For every combat award, there are many other warriors who did as much or more than the awardee. Acts of heroism and sacrifice may be relatively common, but they should not be considered commonplace. Recognizing valor in one man, does not disparage any other.
During WWII, it was common to pull “heroes” out for PR duty. Do you think many. Can you imagine ow hard that would have been for most?
I’m looking at it from a grunts perspective. My brother was a grunt, or 11B Infantryman. He went through hard times in Vietnam. He did not come back with any significant medals. Instead he came back with PTSD and eventually died of Agent Orange diseases.
It’s my personal opinion that if all a typical noncombatant does is do what the grunt does, and gets special recognition, it’s really wrong.
Now if a typical noncombatant goes above and beyond in the same order Audie Murphy did, then that person deserves the recognition of performing deeds that are indeed above and beyond the call of duty.
When I was enlisted in a support MOS, we all understood our secondary MOS was 11B. In other words, when we were hit, we all responded by going to the perimeter to do what had to be done. No one got special awards for going to the perimeter to get shot at or to shoot at others. This is what this WWII Navy guy did, in essence he went to the “perimeter” and did his part as expected.
>>During WWII, it was common to pull “heroes” out for PR duty. Do you think many. Can you imagine ow hard that would have been for most?
John Basilone, medal of honor recipient for actions on GuadalCanal comes to mind, pulled from combat to help sell war bonds back in the USA to help the war effort...finally asked to go back to combat, and was sadly killed on Iwo Jima.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Basilone