Why are these medals so late in being awarded?
My best friend was a Cobra Gunship pilot in Vietnam. He died in 2006 of pancreatic cancer. Only ten days before his death, while laying in a hospital bed, he was awarded a silver star for a heroic action he performed in 1968.
The original Medal of Honor nomination, submitted by George Koziol, one of the men wounded in the battle of Se San, was lost in 1970. It wasn’t until Memorial Day 1999 that the paperwork was rediscovered.
Alton Mabb, a 101st Abn. Div. Vietnam veteran, found the original paperwork while at the National Archives, researching an article he was writing for Screaming Eagle, the division association’s magazine.
“I just asked them to bring me a box of something, and I asked them to bring me some Medal of Honor stuff and, so I had this big file,” Mabb explained. He knew who some of the MOH recipients from that time period were, but when he stumbled across Sabo’s nomination, he knew he had found someone who had never been recognized. “It intrigued me, because there was quite a bit of paperwork there, maps of the battle and all that stuff.”
Initially, Mabb let the information lie, but a few weeks later he asked archive personnel to send him copies of the paperwork and began the push to get Sabo recognized. Mabb confirmed Sabo’s military records and awards using the Freedom of Information Act. He also began the three-year search for veterans of the Se San battle. During that time, he discovered that there was a three-year statute of limitations on Medal of Honor nominations, it would require a congressional override to be completed.
In March 2002, Mabb took the paperwork to his congresswoman at the time, Corrine Brown, and asked her to intervene.
“Then the government wheels moved quite slowly,” Mabb joked.
Then-Secretary of the Army Francis J. Harvey re-endorsed Sabo’s nomination in May 2006; it was then attached to the HR 4986, the National Defensive Authorization Act of 2008, which was passed into law that January. After a 13-year trek through government processes, the award will be made official, May 16.
Mabb believes the delay in the process stems from some confusion surrounding the battle at Se San. “It’s a little known fact that the 3rdof the 506th was really a substitute battalion for the battalion of the 4th Infantry, who was going to Cambodia,” he explained.
why award so late ? maybe because we weren’t suppose to be in cambodia ?