Valor Tales

AMERICAN AWARDS - A Brief History America, fiercely against many European military traditions, did not have a formal system for any awards or decorations for decades after its forming. In fact, they were so anti-European, that the US Navy didn’t have the rank of admiral until the Civil War (nearly 100 years after the country’s founding) because it was too Imperial. There were two Revolutionary War-era awards however. Both were awarded in exceptionally small numbers (three awards each) and neither were awarded beyond the end of the war. The oldest, and first, American award was the Fidelity Medallion. It was awarded to the soldiers who captured British Major John Andre. Andre was famously the British point of contact for Benedict Arnold (a disaffected American general who turned traitor and gave Britain intelligence in exchange for a British generalcy). Only three men of the New York Militia received the award and it was never bestowed again. Often referred to (incorrectly) as A...

In the history of the Medal of Honor there have been 3,523 awards, including 19 men who received the medal twice. The Army claims 2,454 of those awards, the Navy 748, the Marine Corps 300, and the Air Force only 19 (though in defense of my branch, we can claim many from WWI and WWII when we were a part of the Army). When asked what the composition of the United States military is, these four branches will be the common answer. There is one, often forgotten, branch of the US military; the Coast Guard. They can lay claim to having a single recipient of the Medal of Honor and only 36 Coast Guardsmen have been awarded a service cross (the Navy Cross in all such cases). This will actually be another two-person article. These two men, due to their inseparability in their personal and military lives after enlisting were known as the “Gold Dust Twins.” Today we speak of legendary Coasties Douglas Munro and Raymond Evans. In September, 1939 when the war in Europe kicked off with Germany...