[Polybius]

I wonder what the American Spirit Honor Medal was.

It was a Basic Training award.

From this guy's account, it sounds like something out of a Sergeant Bilko episode. :-)

.........the American Spirit Honor Medal, awarded to the one soldier in all of this Basic Training, who best exemplifies "High Example to Comrades in Arms", and that the panel of Officers would judge those competing on many topics, including: Military Bearing. The soldier must demonstrate proficiency with the various Military marching maneuvers, such as The Salute, The About Face, Left/Right Flanking Maneuver, Sitting in Military Way, and so on. That sounded simple enough. ................ The Uniform Code of Military Justice. This is the detailed Law of the Military. The soldier must demonstrate knowledge of this Code by answering questions posed by the panel of Officers. This is just a bunch of memorizing, and it's only a year since I got out of college, so I should be able to handle a little bit of book work. .................... Recognition of US and Enemy Aircraft. Since we are an Air Guard unit, being able to recognize our own, and those who would kill us, seems to be a reasonable thing to ask. I'm good with stuff like that, and I like airplanes, so I should be able to do that too. .................... Overall Considerations. This is some grab bag of preferences and prejudices, most of which are not named, which the selecting Officers would use to weed out the undesirables who managed to do the other work. Here they were looking for someone with the ability to speak intelligently, possesses an agile mind, possibly a sense of humor, some morals, integrity, and as a bonus might be acceptable enough to look at so as to not make the military look stupid for selecting this person. This is the wild card. Anything could happen. .............So Sergeant Salcedo and I had a good little talk about all this. It seemed he wanted to get it all off his chest, to be able to talk about it to someone other than his wife and drill sergeant buddies who would only give him more humiliation about his inability to recruit even one man who had the Moxie to compete. .................... My final question was what I really wanted to know: "How does one do all of the required preparation and study time for this competition, and still perform all that is expected of him during Basic Training? How is it possible?" And then came the answer, the buried gold. If truth be told, he said, the chosen competitors would be exempt from most of the marching, the kitchen duties, the latrine cleaning, and all the wonderful menial stuff. Instead, they would find some quiet place on base that would allow them to focus full time on the serious challenge lay before them. I could barely contain myself, seeing the beauty of this situation, but I pressed for the final answer: "Would your man, if you had one, be allowed to use the Airman's Club to prepare? (The one with the pool table and air-conditioning, and the color TV) Yes, of course, that would be expected, he conceded. ...............It was at this point that from deep within me a growing Patriotism welled up, and I blurted out: "I'm your man!". Salcedo nearly had an apoplectic fit. He went from brown to pink to purple in less than ten seconds, then blew up in paroxysms of cursing and slander and disgust, and went on like that for several minutes, then started to calm down, and it was soon enough that he realized that it was either me or no one at all, so he gave in. .............. And so it was that for several weeks of my Basic Training, while the others were grunting and cleaning and running themselves ragged in the rain, and sweating like pigs on the hot drill pad, being humiliated for having an inspection tag still in a pocket, that I was cool and dry inside, shooting pool, throwing darts, and watching TV in the Airman's Club.

[U S Army EOD]

Well I can certainly understand how Murtha got one, it mentions "about face"

[Vn_survivor_67-68]

Here is the Army's (rescinded) official stuff on it......it was not to be worn on the uniform

http://www.hqda.army.mil/Library/mildoc/AR%20672-210,%2023%20July%201976.pdf