By Jim Tice - Staff writer Posted : Wednesday May 9, 2007 10:39:27 EDT
Soldiers have earned nearly 343,000 combat awards and decorations in Iraq and Afghanistan so far, according to the Army’s latest medal count.
The exact total — 342,701 — was calculated by Human Resources Command in mid-April. It includes valor, service, achievement and combat badges awarded since December 2001 for Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and since March 2003 for Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The Army has fielded a new decoration for soldiers who do not qualify for the Combat Infantryman and Combat Medical Badges — the Combat Action Badge.
Established in May 2005 by then-Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the CAB recognizes non-infantry and non-Special Forces soldiers who come under fire.
As of mid-April, the Army had awarded 33,667 CABs and was processing paperwork on thousands more.
Because of a time lag in the reporting of award data from field commands to HRC’s Awards Branch, the 342,701 total does not include medals and badges awarded in units during March and April.
The total is far behind that from the Vietnam War, with more than 2.8 million medals — not including combat badges .
The Army did not keep centralized records on combat badges — the Combat Infantryman Badge and Combat Medical Badge — until the Grenada campaign of 1983, so totals for Vietnam and earlier do not include combat badges.
While there were 11.2 million soldiers under arms in World War II, the medal count was only 1.8 million, possibly because of under-reporting in the pre-computer age. The total includes 301 Medals of Honor and 4,434 Distinguished Service Crosses.
About 2.8 million soldiers participated in the Korea War of 1950-53. The conflict generated 41,801 awards, including 78 Medals of Honor and 723 Distinguished Service Crosses.
Other than the current wars, the Persian Gulf War and subsequent monitoring of Iraq was the largest conflict for awards and decorations since Vietnam.
Most of the 142,248 medals and badges awarded for that conflict went to soldiers who participated in the intense 100-hour ground offensive of Feb. 1991. The medal count includes 25,013 combat badges, but no Medals of Honor or Distinguished Service Crosses.
Since President Bush declared a “war on terrorism” more than five years ago, directives from Army headquarters to field commands have consistently emphasized that only the most deserving soldiers receive awards, an apparent reaction to the more liberal policies — and congressional criticism of those policies — that followed Operation Desert Storm.
The conservative approach is clearly apparent with the prestigious valor medals.
So far, the Army has given only one Medal of Honor, a posthumous award to Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith for heroism in Iraq; six Distinguished Service Crosses; 269 Silver Stars for valor; and 1,974 Bronze Stars for valor. Compared with past wars, that seems conservative for a force of two field armies that are under constant fire, and that at any given time numbers more than 120,000 soldiers.
