The rectangular-shaped medal with the sky-blue background with the silver musket super-imposed on it about a third of the way down his chest is called a Combat Infantry Badge(a ‘’CIB). This is given to those soldiers in the US Army who have served(or survived more like it) thirty days or more in combat. Not in a ‘’combat area’’, ie. as a supply sargent or a truck driver or some other support service but an actual combat infantryman, a ‘’grunt’’ up front, in a hole getting shot at and shooting back. It has been my great honor and privilege to have known some WW2 vets, men who survived D-Day, the Normandy Campaign , The Battle of the Bulge and other major campaigns who’ve been awarded this citation and when you realize what it means to have lived through that kind of combat, brother you’re meeting a real soldier. This punk ought to have been horse-whipped for this offense alone. Oh and btw, the CIB doesn’t have what ever the hell that silver crap hanging on it that this moron has tacked to it.
The silver “crap” around it are the oak leaf clusters IIRC.
That is what makes it a Combat Infantrymans Badge, as opposed to the Expert Infantrymans Badge which has no clusters.
The stars denote how many times it has been awarded, in the case of the idiot pictured above, that would be the 3rd award.