Hey I figured I'd organize all the answers and add a few more of the ones that are left out.

The first medal is an Iron Cross Second Class given out to German soldiers for bravery in combat.

The second medal is a War Merit Cross given to German soldiers or civilians for merit off the battlefield.

The First two pins are Parachutist Badges given out to US Army soldiers who complete Airborne Training School.

The multicolored ribbon is for the European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal for US Soldiers who had performed duty in the European Theater during World War II. (Btw, in the US Army, when a soldier receives a medal he also gets a ribbon to wear on the uniform. Ribbons are worn during more "casual" situations, whereas medals are worn during more formal situations. 95% of the time, the ribbons are worn. If you haven't found the medals yet, keep an eye out, since he would have received both!)

The stars on the multicolored ribbon are Service Stars indicating the many phases that he went through the campaign, and the Arrowhead Device at the end represents that he was part of an amphibious landing, airborne assault, or glider assault.

The red ribbon is for receiving the Army Good Conduct medal. This medal is given to anyone who completes three consecutive years with "Honorable and Faithful Service", ie, without getting into any serious trouble.

The Purple ribbon is for receiving the Purple Heart, and the oak leaf indicates that he received two.

After scouring the internet, I couldn't find any information on the metal airborne clasp, so I assume it isn't anything official. It is an image of the 82nd Airborne Division which served in World War II.

The last badge is actually a Coastal Artillery Fez Hat Badge used by Italian Coastal Artillery officers on their hats stationed in African. Pretty neat and pretty rare!

Hi, thanks for posting these! It seems that your uncle served in the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division by the looks of the pins and ribbons. During the war, the 82nd jumped into Italy and later the Netherlands to liberate both.

The two German medals are an Iron Cross (a fairly common medal for Germans in WWII) and another medal for bravery. Both are very valuable today and iconic symbols of the Second World War. From the look of it, it seems that these were taken as souvenirs, which is pretty nifty.

I can help a little. This one is the ribbon for the Purple Heart with an Oak Leaf Cluster indicating a second award of the medal.

This one is known as a Parachutist Badge, also commonly referred to as "Jump Wings," it is a qualification award.

I think this one is the ribbon for the Combat Jump Device. You need to follow up on this one. But, if I'm right (and I think I am), this shows the Combat Jump Ribbon with the arrow head denoting a second combat jump, and the stars denoting five more wartime jumps. See /u/TeamRedRocket 's reply for the correct info on this one.

Try taking these by a recruiter's office for more info, but whatever you do, don't let anyone "borrow" them to check them out. They can take pictures. If those belonged to your great granduncle, the man was a big time badass.

Seven combat jump awards and two purple hearts?!! This guy had Stainless Steel balls.

^Edit: ^Corrections.

Hello Jumboworms, thank-you for posting this interesting assortment of medals!

Quite unusually, there is a lot of misinformation in this thread about the German medals. The first medal is actually an Iron Cross First Class (EKI) that has been looped through a ribbon to a WW1 Hindenburg Honour Cross. The EKI is not worn with a ribbon, only the EKII and the Knights Cross to the Iron Cross are worn with a ribbon. The ribbon to the Iron Cross series is black, white, and red. You can tell the medal is First Class because it has a pin-back, which is designed to be worn on the tunic breast pocket. In the center of the 'coke-bottle' pin is a makers mark, I cannot quite make yours out but it looks like a 15 which would indicate it was manufactured by Friedrich Orth of Wien.

The second medal has been correctly identified as a War Merit Cross. Yours is a second class (as it has a ribbon) without swords, indicating the service was not related to combat. The combat variety has crossed swords. To determine the manufacturer of this medal, look on the ribbon loop, there will be stamp with a number on it and that number correlates to a specific maker.

We would love you to post these medals over at /r/Germanmilitaria; the community there will provide you with much information!

Source: Orders, Decorations, Medals, and Badges of the Third Reich by Littlejohn, D.

The stripes are called ribbons and could be worn in place of actual medals. You can find some info on these here

First picture: European African Middle eastern campaign Army good conduct medal Purple Heart Medal

Second picture: Looks like the same ribbons, but with augmentations. The oak leaf on the Purple Heart ribbon would suggest he was wounded twice. The stars on the campaign ribbon indicate how much of the war he was in, and the arrow head indicates he was in an airborne assault (which is to be expected since he was 82nd Airborne)

I'll let someone more knowledgeable about German decorations say what the first few are (although I'm quite positive they're both variations of the Iron Cross).

As for the American decorations...

This one is a Parachutist Badge. All Airborne troopers are required to attend the school, and you get your jump wings when you graduate.

This picture is half of his ribbon stack. The first ribbon is a Purple Heart with oak leaf cluster (meaning he was wounded in combat twice). The center red one is a good conduct medal (referred to nowadays as "good cookie", a term not used extensively in WWII). It means he stayed out of trouble for his first three years in the Army.

The third ribbon is the European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, meaning that he served in at least one of those places. The one silver star and four bronze stars are curious. If there is one thing I've noticed about most WWII uniforms, it's that they rarely got everything correct. This seems to be the case for your uncle's uniform. This page shows the correct wear for the devices, and if you look at your uncle's stars, they are not correctly placed. The silver one should be all the way to the left, but instead he has it placed in the center.

Without his service record I can't tell you with 100% accuracy, however it is likely that he got the first four bronze stars and then thought the silver one (worn in lieu of a fifth bronze star) looked best in the center, without realizing he should remove the bronze stars. There is an extremely slim possibility that he was involved in 9 different campaigns, however this is extremely unlikely. There were a total of 16 campaign stars for the E-A-ME Campaign Medal, and the 82nd didn't participate in all of them (I'm unaware of any unit that did). However I'm not entirely sure how many campaign stars a veteran that fought with the 82nd from the beginning of the war to the end of the war would be authorized to wear. It's very unlikely, but I suppose possible (although made less likely if he missed a campaign or two due to his wounds).

Any way you slice it, he saw a LOT of combat, was wounded twice, and served with one of the most famous units of the war. He had quite the experience, to say the least.

First off, I'm assuming that the ones with swastikas engraved on them were taken off of a fallen German soldier, unless your Uncle's background has anything to do with being in Germany during the beginning of WWII.

The pins seem to be from the school that he trained at before entering the 82nd Airborne division. Here is a link to a site that shows the same pin with the title below http://arotc.uncc.edu/node/74

As for striped accolades, I have no idea what any of the colors represent. Hopefully someone else will be of use here.

That red white and blue piece you have though is the official symbol of the 82nd Airborne division http://www.wartimepress.com/archives.asp?TID=048%2082nd%20Airborne%20Division&MID=Infantry%20Divisions&q=377&FID=89

And for the key shaped thing, I can't get you anything on that, but it definitely is an interesting find!

German Medals:

First one should be an Iron Cross 2nd Class:

http://www.ehrenzeichen-orden.de/zweiter-weltkrieg/eisernes-kreuz-1939-2-klasse.html

Second is a War Merit Cross 2nd Class:

http://www.ehrenzeichen-orden.de/zweiter-weltkrieg/kriegsverdienstkreuz-2-klasse-1939.html

(Sorry for German sources, but you should easily find English descriptions)

Thanks for posting this. My dad recently passed away and I am now inspired to dig into a box of his labeled "air medals," ostensibly from his two combat tours as a door-gunner and crew chief on UH1s in Vietnam. Maybe people in this sub will know about what they are meant to indicate.

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this. You have combat jump stars, incorrectly displayed/on one of his ribbons. In this photo https://i.imgur.com/ZSm4zuX.jpg those small bronze stars on the third ribbon on the far right(the European campaign medal), appear to be actually combat jump stars. They would go on the parachutist badge(this: https://i.imgur.com/v9zTKre.jpg), and they are awarded for those who took part in combat jumps. As to which jumps those where, they could be any that 82nd airborne(as you show a 82nd airborne unit insignia(this: http://i.imgur.com/wiLrVor.jpg)) took place in during world war 2(more than likely one is for operation market garden).

Example of combat jump stars: http://www.sorbrecruiting.com/images/Airborne/WINGS_07.png (ignore the star with the wreath around it on the top of the parachutist badge, its just a master parachutist badge, but at its core, its the same badge) and here is more on both combat jump stars and the parachutist badge: http://www.qmfound.com/parachute_badge.htm

Edit- now i know that medal actually has bronze and silver stars that go on it, but those would be the other two bigger ones that are currently on it. Those being the two larger bronze and silver stars, meaning he served in 6 different campaigns. (the silver one equals served in 5 different campaigns and the one bronze means 1)... Point being, you can tell those other ones are combat jump stars, and not bronze stars for the actual medal, due to the size and the fact that he has the other stars on there. The arrowhead device on it, means he took place in either a airborne assault or less likely(due to the fact he was in 82nd) a amphibious assault landings.

I've got a semi related question to this thread. Is it illegal to buy wwII Nazi badges? Isn't there a whole community of ppl who deal in Nazi Germany relics/items?

Any idea what battalion he was with, or what his job was?

Looks like he was wounded twice. Very interesting.

I answered a related question on Nazi and pre-Nazi German medals in this thread There's some info there on the different types of medals used and their symbols which you may find interesting.

Well, the last one is, according to this probably not reliable site, something from a unit of "Milizia di artiglieria costiera of the MVSN (Coastal artillery militia)". This website (in Italian, unfortunately) has a list of where some of the battalions where deployed, but if there was a number on the pin, it seems to be long gone. This seems to be a pin with a very similar design, and it says that it is for marine and anti-aircraft artillery

Not meaning to hijack this thread, but I'm in a similar situation. My grandmother passed away and we found this in her jewellery box.

Any idea of its origin?

EDIT: My grandmother's late husband wasn't in the army so I can't think how she'd have come across this. She was born and raised in Australia.

Do you have pictures of the back of the jumpwings (parachute wings)?