Word: medal
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Every small child dreams of one day standing atop the podium with a United States flag, a bouquet of flowers, and a medal around the neck, listening to the sounds of the Star Spangled Banner. With the beginning of the 2008 Summer Olympics training in fencing, junior foil fencer Emily Cross may be able to realize that dream. Last month the New York, N.Y. native decided to move her life from the world of books and Harvard Square to a life among the international circuit of weapons. “I made the decision to try to qualify over...
...than in previous wars? That's the message the Pentagon is sending, say critics, by not awarding today's soldiers nearly as many of the nation's highest military honors. Three and a half years of combat in Iraq, for example, have produced only two winners of the Medal of Honor, the country's highest military award for bravery in combat. There were, by contrast, 464 Medals of Honor handed out during America's involvement in World War II, which lasted the same amount of time. If the government had been as stingy then as it is now, adjusting...
...what's different in this war? For one thing, the process for getting medals has become more cumbersome. Some commanders are reacting against what they see as medal inflation in recent wars, especially Gulf War I. And there may be fewer opportunities for Audie Murphy--style heroics when your enemy is planting improvised explosive devices (IEDs) or driving a car bomb. But the nearly 3,000 war dead testify to the peril of those fighting in Iraq, and a growing chorus has been speaking out against the Pentagon's parsimony. They're asking why there have not been more...
Perhaps the biggest reason for the scarcity of top medals is the nature of combat in this war, which is so different from that of previous conflicts. The old saying about waiting to see the whites of the enemy's eyes before shooting doesn't apply when that enemy is a quarter of a mile away, looking at you through binoculars to see when to detonate the IED. Yet there are soldiers in Iraq--and Afghanistan--whose valor at least equals that of past generations of Americans. On April 14, 2004, several Marines were manning a checkpoint in western Iraq...
HONORED. Jason Dunham, 22, Marine corporal who died in April 2004 after diving on a grenade to save fellow Marines; with the Congressional Medal of Honor, the U.S.'s highest military award; by President Bush at the dedication of the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Va. The medal for Dunham was just the second Congress has bestowed during the 31/2-year Iraq...