Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A rare Great War M.M. group of ten awarded to Sergeant J. Fabian, a Czech Legionnaire who latterly served in the elite 1st Cavalry Battery of the Kulikovsk Legion

Czech War Cross 1918, with three linden leaf emblems; Czech Revolutionary Medal 1918, 2 clasps, Bachmac, Zborov; Czech Victory Medal 1914-19, official type 2; Czech F.I.D.A.C. Medal for Veterans of the Great War; Czech Commemorative Cross for Volunteers 1918-19; Czech Zborov Memorial Medal; Czech Bachmac Memorial Medal; Great Britain, Military Medal, G.V.R., unnamed as issued to foreign nationals; Russian Cross of St. George for Bravery, gilt base metal with traces of silvering, no class given and of Czech manufacture, quite probably Hojtas of Prague; Serbian War Commemorative Medal 1914-18, together with an embroidered tunic patch relating to the battle of Bachmac, generally very fine (11) £700-900

Abbott and Tamplin estimate some 320 M.Ms were bestowed on Czech Legionnaires.

Josef Fabian was born in March 1893 at Stritez nad Becvou, a small village in the mountainous area of Wallachia on the borders of Moravia. A farmer by profession, he was recruited into the Austro-Hungarian Army in September 1915, and was posted to the Eastern Front a few months later. Wounded and taken P.O.W. by the Russians in an engagement at Halic in January 1917, he was set to work on a camp farm, but in June he signed up for the Czech Legions and was assigned to the 9th Company of the 3rd Regiment. He was subsequently present at the battle of Zborov, when his company held a position in the rear, to protect the roads for the arrival of reinforcements, and in many other engagements, among them Celjabinsk, Jekaterburg, Niznij Tagil, and Belebej - indeed right through the Siberian campaign all the way to Vladivostock. Thrice wounded during these operations, he was awarded the Czech War Cross on no less than four occasions, in addition to the M.M., following a visit by a British delegation to Vladivostock in 1919. Fabian latterly served in the elite 1st Cavalry Battery of the Kulikovsk Legion and returned to Czechoslovakia in July 1920, where he was demobilised in the rank of Sergeant at the end of the year. A member of the Active National Reserve in the 1930s, he died in September 1949.

Sold with the recipient’s original Ministry of National Defence (Office of Czechoslovak Legions) Certificate of Service, bearing official stamps and dated 24 December 1924; together with an interesting run of Great War period postcards (15), either with printed or photographic images, four of them used, bearing date stamps and signed ‘Josef’; together with six original photographs, the majority of cavalry interest, and including a group portrait image with autographs to the reverse.