IBM wrote in message . ..
(Kevin Brooks) wrote in
m:

"Gord Beaman" ) wrote in message
. ..
"Brian" wrote:

[snip]

The US tendency to award medals at the drop of a hat
is baffling to those of us with roots in the Common-
wealth armed services.
Men of my fathers generation who were on active service
and in harms way 1939-1945 came home with a few campaign
medals or a mention in dispatches ( for not getting shot
up after losing ones way as it happened ). Mind you looking at
some ancient photos of staff in a place Gord might be
familiar with shows a large number of DFCs among the post
war inmates of the Annapolis Valley's contribution to
world peace.
A great uncle was gassed at Ypres and was involved in
( one or perhaps two ) suicidal cavalry charges. He also
got shot at least once. For that he got one medal ( an MM )
plus the campaign gongs for 1915-1919 period which is approx
one more medal than his brother ( who was dragged off to a
prosthetics workshop rather than being sent to the trenches )
got.

IBM

The US military's tendency to give out medals has become a bit
extreme. But your examples are a bit off the mark, IMO, since at the
time of WWI and even into WWII the awrds were much more controlled. As
late as WWII the average troop could expect to receive only the
campaign/theater awards for which he qualified and maybe a Good
Conduct medal, IIRC. Bronze Stars carried more meaning in WWII than
they routinely do now. Korea saw some erosion in this control, and
Vietnam opened the floodgates (I served with an NCO who as a unit mail
clerk made the obligitory number of helo flights and managed to get
the Air Medal--an award for which my father had to fly IIRC five or
ten real combat missions in the western Pacific to get). I have no
idea how many AM's my brother got in Vietnam--as a medevac pilot, he
pulled plenty of combat sorties (IIRC he had some 300 hours of
"combat" time by the time he left), and I remember he had clusters out
the wazoo on his ribbon. Post-Vietnam the problem has gotten worse, in
many but not all cases (there were definite abuses during the Grenada
fiasco, and the current procedure for awarding the CIB is ludicrous).
I served on active duty (peacetime) back in the 80's with a battalion
that as a practice never made awards to officers except on their
departure; hence I left them as a first lieutenant with my ubiquitous
"Roy G. Biv", or "Rainbow" ribbon (the Army Service Ribbon, given to
all who can maintain a more-or-less normal body temperature throughout
their initial training period) and an ARCOM that they mailed to me
after I left--I would not consider two ribbons excessive, nor would I
have called it miserly. We had no gripes with that policy. My next
unit presented awards much more freely, as did the parent HQ's; within
five or six years I had three AAM's and around five ARCOM's, along
with additional service/training awards--none of which really meant
much at all.

Brooks