Medals

I just found a box with my Great Grandfathers WWI medals, including a big 4.5" inch round copper plaque i guess you could call it, He Died for Freedom and Honour. He was English. A bunch of his WWI medals and some WWII medals and some of the smaller medals. About 30 in all.

http://www.greatwar.co.uk/memorials/memorial-plaque.htm

Lord Skimper wrote:I just found a box with my Great Grandfathers WWI medals, including a big 4.5" inch round copper plaque i guess you could call it, He Died for Freedom and Honour. He was English. A bunch of his WWI medals and some WWII medals and some of the smaller medals. About 30 in all.

http://www.greatwar.co.uk/memorials/memorial-plaque.htm

According to your link, the Plaque should not be for your Great Gradfather if he survived and served to receive WWII medals. That plaque was only given to the next-of-kin of those killed in action.

You need to sort out which medals were actually his and which he or his heirs inherited from someone else in the family. You should be able to research his awards through the military records links from your link.

He died in WWI ironically one of my other Great Grandfathers died fight for the other side.

WWII medals are from someone else. Lots of relatives served.

The one Grandfather, Opa, who served in WWII not sure if he ever got any medals? He lead a pretty charmed life, he was one of three who survived his troop transport ship being torpedoed in the Med, was rescued by a Greek fisherman. Everyone laughed at him because he always wore his life jacket. Of the three an Officer an Entertainer and himself he was just a Sergeant so when they made it to land he had to walk the 40 miles to the muster point, half way there he passed the truck, it hit a mine. The Entertainer lost both her legs, the Officer was killed. From there he walked from Greece to Germany. Dodging the partisans in Yugoslavia, across the mountains in Austria. Eventually he made it to Germany, was put on a Hospital river boat and was picked up by the Yanks and put into a prison camp. As he was a former guard at a criminal prison and former Warden at the town my Mom grew up in at the juvenile prison. He was very popular amoung the other prisoners and helped them escape supposedly on the 4th of July 45? Technically after the war ended. He was picked up walking home and driven back to Jever and put back in charge of the Prison again with adult criminals. Sounds kind of fishy but he was rather anti Nazi and did something I never knew about. Somehow He and the Mayor of Jever ended up in the Command structure with the British / Canadians occupation troops.

???

Don't know why.