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.
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.