Posted on 09/02/2023 1:00:45 AM PDT by thegagline
The Army and Marine Corps units that rushed to Afghanistan in August 2021 to oversee the evacuation of more than 124,000 civilians from Kabul in roughly two weeks will receive the Presidential Unit Citation, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced on Thursday.
Troops will be able to wear the award if they were assigned to those units for those missions. But some troops told Task & Purpose that the unit awards should be paired with further individual awards for so-far unacknowledged acts of heroism by individual service members.
Awarded for extraordinary heroism on vital missions, the Presidential Unit Citation is the highest honor that a military unit can receive. The award has gone to units that parachuted or stormed ashore on D-Day, the Navy SEAL team that killed Osama Bin Laden, and Coast Guard units behind that service’s full-throttle response to Hurricane Katrina.
“In recognition of teams that operated and excelled under these difficult and dangerous conditions, I am proud to announce the approval of the Presidential Unit Citation for the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, the Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force-Crisis Response-Central Command, and Joint Task Force 82 of the 82nd Airborne Division and its supporting units,” Austin said in a statement recognizing the second anniversary of the end of the Afghanistan War.
The move comes as belated appreciation for soldiers with the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade, who braved enemy fire to transport about 10,000 Americans and Afghans to Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, from where they were flown to safety.
Several soldiers who served with the brigade at the time told Task & Purpose last year that many helicopter crews who were initially nominated for Distinguished Flying Crosses and Bronze Stars had their awards downgraded by the brigade’s leadership.
“Mike,” an Army CH-47 Chinook helicopter pilot who served with the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade during the evacuation, told Task & Purpose on Tuesday that he and his crew were shot at as they flew missions, but his unit’s leadership refused to award the soldiers Combat Badges and other military decorations.
“I was recognized more by Boeing, the U.S. defense company that makes the helicopter that I fly, than I was by my own brigade commander,” said Mike, who spoke on condition of anonymity and is being identified by a pseudonym to avoid potential reprisal.
Mike said he feels the reason why soldiers in the brigade did not receive individual valor awards is that such recognition would underscore that U.S. troops had to step up in the absence of good leadership.
“I think the DoD internally recognizes it was a disaster, but it’s trying to move on and decided some hand-wave unit awards are the way to least-acknowledge it while still doing ‘something,’” Mike said.
I think I would be absent on this day.
It’s a ‘medal’ that I would refuse to add/wear.
Will anyone want to wear it?
Rather than a ribbon, they might instead wear black armbands.
The ribbon should be black,
It’s getting almost as bad as when the Soviets awarded a medal of valor to this stinking piece of offal:
https://www.thisdayinaviation.com/1-september-1983/original/
Like the still record high number of CMHs given out to the troops who massacred each other while massacring 90 surrounded and surrendering Indians at Wounded Knee.
The heroes of Dunkirk were the civilian boaters. They don’t give many medals to civilians.
Brave Sir Robin(ette) Bravely ran away!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre
"Historian Will G. Robinson notes that, in contrast, only three Medals of Honor were awarded among the 64,000 South Dakotans who fought for four years of World War II."
Regardless of the political import of an event, the heroism of the men and women who participated in it should be recognized. Remember the Alamo!
All the citizens of Malta were awarded the Cross of St George for their heroic defense of the island during World War 2.
Things like medals, border walls, firearms…hell most things in life, are only as good as who controls their use.
While more than 330,000 Allied troops were rescued, the British and French sustained heavy casualties and were forced to abandon nearly all their equipment; around 16,000 French and 1,000 British soldiers died during the evacuation. The British Expeditionary Force alone lost some 68,000 soldiers during the French campaign.
The War Office made the decision to evacuate British forces on 25 May. In the nine days from 27 May to 4 June 338,226 men escaped, including 139,997 French, Polish, and Belgian troops, together with a small number of Dutch soldiers, aboard 861 vessels (of which 243 were sunk during the operation). B. H. Liddell Hart wrote that Fighter Command lost 106 aircraft over Dunkirk and the Luftwaffe lost about 135, some of which were shot down by the French Navy and the Royal Navy. MacDonald wrote in 1986 that the British losses were 177 aircraft and German losses 240.
There were many heroes at Dunkirk. Outnumbered and outgunned, the British and French troops at great sacrifice bought time for the rescue.
A marble memorial to the battle stands at Dunkirk. The French inscription is translated as: “To the glorious memory of the pilots, mariners, and soldiers of the French and Allied armies who sacrificed themselves in the Battle of Dunkirk, May–June 1940.”
A commemorative medal was established in 1960 by the French National Association of Veterans of the Fortified Sector of Flanders and Dunkirk on behalf of the town of Dunkirk. The medal was initially awarded only to the French defenders of Dunkirk, but in 1970 the qualification was expanded to include British forces who served in the Dunkirk sector and their rescue forces, including the civilians who volunteered to man the “little ships”.
I’m sure the award will be given posthumously to those killed during the botched operation. That will make their parents feel so much better.
Notice it wasn’t 124,000 US civilians?
And back to that article on why the military is running a contest to get better recruitment material.....
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