Yep, a picture of Black Jack Pershing. I like it for a couple of reasons. It reflects the man as he is/was. And I like that once upon a time, a 4 star general of the armies was able to wear just 3 medals and because he was a soldier of ours, there weren't enough actual medals to make up a ribbon bar of 3 so he had to wear some French doodad and some other doodad from some other country, mabye even Belgium.
I followed the example of my dad and his dad and just wore the 3. That was enough. I still remember EN2 Anderson asking the Commodore if we would get any medals once we went to the Persian Gulf and started sweeping mines. This was back in the last millenium and as Anderson said, he'd been in the Navy for 5 years and still didn't have a single medal to show for it. By the time he got back from the Gulf he had 3 rows. It was a medalish time and there was a war you never heard of there. Praying Mantis. Me? I'd already spent time sweeping mines in the Red Sea and a year in the Iran/Iraq War Zone and I had two whole ribbons but none of your actual medals. 18 years later I learned that we had been awarded the Humanitarian Service Medal for our actions in the Red Sea. And there, I thought it was nothing but a complete waste of time.
12 comments:
I served in the Navy from 1988-92. My second and last ship, the USS Forrestal, was part of Operation Provide Comfort--by the time we got there, the war was over & done, but then, if you blinked, you missed it.
I was honorably discharged with 3 ribbons on my uniform, and two of those represented medals, more or less (National Defense & SW Asia Service--the third ribbon is Sea Service Deployment). Peacetime naval avionics doesn't lend itself to the collection of decorations.
--Tennessee Budd
If you look at my 'about the author' you see me with all of my ribbons as an LT. A muc and ssdr. By then I'd served on a frigate, middle east force flagship, a destroyer and a mine sweeper. It was a different navy back then.
He looks like what he was, someone who has seen a lot of things, that were not pleasant. But he kept going, as that is what a Man does, and sees things through.
I was in the Air Force, they started giving out medals and ribbons for showing up to work on time during my day. Only three of 'em (mine) are worth mentioning, the others, meh, bits of tinsel to dazzle the civvies...
(Was there a link to this "new" blog you speak of?)
On the right, blogroll, top of the list actually, History.
now, get yur mad on, His story. Oh, never mind.
as a fellow airman, I tend to voice my disdain for the "participation" medals we were awarded for having a warm body in class. that said, I also feel that showing up for formation and working the mission for what often turns into days uninterrupted is something that needs to be recognised at the unit level. sometimes at the individual level. Pressing beyond the usual personal limits to further the mission often is never recognised even by peers.
every soldier, salor, airman and marine at some level holds recognition in high regard; performing one's duty well deserves recognition. If all that is asked of you is that you show up on time every time ready tp do your duty, then that is something that should be recognised,no matter how slight the recognition may be.
Occasionally, I saw an "Operation Deepfreeze" on a DER sailor from the Tincan Fleet at Pearl.
Other than that nobody got anything but a Good Conduct, for putting in the time.
I keep hearing in the back of my mind:
"Medals? We ain't got no medals. WE. Don't. Got. TO. SHOW. YOU. NO. STINKIN'. MEDALS!"
I got the recognition thing. The skipper would give medals to anyone I pointed at. I would give them days off. They were by and large, the essential men and yeah, I got underway without them. They really and truly were the guys that could fix anything. My job, as I saw it as CHENG, was to create more of them. It worked of 464 and worked even better on 438.
Hahaha!
Ah, I see it now, gomen nasai!
make no mistake. I horded the medals all the way back and if the powers that be said we could award 4 NAMS for our role in fighting Iraqi agression on Faylaka I was there telling the awards board that I'd be awarding them all to my guys. And then the senior chief would ask, what about the Doc, don't you think he should get one and I'd be all like, well, yeah, he can have one of mine and then he'd say something about the MS2 and maybe he deserves one and I'd be like OK but what srsly pissed me off over the years is that good sailors didn't get an award because their division officer was too lazy or stupid to write them up for one. It would take me all of about 5 minutes to write a seriously good NAM or NCM . 5 minutes and that was without having to take a minute or to make shit up. Srsly, had the best sailors in the world working for me back in those days.
My great uncle, my grandmother's , was a sister's husband was a navy captain and destroyer co throughout wwii. He also went on 6 or 8 Deep Freeze things. He kept the certificates on the walls of his downstairs bathroom in Virginia Beach. I remember him in in his bridge coat, a beret with his command at sea pin on it. He was a character.
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