associated to MfS employees and their to have a goal!

Vol. 65, No. 6 (November-December 2014) 3 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

PLEASE NOTE: Effective February 1, 2015 the postal address of the Editor will change to PO Box 6122, Chico, CA 95927-6122

Eric Tripnaux writes: “I fully agree with my friend Paulo Estrela who wrote in the last issue of JOMSA that other heads of state have received the Chinese Grand Order (Da Xun Chang). A specimen survives in the collections of the Belgian Royal Palace in Brussels. It had been awarded to King Albert of the Belgians on the 10th of May 1914. According to the magazine L’Expansion belge dated June 1914 (p. 378), the highest Chinese award has been conferred by Yuan Chi Kai, the President of the Republic of China, who had just received the 1st class of the Belgian Order of Leopold. Lou Tseng Tsiang, President of the Council and Foreign Affairs Minister, leading a special delegation, brought it to the King in Brussels. The widowed Queen Elisabeth donated it with other orders and medals to the Association “Dynasty and Cultural Patrimony” after the King’s death in 1934. The Royal Army Museum in Paulo Jorge Estrela replies: “When I prepared Brussels that manages the other part of King Albert’s my letter as a modest compliment to Gavin Goh’s orders and medals preserves in its archives a red ribbon interesting article, I contacted Guy Deploige and he told bar of the Da Xun Chang in an envelope issued for the me about the Chinese decoration to your Belgian king. Royal Castle in Laeken. “Chine” is hand written in I believe, with all this new information someone can do French on it (see the attached figure). Note that the text a more complete history about this important Chinese published in Paulo Estrela’s article is not translated in Order. The envelope with the piece of ribbon is a real Portuguese, but in French!” nice and scarce item.”

Lonny Borts writes: “The Marine Corps has released Mabus on August 22. Further details on the new ribbon the first images of the service’s new combat instructor will be released in a forthcoming MARADMIN, ribbon. The green, black and tan ribbon will be awarded expected to be released within weeks. While recruiters, to all Marines who successfully complete a 36-month drill instructors and Marine security guards at embassies tour as a combat instructor at the School of Infantry across the globe have long been awarded ribbons, East or West. Marine Corps Times first reported on the combat instructors remained one of just two special duty new ribbon in August, which was approved earlier that assignments without a ribbon. In order of precedence, month by Navy Secretary Ray Mabus. The decision to the new ribbon will be placed after the Marine Security award combat instructors with a ribbon follows more Guard Ribbon and before the Armed Forces Reserve than a decade of calls from the schoolhouses due to Medal, according to a Marine Corps news release. The the rigors of combat instructor duty. Thousands will first batch of ribbons will be produced to meet short- be eligible for the new ribbon, which is backdated for term requirements at the Schools of Infantry and the anyone who has worked as a combat instructor or in a Military Awards Branch, according to the release. The high-profile leadership role at SOI East or West since ribbons are expected to be available commercially about October 9, 2002, when the job was opened to Marines 30 days after the MARADMIN is released.” from all military occupational specialties.

Details of the new ribbon were authorized by Secretary

4 JOMSA