Fall 2026 Militaria and Aviation Auction
Lot 221:
Description
RARE CBI: Cloud & Banner, LoM, Group Burma Road blast. Order of the Cloud and Banner No. 1276 and Legion of Merit to Maj. Peter S. Hopkins – American Liaison Engineer who blew the peak that opened the Burma Road, 20 August 1944
A documented China-Burma-India grouping to Captain (later Major) Peter S. Hopkins, O-1103701, Corps of Engineers, American Liaison Team, built around the two decorations that mark the same action: a numbered Republic of China Order of the Cloud and Banner and a numbered U.S. Legion of Merit. No separate published biography has been located under his serial; the story sits in the China Theater citation and in the official engineer record of the Salween fighting.
In the summer of 1944 the Japanese still held the mountain fortress line west of the Salween that sealed China’s last overland link with the world. Official U.S. Army histories of Y-Force and the Salween front describe American engineer advisers working with Chinese units on assault demolitions against those peaks-most famously Sung Shan, rising some three thousand feet above the river-after infantry attacks had failed. Hopkins’s citation is the personal account of that work. After several Chinese assaults could not take the summit, it was decided to blow the top of the peak with large TNT charges. Textbooks gave no formula for removing a mountain under an enemy. As engineer officer on the American Liaison Team he fixed tunnel number, size and depth, charge weight, wiring and tamping, then personally supervised Chinese engineers six to ten yards beneath the Japanese positions, as quietly as the ground allowed. On the morning of 20 August 1944 the charges fired. Every pillbox, trench and dugout on the peak was destroyed except a small pocket on the west face. Chinese troops occupied the height; the position was the key to the rest of the fortified belt blocking the Burma Road. The citation, typed and stamped OFFICIAL by Headquarters, U.S. Army Forces, China Theater, calls the result vital to the campaign that followed.
The Legion of Merit (Legionnaire) is the numbered wartime issue in its case, brooch stamped 3573, with the correct pink-white ribbon and matching bar. The Chinese order is the Order of the Cloud and Banner (Yunhui / Resplendent Banner), created in 1935 in nine classes for contributions to national security: a multi-rayed silver star with blue-enamel clouds and a central medallion of the golden banner among clouds, suspended from the yellow-blue-red ribbon with rosette. The reverse carries the arched Chinese inscription and serial 1276. A dress miniature of the same order hangs on a five-place miniature bar with the Legion of Merit miniature, American Campaign Medal, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with three stars, and World War II Victory Medal.
Also in the lot: the Republic of China War of Resistance / Victory commemorative medal, reverse numbered A11384, in its gilt-titled case with an ink tag "Maj Peter S. Hopkins"; a small Chinese enamel badge numbered 638 on the reverse; Corps of Engineers castle insignia, U.S. ciphers, gilt oak-leaf clusters and buttons; additional ribbon bars; and a Spink & Son Ltd. case, 5, 6 & 7 King Street, St. James’s, London. Paper is folded and toned as expected of theater issue; enamel on both Cloud and Banner pieces is largely intact; medals and hardware show honest wear.
A scarce named liaison-engineer group that ties a numbered Cloud and Banner and a numbered Legion of Merit to the demolition of 20 August 1944-the charge that cracked the Japanese hold on the mountain and helped put the Burma Road back in Allied hands.
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