I think one of the highest military decorations one can achieve is respect of ones peers.
…story time-ish…
My father was a fighter pilot for many years, before that he sat alert as a nav/bombnav in B-52’s at Barksdale, LA. After that, F-111’s at Upper Heyford, UK as part of Warsaw Pact central heating. He may or may not have gone downtown in Libya…the first time. Apparently there’s enough classified info surrounding it that he can’t talk about. I’m sure real info is public domain but he refuses and I don’t want to delve. During the first Gulf War, he dropped a single live GBU-28 Paveway III in the deserts of Nevada as a test pilot. This was after turning down the job as the squadron commander of the first F-117 operational unit. He wanted to spend time with his family (me and my mother). Shortly thereafter an F-15 dropped the first operational “bunker buster” in downtown Iraq to great effect, albeit a rather black eye for the US as it was a bunker Saddam had packed full of civilians apparently. He was the last pilot to do fully operational testing before it was used in-theatre. His recommendation was the final check mark on making the weapon operational. After, he became an A-10 pilot, he specialized in CSAR, close air support, was instrumental in getting all the O/A-10’s NV capable. He was a squadron commander both stateside as well as SW Asia. He was shot at on a regular basis by surface-to-air missiles, AA guns, etc. He owned Al Jaber Air Base in Kuwait for a while. He turned down a 6 figure job with the Kuwaiti’s because he didn’t want to move us over there. He became commander of a Combat Operations Squadron at DM, then XO of the wing at Eielson AFB in Alaska. He was instrumental in developing the 12th AF Combined Air Operations Center at DMAFB. It coordinates all of USSOUTHCOM operations (for the most part). When Haiti kicked off he was there running around with the go fast guys as the top AF guy. He refuses to talk about what he saw. From what little I know of what happened outside of the airport I won’t ask. He speaks rather highly his French counterpart, I was surprised. The AF had to pay for knee surgery because of whatever damage he sustained there. I still don’t ask how he got hurt. He retired to ride his motorcycles and substitute teaches elementary school.
Suffice it to say, my father is my hero. I know what he’s accomplished, more so by what he won’t talk about than what he will. During this time he sat on several important commendation recommendation boards. The thing that gets me about this conversation, was something I overheard one day. He just recently became more training/prepping minded. I wrangled him into a local pistol class here in AZ. The instructor is a former Army helo enlisted guy and they started talking a little shop. I’m paraphrasing here but basically what I overhead:
“While I sat on the board we saw a bunch of guys from Iraq and Afghanistan. We were able to direct the order of recommendations we received because of our rank (he retired as a full colonel). After we had made our decisions, we wrote up an overall recommendation for how further commendation processes should proceed. Our recommendation was to review all of the lesser recommendations for commendation first, because after what we saw the FAC’s and STS and PJ’s did, we would rarely be able to justify approving lesser commendations. In every case dealing with those guys, we bumped up the level of commendation because of the understatement of their actions. Those guys did incredible things, and we’ll never be able to give them the credit they really deserve.”
When I heard that my heart stopped. Here’s someone who has several of the medals already listed in this thread (and many of the additions to those medals), a pretty excellent career in his own right (although I feel like I’ve understated it), saying that they were giving medals to guys who accomplishments were so great that lesser commendations could barely be considered. That level of respect seems pretty awesome to me. From what I’ve heard from others who know him, he is a warrior. Though different from the guy with their boots in the dirt, his contributions haven’t been any less valid. The amount of respect he has for those other warriors really does speak volumes to their accomplishments, and I don’t think any dangly piece of metal will ever adequately state what they have accomplished.
Flame me if you will for not having first hand information. This is just one guys opinion based on observation from the outside looking in.
