The Medal of Honor

 

The three present day Medal of Honors:

Pictured from Left to Right

NAVY  AIR FORCE   ARMY

 

            One thing alone distinguishes them from other Americans.  They are entitled to wear a bronze decoration suspended from a blue silk ribbon drawn close at the neck: the Medal of Honor.

 

        America’s highest award from valor, it is conferred only after exhaustive and exacting documentation based on eyewitness accounts.

            From the beginning of Word War II to the U.S. action in Somalia in 1993, only a tiny fraction of the tens of millions who have served in America’s armed forces –just 839 men- have received this honor.  Of those, 513 died earning it.  Most of the 150 living recipients –they avoid the term “winners”- see themselves simply as ordinary men who were called to do extraordinary things.

                                                                        From excerpt Readers Digest June ‘01

There were no awards of the Medal of Honor during Grenada, Panama, Lebanon, or Desert Storm.

Since 1993, 39 other Medals of Honor have been awarded to correct past errors, follow up on lost recommendations or were the result of new evidence.  Of those 39 Recipients, 13 were living at the time the Medal of Honor was presented.

 

The Army awarded:

155 Medals of Honor in Vietnam.

846 Distinguished Service Crosses in Vietnam.

21,630 Silver Stars in Vietnam.

The Marine Corps, which lost 103,000 killed or wounded out of some 400,000 sent to Vietnam, awarded 47 Medals of Honor (34 posthumously).

362 Navy Crosses (139 posthumously)

2,592 Silver Stars in Vietnam.

The Army awarded another 1.3 million "meritorious" Bronze Stars and Army Commendation Medals in Vietnam, this was hardly unique.  After WWII Army Regulation 600-45 authorized every soldier who had received either a Combat Infantryman's Badge or a Combat Medical Badge to also be awarded a meritorious Bronze Star.

 

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