Saw this article over on j-aircraft http://www.j-aircraft.org/smf/index.php?topic=17062.0 It's fairly long but describes the authors acquisition, research into the providence of, and return of several high medals to the families of the ones who they were awarded to as well as some details of their service. It's a fairly long article so I won't quote it here.
It did leave me wanting to know more about the men who earned them At least for the higher level US metals there's a site where you can look up the metal citations and potential find out more about the individuals. Given my complete lack of comprehension of Russian even if similar sites exist I can't get much from them if I could find them.
It definitely isn't easy that's for sure. So much carnage and confusion occurred that I suspect many more such cases will occur.