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Where are the MOHs?
I would like to propose a discussion concerning where the heck are some MOH awards from OEF/OIF? It truly seems our brass are afraid to award it? Why? Does everyone have to be killed? Look at the battles with the 173rd in AFG or 10 SFG recently. The Brits have awarded I believe three VCs? Some of these guys have put it on the line and represent the best in the Army.
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I was wondering the same thing. It seems as if the Army is going out of its way to NOT award them to Army SOF,yet give the few that were awarded to the "conventional" Army (3rd inf off the top of my head),kinda like a morale thing, like the black beret fiasco.
I guess,it is like they want the focus on "regular" soldiers, as if they think SOF is undeserving cuz they are already "special". This is just how I think they are thinking. But I think it is weird that more MOH's have been awarded in the Army, and it is like SOF has been excluded deliberately. |
Alot of that goes into guys not being put in for one. Theres some deserving guys out there(O'Connor is a close one). But for whatever reason we stop it at our level and don't submit the award. USASFC downgrades alot of silver stars even, wonder how many MOH's have crossed the desk?
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Bob Howard was put in three times before being awarded the MOH - Zak was awarded a DSC and it was upgraded upon review - same with a number of WW2/ROK vets - lots of guys just do their jobs and don't think much of it all - never knew anybody who went out looking for or demanded an award...and don't think I'd want to be around someone who did - the witness requirement sometimes gets in the way of being able to confirm and justify the award (Vern Klinger was one whose DSC was never upgraded because of that) - choosing someone from among a group of maybe hundreds who might technically qualify but are all just doing the job they volunteered to do and aren't glory seeking (e.g., SF) would be tough - etc. In other words, it can be complicated - and this is one station for whcih there is no prep manual or study guide. ;)
Richard's $.02 :munchin |
The witness requirement may be difficult and place a laboriously burden on others to wade through the difficult process, but it makes no sense to me that the only MOH's that have been presented have all been given posthumously. Of the hundreds of thousand who have served in both Iraq and Afghanistan and the untold amount of firefights and actions taken place, I cannot imagine that many more deserving soldiers and marines have merited the MOH. It is incomprehensible.
Therefore something else must be taking place. There must be a willful determination to insure that more MOH’s are not presented, and if so, only to those who have perished in the encounter. The lack of awarding MOH’s is so apparent, that some in government are also questioning the situation: http://www.sdnn.com/sandiego/2009-06...medal-of-honor Quote:
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Like promotion boards - it's not a wholly objective process - and with valorous awards, one man's hero is another's idea of someone just performing IAW his duty description. Remember - rocket science ain't as exact as scientists would like us to believe, either. ;)
Richard's $.02 :munchin |
Roy Benivedes
Roy Benivedes (sp) was the only SF Soldier that I know of who actively campaigned for his MOH. As much as he deserved it, one didn't campaign for any award in the Army during the Vietnam war.
I have met Rodger Donlon, Bob Howard and Delbert Jennings. They certainly didn't do anything to promote their awards. |
SOF is its own worst enemy when it comes to awards. The conventional guys that got slapped around in Herat, Afgh. in 2004 got silver stars and BSMw/V left and right. It took me a month to get my men air medals for flying back into that shit to rescue the ones who got the silver stars. I was told to put them in for ARCOMw/Vs by the Bn CSM and got called on the carpet when I refused and put them in for BSMw/V. Fortunately the conventional command took care of my team and the 23rd ID CG awarded them air medals, but I had to get my ass ripped by the chain of command for it. They deserved a hell of a lot more than what they got and our own chain of command who freely gave BSMs to mechanics and cooks in Khandahar got pissed off about it.
Considering that crap it would take a whole lot to even think about putting one of the boys in for even a silver star. Probably the best thing to do is to write it like a CMoH and shoot for a BSMw/V. Hopefully someone up the food chain will see the need to upgrade. There are more than a handful of SOF guys out there well deserving the CMoH. The system is borked badly and needs to be fixed. Always has been. |
rltipton wrote
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Rltipton stated that the system is borked. Is it borked because it’s just one of those things that is allowed to happen in a big organization? Is it borked because the reigning powers that be don’t want to recognized heroes? If it’s the former, then it needs to be fixed. If it’s the latter, then it’s another reason why the dems and liberals need to be thrown out of office. However I think maybe there is a third reason. One that is harder to express. If we present medals to deserving folks involved in the current conflict, have we failed ultimately by comparison to adequately honor those in the past whose deeds may be more pronounced, yet they went virtually unnoticed. For example, the SOG folks. In my way of thinking, just getting on a Huey to be dropped behind enemy lines into Laos in itself warranted commendation. Forget what happened after they were there. The SOG stories are just the ones I know about from Plaster’s book. I’m sure there are untold stories where deserving folks went unrecognized. I do not believe the SOG generation did their deeds because they thought they would receive medals. I don’t believe the El Salvador folks did what they did for medals either. However, if we have failed to adequately honor them, we have failed, not them. Does it justify falling short of our duty now? I guess why someone does something is really not the issue. The threshold issue is,” Did they perform an unusually heroic act?” If so, they deserve a medal. However, I hope we are not failing to honor are current heroes, because we failed to do so in the past or have we set the bar so high that they only way one can be awarded the MOH is to die in the process. That doesn’t make any sense either. On Memorial Day I went to the National Cemetery in Riverside, CA to visit my Uncle’s grave. I went early to beat the crowd and also took the time to walk through the MOH pavilion where the MOH awardees were listed. They were categorized by war or engagement. Some were from wars or engagements I was not familiar with. Some folks were awarded more then one MOH. I got the feeling that the criteria has changed over time or maybe changed as our culture changed. I’m not saying we should cheapen the MOH. But to only give five or seven MOH’s with all the fighting going on doesn’t seem to be right. |
It shouldn't be a numbers game...ie: How many have been given out during this conflict or that conflict, ... If the situation warrants 10 guys being put in for it no matter how small the operation/mission than so be it. But as stated above it'll never be an exact science...
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I hear you on the air medals. We did 1-2 air assaults per week the entire deployment all over the country. We never got the air medals and kept trying to put in for them. One person was stopping them and it was in our own chain of command before they even got sent up to USASFC.
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MOH may be awarded
Fallen soldier to receive Medal of Honor
By Gina Cavallaro - Staff writer ARMY Times Posted : Thursday Jul 23, 2009 16:58:08 EDT Sgt. 1st Class Jared Monti, who was killed in Afghanistan June 21, 2006, will receive the Medal of Honor for his actions in combat, his father, Paul Monti, told Army Times in a telephone interview Thursday. President Obama called Paul Monti, a retired school teacher, Tuesday evening at his home in Raynham, Mass., Monti said. “The talk was very short and to the point. He said ‘hello, how are you?’ and I said ‘fine, Mr. President’ and then he told me the secretary of the Army and the secretary of defense have approved Jared for the Medal of Honor,” Monti said. “He said he was proud of Jared.” Sgt. 1st Class Monti, 30, was assigned to 3rd Squadron, 71st Cavalry, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, when he was killed in Afghanistan. He will become the sixth service member to receive the Medal of Honor during operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and the first soldier to receive the nation’s highest award for valor in Afghanistan. His father said he will receive the award on behalf of his son at a ceremony will scheduled for a date in September. The announcement of the award and the call from the president, he said, is “bittersweet” after the loss of his son. “I’m reliving all of this all over again. I’d much rather have him than any medal,” Monti said. Sgt. 1st Class Monti was single and had aspired to be a school teacher like his dad. He told his father he didn’t want to marry until his commitment to the Army was complete. “He told me ‘I’m not getting married while I’m in the military, I don’t want to leave a widow behind, I’ve seen too many of my soldiers go through that too many times,’ ” Monti recalled. http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/0...i_MOH_072309w/ lue |
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Big Teddy :munchin |
One thing is for sure.
If we keep making dying while earning it a pre-requisite, we are denying our children opprtunities to meet the role models we should be emulating. We have not had a living MoH recipient since 1973, IIRC. Given the number of American servicemembers engaged in combat since then, you would think that someone has met the standard, and survived. Statistically, there have been fewer MoH awards for OIF and OEF than in any other conflicts in our history. TR |
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