I agree that the award of a bronze star suggests some kind of battlefield heroics, the fact of the matter is that it does not necessarily mean a battlefield action. Carp was awarded the bronze star apparently because by his service he may have and probably did contribute to saving the lives of many soldiers.
FWIW you get a purple heart if you lose a leg or cut your finger. The fact that one soldier gets it for cutting his finger does not diminish the honor bestowed upon the soldier who loses his leg. They both earned it under the same rules. Chain mail earned his medal on the battlefield and Carp earned his by his service off the front lines.
I think the headline on this story is misleading. The power point was not the point. It was the entire tour of duty.
Thanks for your service. Both of you. You both have done your Country proud.
I really hope that "award inflation" is stopped and maybe "battlefield heroics" gain their own separate status from the meritorious service.
I had a reasonably long time in the service, starting as an enlisted man and finishing as a lieutenant colonel. I saw many views of the service and its idiosyncracies. There was award inflation based on rank, certain awards reserved for colonels and above, and there was also strong pressure to obtain certain awards to be in a better position for promotion. I agree that combat support and combat service support troops are exposed to severe danger sometimes and they are essential in their jobs. I just feel that those rare events where you know that what you are doing will get you horribly killed and you do it anyway should be a separate class of awards, not confused with anything else.
While I was being trained as a new second lieutenant, I saw a Marine Colonel awarded the Bronze Star with V device for "being instrumental in the fielding of the M-16 rifle". Later, when I was attending a graduation dinner for a service school, the young lady airman sitting across from me was wearing the Bronze Star and when I asked her how she earned it, she said that she "provided essential support to the operations in Grenada" from her office in the Pentagon.
These sort of things make those of us who were in direct combat pause. Is that all our service meant to our country? There were few of us as it was who signed up for the most dangerous stuff - and it was dangerous: I never met a single Marine infantryman in Vietnam who hadn't been wounded. They often didn't report what they considered "scratches" because they wanted to stay with their units and not be sent home (unlike 'ol Combat John Kerry) and often the wounds were caused by your own grenades - it's hard to throw the things far enough to avoid being hit by your own frags. One man I knew was hit by a small fragment and concealed it from all of us - just rubbed Johnson & Johnson First Aid Cream into the hole and kept going - until he collapsed later in the day. I knew many, many other acts of heroism that weren't seen by any officer and most of the real heroes never got any medals at all. All the same, it still galls to think that what small recognition we got can be confused with "outstanding support for the operations in Grenada".
I don't begrudge the Chaplain who was recognized for his superb work supporting our forces in Afghanistan. I just wish they'd picked a different medal, that's all. Life ain't perfect, I guess,