WP: Army Badge Of Honor Now In Contention

[kskiska]

Award Denied to GIs Retrained for Infantry

Sunday, October 24, 2004; Page A01

BAGHDAD -- Capt. Steve Gventer is still picking shrapnel out of his right shoulder. It became lodged there last month when a rocket-propelled grenade sailed over his head and exploded against a wall, splattering him with hot metal.

That attack came two weeks after an insurgent in Sadr City, the Baghdad slum, shot Gventer through his left calf with a machine gun.

Gventer's street fighting would appear to qualify him for one of the U.S. Army's most prestigious awards, the Combat Infantryman Badge. The award recognizes soldiers whose daily mission is to pursue the enemy, primarily on foot, and engage in close combat.

But Gventer won't get the award -- at least not under current rules. Normally a tank company commander, Gventer was retrained as an infantry officer before he was deployed. He and his men have fought furious street battles in one of Iraq's most perilous corners. But because they are technically tankers, they are ineligible for an award that for six decades has distinguished those who fight at ground level, where war is most lethal.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57435-2004Oct23.html

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. They have given the CIB and devices to...

Ossifers who have flown into the fringes of a combat area, stepped on the ground, gotten back into the bird and flown away. Really.

This is so lame. Just mind roasting.

[PsN2Wind]

5. Read Hackworth's "About Face"

Talks much about the officers going to VietNam to "get their ticket punched". Pick up a CIB, theater ribbon etc. then unassing the area.
A good friend, one of the only guys I've known that went to Nam and admits he was a REMF. He was in Danang but volunteered for a temporary assignment in Chou Lai because he wanted to "get in the shit" and get a Combat Infantry Badge. Never heard a shot fired, so no CIB, and he's still pissed.

[clydefrand]

2. Then I say we take away the chimp's honorable discharge.

that he says he got...

[PsN2Wind]

4. Dubya got an "Honorary Discharge'

much like an Honorary Degree in that you don't have to do all that studying and stuff or to have even been there. Granted by people that didn't want to piss off his daddy. No officer in the military ever hurt his career by doing nice things for the politically well connected.

[DS1]

3. Wow, retraining tankers, they're really desperate for bodies

[lfs5]

6. That sucks! I say we start an email campaign...

use the media list that was posted here last night...also protest letter to DOD and whoever's in charge of the policy! Who's wiling to volunteer? One person won't amke a difference, but a lot of us yelling and screaming about the injustice might!

Let me know. I'm ready to go, if you are.