Posted on 04/11/2003 11:36:58 PM PDT by flutters
West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Warren McGraw is sending letters to President Bush and the state's congressional representatives to encourage the awarding of the Congressional Medal of Honor to Pfc. Jessica Lynch, the 19-year-old former prisoner of war from Palestine.
"It's clear to me that she demonstrates the characteristics of an American hero," McGraw said.
Lynch, a supply clerk with the 507th Maintenance Company, was rescued April 1 from a hospital in Nasiriyah. She had been taken prisoner March 23 after her convoy took a wrong turn and was ambushed by Iraqi forces.
Reports said Lynch fired on her attackers and fought fiercely before being captured.
She has been treated for a head wound, injury to her spine and fractures to her right arm, both legs and right foot and ankle.
"It's just absolutely heart-stopping," McGraw said.
"It brings tears to my eyes every time I hear a story about it."
"While many others have served with great honor and distinction in our struggle in Iraq, I believe that the bravery shown by Pfc. Lynch and the impact her conduct had upon the morale of our troops and the mood of our nation qualifies her for this high honor," said McGraw.
The Medal of Honor was made a permanent decoration by Congress in 1863. It is the "highest award for valor in action against an enemy force which can be bestowed upon an individual serving in the Armed Services of the United States," according to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.
More than 3,400 Medals of Honor have been presented, according to the U.S. Army.
Only one woman has ever been awarded the Medal of Honor. Mary Walker, the first American woman to be a military doctor and a prisoner of war, received the medal in 1866 for her service during the Civil War.
Not discussing who is right or wrong, I was merely pointing out that Bush passed out medals by the handful to the 24 crew members that gave the Chinese their aircraft.
This fact would perhaps argue that Jessica earns something beyond a $25 Purple Heart.
At least one already has. Chris Matthews was calling for PFC Lynch to get the Medal of Honor the other day.
The crew got the MSM, which is a non-combat medal. All combat medals rank higher in my book. She deserves a Bronze Star, probably, depending on her story.
The medals only cost $2 to make. It is the significance that we attribute to them that makes them valuable.
Interesting remark, that.
My dad was a Navy Corpsman who was in the first wave on Iwo Jima. His entire medical team was disabled by one explosion (his partner was killed). Dad was paralyzed from the waist down, and spent eight hours in the ash and sand with the battle raging around him (he took more shrapnel lying there - realized he had a hole in his helmet when he finally got evac) and no one to treat his wounds; he gave himself shots of morphine and tried to stay conscious so no one would assume he was dead.
No one called him a hero. He never thought of himself as a hero. He saved some Marines on that island, and eventually had to save himself - but he was not considered by anyone to have been a war hero. (He was MY hero, but that's another topic.)
I remember seeing the pits and craters on his skin when he had his shirt off. I remember him letting me feel the shrapnel still lodged in his calf.
His "$25 Purple Heart" (all he got, and all he earned) was his most treasured material possession, I think.
My, how times have changed.
Thank you for making that point. I was a little surprised to hear the cost brought up.
My family went thru grief of a brother KIA during WW2. We received a phone call from some person from Western Union and later the Purple Heart. End of story.
We did not begrudge those that lived, all of their medals. Far too many were passed out to far too many for little of nothing. For instance, Lyndon Johnson received a Silver Star. Thus it does not mean a great deal whem some people receive a chest full of medals.
Lobbying for what, Smedley?
To get Pfc. Lynch a Medal of Honor? Or not?
To get Mary Walker's Medal of Honor downgraded to a Meritorious Service Medal? Or not?
To get Douglas MacArthur's Medal of Honor for being caught with his pants down after Pearl Harbor revoked? Or not?
Lobbying Congressional politicians to not play politics with military honor is an exercise in futility because the vast majority of Congressional politicians will put political expediency before military honor every time.
You may get a Congressman to champion the upgrade of an award if they believe that they can make political hay out of it but you will never get Congress to advocate the downgrade of an award if they believe it will have negative political fallout.
Only if you believe otherwise is "lobbying" for such things anything more than an utter waste of time.
So, I'm at a complete loss in trying to figure out just what, exactly, you believe I am "lobbying" for.
Mary Walker's so-called "Medal of Honor" was legitimately revoked in 1917. That is a historical fact.
Just because Jimmy Carter decided that it would be good 1970's politics to railroad it's restoration does not mean that Mary Walker actually earned the equivalent of a modern-day Medal of Honor. The feminist claim that Mary Walker "earned America's highest award" is simply Politically Correct historical revisionism that was compounded by Jimmy Carter's action.
Mary Walker simply earned an award that, at the time that it was awarded to her, had a meaning that ranged the entire spectrum from exceptional gallantry in combat to the Civil War version of the "Alive in '65 Gedunk Medal" to, in her particular case, the Meritorious Service Medal for meritorious non-combat service.
From your hostile reaction to my historical posts, I am sure that you have a dog in some fight on this topic. I just don't see what your dog is or even what your fight is.
You posted the news blurb of that ceremony without comment.
Just so that I can try to learn what your dog in this fight is, let me ask what your point was in bringing your up this incident and the subsequent awards.
Were you for or against those awards?
One set of dogs claims that he was a hero and that the awards were earned.
One set of dogs claims that he was derelict in his duties for not ditching the plane so that it would not fall into ChiCom hands and claims that the awards were a political whitewash.
I do realize that the price of manufacturing a medal has gone up since 1945, but thanks.
I have to tell you that your "$25 Purple Heart" remark struck me as very cold. That's because I knew what it meant to my Dad.
It reminded me of this:
I had a relative who was a career Army man. He was younger than Dad, and unimpressed with my father's service - saying once during a discussion about the Purple Heart my Dad earned on Iwo Jima: "Big deal. They throw those out like candy."
If they do, that's a problem, in my opinion. When those who receive them don't believe they did anything unusual to earn them, what is the point of having them at all? There is none.
Sad that the standard is becoming so low that a young woman who merely did what was expected of her is being suggested by some for the highest of all honors - and odd that someone who apparently thinks they're worth so little seems to want so badly for Private Lynch to have so many.
Big of you not to begrudge them, though.
(If I'm misjudging your remarks, I apologize. Could be my mood right now.)
As Oscar Wilde defined them, a cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I beleive it was Audi Murphy or some person of his stature that made a statement regarding medals and heros. Whoever it was, said, "The heros are those that did not come back".
To me that keeps "medals" in perspective. In my own experience, I saw far too many medals handed out like candy. Yet, here on the wall beside me I have a list of friends shot down, fifty years ago, MIA, medals, one each.
Cold??? Not at all. Grief, you bet.
I suspicion most of this has gone over your head.
May I assume you have a background in such military intelligence gathering????
http://www.homeofheroes.com/jacklucas/3_mcl_story.html
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