Oft-awarded Bronze Star’s significance suffers, some say

[thedrifter]

Posted on Sat, Jul. 07, 2007
Oft-awarded Bronze Star’s significance suffers, some say
By JOYCE TSAI
The Kansas City Star

While the awarding of the Medal of Honor has all but disappeared, another combat award — the Bronze Star — seems to be everywhere.

More than 68,000 Bronze Stars, the military’s fourth-highest combat award, have been given out since the start of the fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. But some say the medal’s significance has been clouded by inconsistencies in how they are awarded among the different services.

The medal, first issued in 1944, was intended to recognize the sacrifices and hardships of combat grunts. But the lines have grayed between combat and noncombat dangers, especially in Iraq.

The Army and Marine Corps are doing most of the fighting in Iraq and suffering the greatest numbers of military deaths. But the Air Force and Navy lead the way in issuing Bronze Stars, based on the ratios of Bronze Stars to service-member deaths.

The Navy is awarding the Bronze Star with V device nearly 10 times more often than the Army and Marines, and the Air Force, about six times more often.

A Pentagon review of medal policies is examining how to ensure that different military branches use similar criteria when awarding the Bronze Star. It also is delving into whether the Bronze Star should continue to be issued to support staff and officers who do not fulfill a combat role.

The medal comes in two types — for valor and for meritorious service. Bronze Stars for valor have a “V” device and are issued for a specific act or acts of heroism in combat. Bronze Stars for merit are issued for a job performed particularly well while in a war zone, not for one heroic act.

Inconsistencies have marred the awarding of both versions.

The Pentagon has received e-mails from service members who have run into personnel with the same type of Bronze Star from different services, and learned that the medal did not involve the same level of combat and sacrifice, said Maj. Stewart Upton, a spokesman. “You will have two soldiers standing side by side. He was in direct combat engagement and the other one wasn’t. … What the review is trying to create is a consistency.”

The Pentagon review has found that the Army has used the V device to recognize a single valorous act in combat, said Bill Carr, Department of Defense undersecretary for military personnel policy.

The Navy and Marines use it to denote several acts of heroism or meritorious performance in a combat zone. The Air Force uses it to reward a single act of courage, several minor acts of heroism or actions while serving in a combat zone, even if not in a combat role.

Some say the disparities in the awarding of the Bronze Star are just a function of the branches’ differing cultures. Marines are known for their tougher standards — and less generous stance on awards, said Allan Henderson, an Army veteran from Topeka who received the Bronze Star for merit.U.S. Rep. John McHugh, a New York Republican, acknowledged that “different services have different cultures, and we want to recognize that.”

But, he said, “looking at the raw data for Afghanistan and Iraq, you have to wonder if there’s not a wide erosion and discrepancy in awards given out for valor. They should be awarded across the services in a way that has a semblance of consistency and predictability.”

Carr agreed.

“We want all four services to sustain their ethos but at the same time to achieve unity of purpose in their awarding of common decorations,” he said.

But making the medals system consistently fair across services and even across history may be an impossible task.

A Bronze Star for a Marine in Vietnam should be the same thing as a Bronze Star for an airman in Desert Storm and a Bronze Star for a soldier in Iraq, said George Webb, a retired Army colonel and executive director of the Kansas Commission on Veterans’ Affairs.

“You’d like to think they are all about the same, but they never are actually the same,” Webb said. “How do you get the medal to mean the same things across the services and across time?

“You’re never going to get it perfect.”

BRONZE STARS FOR AFGHANISTAN, IRAQ WARS

Ratio of Bronze Stars for valor to deaths by branch:

ArmyMarines Navy Air Force

.7-to-1 .8-to-1 7-to-1 4.5-to-1

Ratio of Bronze Stars for merit to deaths by branch:

Army Marines NavyAir Force

21-to-1 1.8-to-1 13-to-1 56-to-1

As of June 23

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Posted on Sat, Jul. 07, 2007
Many say deeds of valor fall short of getting their due — the Medal of Honor
By JOYCE TSAI
The Kansas City Star

To many, this photo is the quintessential image of heroism from the Iraq war.

It shows a bloodied, severely wounded, but apparently indestructible Marine, 1st Sgt. Bradley Kasal of Iowa, 9 mm Beretta in hand, supported by two fellow Marines.

On Nov. 13, 2004, Kasal led his men into an insurgent stronghold in Fallujah to rescue wounded Marines.

As he pulled one Marine toward safety, Kasal was riddled with seven rounds from an AK-47. As both rapidly lost blood, Kasal gave his only set of bandages to the other Marine. When a grenade landed close to them, Kasal rolled on top of the other Marine to shield him from the blast, absorbing more than 40 pieces of shrapnel. Kasal lost 60 percent of his blood but survived.

The photo was posted at military installations worldwide, and many Marines believed he would receive the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest citation for bravery. But Kasal has come to symbolize something else to critics of the military’s medal process: How the military has left unsung — or at least, under-recognized — many heroes of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

Kasal received the Navy Cross, the Marine Corps’ second-highest medal for valor.

“He is a poster boy for courage, selflessness and service to others,” said Joseph Kinney, a writer and Marine veteran of Vietnam. “He is absolutely a hero beyond measure. … There was tremendous frustration that he didn’t receive the Medal of Honor.”

Critics say the medals system has been weakened by inconsistencies, including a failure to recognize service members’ most valiant actions with the Medal of Honor. Some blame politics, suggesting that a desire to highlight how well the war was going in its first weeks led military and government officials to play down acts of heroism performed during fierce fighting. Others say the nature of the war in Iraq has limited the kind of direct combat that leads to Medals of Honor.

Inconsistencies in the medals system have surfaced in previous wars, too, though the current conflicts have called attention to the problem, said Randy Barnett, director of the Kansas City chapter of Vietnam Veterans of America.

“The military needs to redo their guidelines and make them clear-cut and definite,” Barnett said.

The questions have prompted a congressional hearing on medal reform, and the Pentagon is conducting its first major review of its awards and decorations manual in more than 10 years.

Ensuring that medals are issued consistently is important because different standards can hurt troop morale, said Bill Carr, Department of Defense undersecretary for military personnel policy.

U.S. Rep. John McHugh, a New York Republican, said he called for the congressional hearing after learning of too many cases of “medals delayed, medals denied.”

Kinney, who has done extensive research on Medal of Honor recipients, was among those who testified.

“Do we lack true heroes from the war on terror?” he asked. “Is there something in our culture that paralyzes recognizing our bravest warriors?”

Fewer opportunities?

One way military observers analyze how medals are issued from war to war is to compare the numbers and types of medals to the number of service members killed.

Since the start of fighting in October 2001, more than 3,930 U.S. troops have died in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

In the Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia in 1993, 18 U.S. Army Rangers and Delta Force soldiers were killed.

The number of Medals of Honor issued for Iraq and Afghanistan: Two — the same as for Mogadishu.

The Vietnam War had 246 Medal of Honor recipients, one for every 237 troops killed. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the ratio is almost 1-to-2,000.

Marine Brig. Gen. Richard P. Mills told lawmakers that the Medal of Honor has been awarded less often because in Iraq, troops were more likely to be killed by a roadside bomb than to be engaged in close combat.

“When an IED (improvised explosive device) explodes, very seldom is the opportunity there for people to attack, to engage with the enemy foe that is attacking him,” Mills said.

This limits the opportunities for individual medals, he said.

Kinney countered that a lot of close combat occurred early in the invasion of Iraq and continued in insurgent hotbeds. But he said the Bush administration, after originally describing the war as a short-lived operation that would meet little resistance, has sought to downplay what has become an unpopular war.

Early on, the administration was “apprehensive about taking any action, including the Medal of Honor, that would have made the invasion of Iraq look any more warlike than it was,” Kinney said. “That way, they could keep the harshness of the war out of the minds of the American people.

“But in retrospect, there were a lot of battles going on in the first few days of the invasion and beyond that were pretty amazing, but those events were diminished — and (the military) was unwilling to give the medals these soldiers deserved.”

The decision to downplay actions in the beginning of the war has continued to influence the issuing of medals, he said.

Kinney, who said he had examined hundreds of medal citations, is certain that “in previous wars, Kasal would have received the Medal of Honor.”

U.S. Rep. Ike Skelton, a Missouri Democrat and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said he thought more service members in Iraq had performed acts worthy of the Medal of Honor.

“Some of the Distinguished Service Crosses could have very well warranted the Medal of Honor,” he said.

He said he hoped that some of these medals would be upgraded over time, as they have been in past wars.

Death as a factor

Some observers, including McHugh, say that over the years death has become a criterion for the Medal of Honor. That’s not the way it should be, he said in an interview. Whether a service member lives or dies should not color the decision to grant a Medal of Honor or the No. 2 medal for valor — the Navy Cross, Air Force Cross or the Army’s Distinguished Service Cross.

Only two service members have been named recipients of the Medal of Honor in Iraq, and both died as a result of their heroic actions.

McHugh noted one example from Vietnam in which two Marines from the same unit shielded someone from a grenade blast on the same day, but in different locations. Gunnery Sgt. Allan J. Kellogg, who died, received the Medal of Honor. Lance Cpl. Richard Gresko, who lived, received the Navy Cross.

“That is an inconsistency of our highest medal, by any measure, and that is not the way these things should be issued,” McHugh said.

He said he was worried that this type of decision-making might be happening even more now.

Joseph Sloan, Gresko’s former commanding officer, said he thought politics and the desire to keep the lid on an unpopular war played into such decisions.

“If someone dies through a heroic deed, if you can face it with a Medal of Honor, it’s really nice. It reads better in the newspapers,” he said in an interview. But if he lives, “he’s a constant reminder of a war gone bad. Why would you want to give him the highest award?”

Skelton said he thought that “for some reason, there was a clampdown on awards for valor in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

The Department of Defense’s Carr said he could point to at least two upgrades from Silver Star to the Distinguished Service Cross as proof that the military was not suppressing medals. And he rejected the notion that death has become a requirement for the Medal of Honor.

“No military leader would tolerate an artificial constraint on recognizing one’s heroism, and there has never been a hint of that kind restriction in this operation — from the administration, Congress or the Department of Defense,” he said.

White House spokesman Alex Conant said the executive office did not try to influence such decisions, and relied on recommendations from the Department of Defense.

An imperfect scienceDan Fraley estimates that hundreds of service members have been trying to upgrade medals they received for past conflicts. Fraley, director of veterans affairs in Bucks County, Pa., has helped lead an effort to get Gresko the Medal of Honor. Gresko, disabled from his injuries, walks with difficulty now and often endures great pain.

Appeals are difficult because the military has been reluctant to reverse past decisions. Activists — with the help of at least eight congressmen and one senator — have been lobbying to get Gresko’s medal upgraded for 24 years, said Jerry Jonas, a newspaper columnist who testified in the hearings.

The medals system is imperfect, Fraley said, and always will be.

“They are always going to make mistakes,” he said — but there are too many blatant inconsistencies.

Kasal, who struggled for nearly two years in recovery and rehabilitation, is now a Marine recruiter in Iowa with the rank of sergeant major. He is not bitter about not receiving the Medal of Honor.

“The awards process as I know it is a system that has a lot of checks and balances, and if for whatever reason they decided not to award me the Medal of Honor, that’s out of my control,” he said in an interview. “… I’m just happy the Marine Corps gave me the opportunity to continue to serve again.”

But Kinney said it was important that heroic acts be justly recognized: “In cheating them, we cheat ourselves.”

“My son is 21 years old,” he said. “He should be able to look at his own peers and find his own heroes. We are denying a whole new generation of heroes — and those that can be inspired by them.”

Only two Medals of Honor have been awarded for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the same number as the Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia in 1993. The recipients in Iraq were Army Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith, top, and Marine Cpl. Jason Dunham. For their stories,

see A7

@ Go to KansasCity.com to hear an interview with Marine Sgt. Maj. Bradley Kasal.

Medal of Honor recipients in Iraq
•Army Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith, 33, of Tampa, Fla., was helping to construct a prisoner-of-war holding area on April 4, 2003, when more than 100 of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard attacked.

Smith organized a hasty defense and counterattack. He called up two platoons of soldiers, one Bradley Fighting Vehicle and three armored personnel carriers. Lobbing hand grenades and firing anti-tank weapons, he rescued three wounded soldiers from an armored vehicle that had been struck by enemy fire.

He then ran onto the damaged armored vehicle to man a .50-caliber machine gun. From an exposed position, he killed as many as 50 enemy soldiers before he was fatally wounded.

•Marine Cpl. Jason Dunham, 22, of Scio, N.Y., was leading a patrol on April 14, 2004, looking for sites for a base near the Syrian border, when explosions erupted about a mile away.

Over the radio, he learned that his battalion commander’s convoy had been ambushed and that his commander and a translator had been shot. Dunham and his men rushed to the convoy. He ordered his men to leave their armored vehicles and approach on foot. They stopped a line of seven Iraqi vehicles trying to leave the attack site.

An insurgent jumped from one vehicle and grabbed Dunham by the throat. They wrestled, and in the struggle, Dunham saw the man pull a grenade pin. Dunham dove onto the grenade, using his helmet to shield others from the blast. He died eight days later.

To reach Joyce Tsai, call 816-234-4415 or send e-mail to jtsai@kcstar.com.

Ellie