Experts say too many medals issued
By Franklin Fisher, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Sunday, November 17, 2002
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by Jon R. Anderson / Stars and Stripes
A Bronze Star medal hangs from a United States Air Force uniform.
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Courtesy Department of Defense
President Clinton approved establishment and award of the Kosovo Campaign Medal and campaign streamers to recognize the accomplishments of U.S. military servicemembers who participated in or were in direct support of the Kosovo operations within established areas of eligibility.
It was an issue in 1945, too ...
The Jan. 8, 1945, issue of Stars and Stripes included these letters in the "B Bag" column, a forum for servicemembers' gripes and comments:
Much about medals
The division AG and the regimental S4 get a silver star for gallantry in action. Hell, they are so far back that the German artillery can't reach them. How could they be gallant in action?
What chance do the boys on the front lines have to get citations when the brass in the rear echelon gets them?
? 1/Sgt. William R. Johnson and four others of 95th Div.
Medals ? Two
Why are "Bronze Star Medals" distributed so freely? There are rumors that one is given with every ten tops from K ration boxes. If so, to whom must we address the box tops?
? S/Sgt. D.A., Ord.
???
We are part of an ammunition section and are plenty browned off because our section chiefs were awatded Bronze Stars. We're still trying to understand why. To top that a motion pictureoperator received the Bronze Star for showing us exactly two movies since we have been in combat. He was cited for showing movies under hazardous conditions.
? Three Ammo Section, FA.
Kosovo Bronze Star controversy
A July, 2000, Stars and Stripes investigation showed that many of the Bronze Stars awarded for service in the Kosovo War went to Air Force and Navy personnel who were not in the combat zone. The issue produced numerous letters to the editor and a Pentagon review of the process. Click here for an index of the stories.
There?s a World War II newspaper cartoon by Bill Mauldin, whose wartime work came to battlefront GIs through the pages of Stars and Stripes.
It shows a tidy MP in a helmet liner, necktie and nightstick, standing near the entrance to a rear-area rest center. Three scruffy front-line soldiers lean forward in admiration ? real or feigned ? peering at the ribbons on his chest. The caption has the MP saying: ??Th? yellow one is fer national defense, th? red one wit? white stripes is fer very good conduct, and th? real purty one wit? all th? colors is fer bein? in this theater of operations.??
Half a century after U.S. forces fought to victory across Europe and the Pacific, some would say Mauldin?s cartoon makes a point that applies to today?s U.S. military. Because, in the decades since the Vietnam War, the military has greatly expanded the number and types of ribbons and other awards it bestows on its members.
For example, the services variously issue ribbons for service as a recruiter or drill instructor. There are ribbons for basic training honor graduate and for completing a noncommissioned officers? school. And each service has its own commendation medal and achievement medals.
Some critics blast the trend, which, they say, cheapens the overall value and prestige of U.S. military awards.
?I think you?re discrediting your military-awards program, regardless of what branch of service,? said retired Marine Sgt. Maj. William F. Carroll, who served from 1965 to 1990. Carroll was awarded a Bronze Star with combat ?V? in May 1967 for saving a wounded Marine under heavy artillery fire in Quang Tri Province. He was wounded in a firefight later that year, and received the Purple Heart.
?A lot of people are receiving recognition for just doing their damn job,? Carroll said. ?Whereas awards should be presented to people who are truly deserving and have gone above and beyond, not just been there.
?The awards system is supposed to set you apart from the other soldier, sailor, airman or Marine, but when they?re ? given out in mass quantities, you?re upsetting the purpose of the awards system,? Carroll said.
But the military defends its policies, arguing that the noncombat ribbons contribute to morale, and that the issuing of combat awards is subject to careful scrutiny.
?We take awards very seriously,? said Army Lt. Col. James P. Cassella, a Pentagon spokesman, ?combining our desire to recognize the service and sacrifice of servicemembers with the judicious application of policies.
?In that way, we can recognize the deserving, maximize the value to morale, and preserve the value of the award itself,? he said.
?It is important to point out that there are awards for service and awards for valor; a medal for valor will stand out even among a chestful of service awards,? Cassella said.
The biggest change, noted David Cole, staff curator for the U.S. Army Center of Military History in Washington, D.C., has occurred in the number of ribbons awarded. ?Medals also,? he said, ?but really more the ribbons that have proliferated since the Vietnam era.?
?A soldier today who has any length of time in service, if you count the service ribbons, such as the Professional Development, Army Service, Overseas Service, who say, went through the Persian Gulf War, probably would have six or seven ribbons or more, not counting qualification badges and so on. Far more than his predecessor,? Cole said.
And with the war on terrorism and other changes in the global picture, the services are having to further refine their medals policies. They?re looking at new types of awards that will reflect the new types of assignments and conditions that come with their newer types of missions.
?Things have changed, no doubt about it,? said Navy Cmdr. Tom Van Leunen, the Navy?s assistant chief of information.
?The philosophy of presenting personal awards to individual sailors has changed,? said Van Leunen. ?I think the Navy?s thought that the recognition of a good job by a sailor or officer of the Navy is worthy of some sort of award.?
The changes are here to stay, the military says. And the amount and types of awards likely will increase with new military operations in coming years.
?The way or means of earning these things will certainly be greater in the future because the way this war on terrorism is, it naturally changes the philosophy, thinking, the culture ... for all the services,? said Joseph Lineberger, director of the Air Force Review Board, which oversees that branch?s awards system.
?It might be that we would have to develop new awards,? Lineberger said.
Several factors have driven the changes. Once the government ended the Vietnam War draft in 1973, the military became an all-volunteer force. Ribbons and other awards were one means of sustaining morale and were also an inducement to re-enlistments, crucial to a volunteer military, experts said.
And military awards are a factor in getting promoted and can even mean promotion points for some servicemembers.
?Each one of the services has a separate service culture, and the way in which services look on awards is just one manifestation of that culture,? said Dr. Philip Anderson, a retired Marine colonel and now senior fellow and director of the Homeland Security Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
?My perspective,? said Anderson, ?is that the Marine Corps is the most conservative, the Army is the most liberal, the Air Force is not too far behind and the Navy falls somewhere in the middle.?
?There?s a distinct change in the Navy,? said Jack Green, staff curator at the Naval Historical Center in Washington. D.C. ?The Navy nowadays is far more liberal in awarding decorations than it was,? said Green. ?Up into the second World War, the Navy was much more hard-nosed about giving decorations.?
The Marine Corps has also changed but ?not appreciably,? said Stephen Mackey, Marine Corps director of awards, at Quantico, Va.
?Our system is stringent, restrictive, demanding, exclusive, and extremely carefully scrutinized,? said retired Marine Col. John W. Ripley, director of the Marine Corps History and Museums Division at Marine Corps Headquarters in Washington. Ripley served from 1957 to 1992, and received the Navy Cross, the nation?s second-highest award, for action in Vietnam in 1972.
?It?s all in our concept of duty,? said Ripley. ?Duty requires that you do things that are unusual, greater than the average requirement. The fact that an action took place does not in and of itself justify the award of certain medals.
?We don?t necessarily view other services as doing the wrong thing. They have a different philosophical approach to what they consider extraordinary performance of duty.?
Spc. Albert Brunson, 21, serves with the U.S. Army in South Korea and looks on his five medals and ribbons as ?nothing but good.?
Brunson, of Prince George, Va., is a personnel clerk with the 19th Theater Support Command?s Headquarters and Headquarters Company at Camp Walker in Taegu, South Korea.
He?ll return to civilian life soon after four years in the Army, and he?ll go home with at least five ribbons on his chest: the Army Achievement Medal, Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Army Service Ribbon, and Overseas Service Ribbon.
His Army Achievement Medal, given for achieving a permanent change of station, was awarded after completing a tour at Fort Still, Okla., he said.
But not everyone gets one, Brunson said.
?It depends on what kind of work you do,? he added. ?I guess it?s for how well you work.?
By the time Brunson began duty in Taegu, his medal was waiting for him in the mailroom.
?I guess it?s like a rating because it shows my accomplishments,? Brunson said about the Overseas Service Ribbon, which he received for serving 10 months overseas.
?I worked for every one I have. I don?t have the Bronze Star, know what I?m saying? I haven?t been to war. But the ones I have, I have worked for.?
He and many fellow soldiers welcome such awards, said Brunson.
?Because one, it?s promotion points,? he said. ?Two, it?s another accomplishment. They have to write down everything you did. It?s like an esteem-booster.?
Army Sgt. Maceia Roscoe is a food-service specialist in Brunson?s company. Roscoe, 25, of Chicago, works in the unit dining hall at Camp Walker.
With seven years in the Army she wears six ribbons on her uniform, several of them with small attachments indicating subsequent awards of the same medal ? five Army Achievement Medals, two Good Conduct Medals, two National Defense Service Medals, an Army Service Ribbon, an Overseas Service Ribbon ?for being over here in Korea,? and, most recently, the NCO Professional Development Ribbon.
She got that award for completing a 30-day primary leadership development course at the 8th U.S. Army?s Noncommissioned Officers Academy at Camp Jackson in South Korea.
?It challenged me in areas that I?m not doing all the time,? Roscoe said. ?We stood in formation, they gave us our certificates and let us know they were proud of us completing the program.?
An Army Achievement Medal came for taking part in a competitive culinary arts program, something not every soldier in her field gets to do.
?So I felt like I went above and beyond the standard they were looking for in order to receive that award,? said Roscoe. ?That one, I felt it was another stepping stone towards becoming sergeant major one day.?
Like Brunson, she values her awards.
?Myself, I like to see what I?ve done, and once I put on that Class A uniform and I see my ribbons and the things I accomplished, it?s a pride,? Roscoe said.
But critics say these self-esteem boosters diminish the value of medals.
?It?s a false sense of self-respect,? said Dana Dillon, a retired infantry major who served in the Army from 1980 to 2000 and is now a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, which specializes in military affairs and Asia. ?There?s a societal tendency to do that, and now, it?s reflected in the military.?
?If you get the medal for just standing in the right place at the right time, you know the medal isn?t worth anything.?
A solution, said Dillon, is for the military to carefully retool its awards system.
?I hope that they review what is the criteria for giving out an award and set up a standard criteria,? said Dillon.
?I would hope that the personnel system would issue better guidelines, and they would come from the chief of staff. And he would say that ?each of the men and women in the military need to be rewarded for their service, but let?s not cheapen those awards by giving out too many.??
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