"Automatic" Iron Cross
On 1 June 1940, Hitler decreed that any recipient of the Wound Badge in Silver or Gold be automatically awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class if that individual did not already have that decoration. This pluralism meant that, for example, a sailor who lost a hand or foot in action while serving on an E-boat at the Kuban bridgehead would receive not only the Wound Badge in Silver, but also the Fast Attack Craft War Badge, the Kuban Shield, and the Iron Cross 2nd Class, purely on account of the wound sustained.
Read more about this topic: Wound Badge
Famous quotes containing the words automatic, iron and/or cross:
“What we learn for the sake of knowing, we hold; what we learn for the sake of accomplishing some ulterior end, we forget as soon as that end has been gained. This, too, is automatic action in the constitution of the mind itself, and it is fortunate and merciful that it is so, for otherwise our minds would be soon only rubbish-rooms.”
—Anna C. Brackett (1836–1911)
“As a people, we have the problem of making our forests outlast this generation, or iron outlast this century, and our coal the next; not merely as a matter of convenience or comfort, but as a matter of stern necessity.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Life is a bridge. Cross over it, but build no house on it.”
—Indian proverb, quoted in Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines, ch. 30, “From the Notebooks” (1987)