Bruzilla
Well-Known Member
My son was helping me get my roll around tool box organized over the weekend, and he found one of my medals all crunched up in the back of one of the drawers, still unopened in the original envelope. He asked me what it was, and why it was there, and it made me think of that new Distinguished Warfare Medal that just came out.
The medal my son found was a Navy Expeditionary Medal that I received in 1984 after participating in combat operations over Lebanon in 1982. All of the flight crew guys were awarded the medal in early 1983, but then our maintenance people got upset because they didn't receive the medal. The reason they didn't receive the medal was because they were never in the combat area and had never left Sicily, but they were ticked because guys they knew on the carrier-based squadrons got the medal and the fact that the carriers were also in the combat zone and not 1,000+ miles away didn't matter. So after lots of pressure, our CO decided to request awarding the medal to everyone in the squadron and some doofus at the Department of Naval Personnel approved it. So there we were on deployment to Rota, Spain when the medal was reawarded, and we're supposed to go to the uniform shop to get ribbons to wear to the ceremony. We get to to the shop, and who's the first person in line to get a ribbon? Our disbursing clerk, (DK1) Tina.
DK1 Tina was technically a member of our squadron, but the first thing she did when we went on every deployment was get her fat *** assigned to the base accounting office. While we were flying our asses off, and the maintenance folks were working 12-hr days six to seven days a week, DK1 Tina was working from nine to two, Monday through Friday, and there she was getting the same medal we had risked our lives for. I was pissed, as was everyone else on my crew. We put our ribbons back, and went back to the hangar and told the rest of the guys about seeing DK1 getting her ribbon. We all showed up at the award ceremony with an empty space on our ribbon bars where the NEM ribbon was supposed to be. The skipper was some kind of pissed, but not half as much as we were for him devaluing a medal we had risked our lives to earn. And so when I got the medal itself I never opened it and it's been moved from junk drawer to junk drawer ever since.
So now we have this new Distinguished Warfare Medal that's meant for distinguished service piloting drones or fighting cyber attacks, and I'm feeling the same way again. I agree with the idea that these folks who don't engage in actual physical combat deserve their own award, but it is ranked above awards for valor in combat such as the Bronze Star. It's also ranked above the Purple Heart. There are medals that are administrative in nature, and there are those meant to recognize valor and sacrifice in the face of great danger, and there's no danger from sitting in a van on the other side of the World from the combat zone flying a drone, or sitting in an office waiting for cyber attacks. If the DoD wants to recognize the efforts of these people fine, but they shouldn't be devaluing actual combat medals to do it.
The medal my son found was a Navy Expeditionary Medal that I received in 1984 after participating in combat operations over Lebanon in 1982. All of the flight crew guys were awarded the medal in early 1983, but then our maintenance people got upset because they didn't receive the medal. The reason they didn't receive the medal was because they were never in the combat area and had never left Sicily, but they were ticked because guys they knew on the carrier-based squadrons got the medal and the fact that the carriers were also in the combat zone and not 1,000+ miles away didn't matter. So after lots of pressure, our CO decided to request awarding the medal to everyone in the squadron and some doofus at the Department of Naval Personnel approved it. So there we were on deployment to Rota, Spain when the medal was reawarded, and we're supposed to go to the uniform shop to get ribbons to wear to the ceremony. We get to to the shop, and who's the first person in line to get a ribbon? Our disbursing clerk, (DK1) Tina.
DK1 Tina was technically a member of our squadron, but the first thing she did when we went on every deployment was get her fat *** assigned to the base accounting office. While we were flying our asses off, and the maintenance folks were working 12-hr days six to seven days a week, DK1 Tina was working from nine to two, Monday through Friday, and there she was getting the same medal we had risked our lives for. I was pissed, as was everyone else on my crew. We put our ribbons back, and went back to the hangar and told the rest of the guys about seeing DK1 getting her ribbon. We all showed up at the award ceremony with an empty space on our ribbon bars where the NEM ribbon was supposed to be. The skipper was some kind of pissed, but not half as much as we were for him devaluing a medal we had risked our lives to earn. And so when I got the medal itself I never opened it and it's been moved from junk drawer to junk drawer ever since.
So now we have this new Distinguished Warfare Medal that's meant for distinguished service piloting drones or fighting cyber attacks, and I'm feeling the same way again. I agree with the idea that these folks who don't engage in actual physical combat deserve their own award, but it is ranked above awards for valor in combat such as the Bronze Star. It's also ranked above the Purple Heart. There are medals that are administrative in nature, and there are those meant to recognize valor and sacrifice in the face of great danger, and there's no danger from sitting in a van on the other side of the World from the combat zone flying a drone, or sitting in an office waiting for cyber attacks. If the DoD wants to recognize the efforts of these people fine, but they shouldn't be devaluing actual combat medals to do it.
We had the same problem with ours.
