The medal hangs on a ribbon with a square loop and rounded corners. At every fifth award, the bronze and golden were replaced by a a silver oak leaf cluster or silver star.
A bronze "V" for "Valor" was awarded when the Bronze Star was received for heoism in battle, thus distincting the award from the Bronze Stars warded for merit. This "V" was introduced in The action it was to be awarded for had to be of significant value. Only one "V" was permitted to be worn on the ribbon. Looking for reliable information or news facts about WW2? Do you want to create your own battlefield tour to sights of wars from the past?
Or are you interested in war medals and their recipients? All rights reserved. Privacy statement, cookies, disclaimer and copyright. TracesOfWar needs your help! We miss photos of important sights in the Netherlands , Belgium , France and Germany.
Submit your photos to input tracesofwar. This allowed the expansion of qualifying criteria to include those serving with friendly militaries. As a result, non-U. The criteria for earning a Bronze Star would be amended a second time.
The result of those changes allowed those serving on or after September 11, to be awarded a Meritorious Service Medal instead of the Bronze Star for achievements in a combat theater.
They must be less than what is required to earn the Legion of Merit, but must still be recognized as valor, meritorious service, etc. In , following reports of Air Force members being subject to harassment after receiving non-combat BSMs, a review of BSM award policies was undertaken.
At this time there was a debate over whether the Air Force was too liberal in its policies for reviewing BSM submissions. Biden traveled to Washington, D. Biden received a visit at Camp Victory from his father on July 4, Last deployment, a lot of the staff officers and senior enlisted received Bronze Stars. Also keep in mind that Bronze Stars can be either meritorious or for valor. No more than one Bronze Star Medal shall be awarded to any one person, but for each succeeding heroic or meritorious achievement or service justifying such an award a suitable device may be awarded to be worn with the medal as prescribed by appropriate regulations.
Bronze stars are authorized for participation in the the 29 campaigns specified for the Vietnam War. Service stars are authorized for certain unit awards The service ribbon itself indicates the first award, with a bronze service star being added to indicate the second and subsequent awards. If ever applicable, a silver service star is worn instead of five bronze stars.
Service stars are permitted as attachments worn on the Vietnam Service Medal for recipients who participated in multiple campaigns during the Vietnam War. For the same reason, it is a lot easier to notice the achievements of senior sergeants and commissioned officers, because they are fewer. What's more, the paperwork recommending someone for an award usually starts with his or her immediate superior and then is reviewed by one higher headquarters after another, so the higher your rank the fewer hurdles your award recommendation has to clear before final approval.
Whether the end result is a Good Conduct Medal or the Medal of Honor, the process begins the same way, with a preprinted form. The more prestigious the award being considered, the higher up the chain of command Form must go, and the greater the number of reviewers who must sign off in turn before it's finally approved.
What we want to be very, very sure of, in honor of the military ethos, is that for the higher awards -- Silver Star and above -- we are clear, which equals consistent, which equals legitimate. The problem with this understandable desire to give higher awards a higher level of review is not merely that it slows things down. It is that the final decision is pushed further and further away from those who have firsthand knowledge of the person and the action in question.
True, the more prestigious the award, the greater the number of after-action reports, narrative details, and eyewitness statements that get attached to the basic form.
True, the "awards boards" that advise most senior commanders often request further documentation. But there are no provisions, and no resources, for sending an expert to reinvestigate the scene of action or interview the eyewitnesses directly -- the way the military does routinely for, say, a friendly-fire incident, an aircraft crash, or a court-martial.
That is one of the reasons why the paper trail is so much fainter, and publicity so much poorer, for acts of valor than for mishaps and misdeeds. Even when the Army review board considering Paul Ray Smith's Medal of Honor requested confirming details, it left the legwork up to Smith's old unit. A few men who knew Smith made a major effort to get additional statements from the eyewitnesses -- all of whom were back in the United States by that point, some of them reassigned to other units.
For that matter, if not for the lull in the fighting after Baghdad fell, his unit might not have been able to put together the initial package of statements. Had Paul Ray Smith's comrades not gone the extra mile in his memory, his Medal of Honor might well have been downgraded for lacking the "incontestable proof" that regulations require. It is no wonder, then, that many service members feel that well-deserved nominations for, say, the Silver Star fell through the cracks, especially in the first years of the war.
No number of reviews and regulations can substitute for firsthand knowledge. And clear eyewitness testimony is a precious commodity after a battle. Hollenbaugh said, recounting the Falluja battle for which he and his unit's medic both received the Distinguished Service Cross. Again and again, troops who have been decorated for valor say they wear their medals in honor of those who have not been so recognized. You can't think of it so much as a personal medal, but for the E.
We're out there doing great things, and we don't get recognized. Again and again, troops who play down their own awards speak proudly of their comrades' medals. Wolford, who, in an unusual Army publicity effort, became a character in the online video game "America's Army: Real Heroes," accompanied by a collectible action figure bearing his facial features. What Wolford prefers to brag about are the four Bronze Stars for valor awarded to his seven-man squad for their acts on that same day in In the end, America's fighting men and women wear their medals for the same reason that they earned them: to preserve the lives and memory of their comrades.
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