Medal of Honor
Distinguished Service Cross
Distinguished Service Medal
The three highest honors that the US Army gives, awarded to Charles Evans Kilbourne throughout a long and distinguished career; the medals have been donated to VMI where he studied and worked, but the corresponding ribbons remain in the attic of his old home.
Just to piggy-back on my post complaining about my ribbon-wearing woes, I was digging through my mom’s attic and unearthed a box containing my great grandfather’s ribbon collection. Aside from revealing some old-school mounting methods, I can appreciate that he probably got tired of dealing with ribbons as well, albeit for a different reason. A lot of these are repeats for different uniforms or replacements for ones that wore out, but there looks like there is some new information in here. Specifically the Military Order of the Dragon which I hadn’t heard of until now. Clearly I have a lot of research to do and a lot less complaining to do about my own ribbon problems. I wish I could link to all the exploits that earned these, but I don’t think I could do him justice. I’ll leave it at this though,
“Within a range of 250 yards of the enemy and in the face of rapid fire (he) climbed a telegraph pole at the east end of {Paco Bridge} and in full view of the enemy coolly and carefully repaired a broken telegraph wire, thereby reestablishing telegraphic communication to the front.”
If you’re wishing people a “happy” Memorial Day,
you’re missing the point.
yesterdayshitsfortodaysloners:
Lucero - Joining the Army
In honor of ‘The Greatest Generation’, the ‘New Greatest Generation’, everyone before and in between, and all the misfits, loners, rebels, friends and lovers who supported them. Thanks.
Ordinarily I spend my days off from the day job focused on writing pursuits. And I usually don’t have holidays off.
However, I have Memorial Day off and have decided that I will spend it, instead of writing, tracking down and posting various soldier memorials that I can find from online sources,…
Thank you.
we won’t remember a thing.
I realize that the site I’m reading is comedy, but it’s tasteless to broadcast stuff like this. We get the day off in order to honor the memories of those who were lost (Veterans Day is that other one where we honor those who are still with us), and the whole idea in the beginning was to spend the day placing flowers on the graves of service members. You may think you don’t know anyone who served, but it’s a pretty safe bet that if you are over the age of 20, you at least have or had two grandfathers who did some type of service, and potentially even two grandmothers who served as well. If they are still here with us, then you can bet a lot of their buddies who served aren’t; if they aren’t with us, then they probably have a headstone you could visit.
I’m not stupid; I know everyone isn’t going to drop their plans tomorrow in order to do something selfless, but if you plan to spend the weekend celebrating the creation of the hamburger or the revolutions in beer packaging that gave us a lower “glug factor”, maybe you should at least keep it off the internet. I’m not saying everyone should spend the entire weekend remembering as many service members as they can, as soldierporn has committed to doing. I’m just saying that comedy doesn’t necessitate tastelessness.
I’m a little torn over this one. I just got my second ribbon (medals and ribbons are basically the same thing, just worn on different uniforms), but much like the first one, I don’t really feel like I earned it. The first is the National Defense Service Ribbon which is awarded for serving during a time of national emergency. The second is the Global War on Terrorism Service Ribbon which is awarded after 30 days of consecutive service in “the fleet” in support of combat operations. Because of my duty station, my unit is constantly in support of a lot of other units, some of which are deployed in the “Global War on Terror”.
Nobody ever even mentioned that I had ‘earned’ the second one, it just showed up one day in an online database that tracks my records. I had to do an afternoon of digging just to make sure it wasn’t a glitch, and I’m still not entirely convinced. Basically wearing them makes me look more impressive to people who know nothing about military decorations, and makes me look like even more of a boot-ass Lt to anyone who does.
Regardless, the rules say that you wear what you rate, so I don’t have an option; pin them on and prepare to explain what they mean to people who don’t know, and explain the technicality that you were awarded them on to those who do know.
Once again, Terminal Lance cuts through the bullshit; since I know that everyone really just wants to know more about haircuts, he says it better than I can, please read this before asking me anything about my haircut.
Curious about Marine Corps haircuts? I’ve taken the liberty of breaking it down for you Barney-style in response to a reader’s email. Check it out!
Snacks made from MREs given to me by a friend who became a Marine. These are popovers with cherry-blueberry cobbler filling and instant cappucino mix cream. Little patriotic snacks with Army folk among them.
I’ve been anxiously awaiting this post. MREs, although I hate them a lot less than most Marines I know, are admittedly a bit disgusting. I rounded up some of my favorite and least favorite MRE components and passed them along to a culinarily inclined friend who I knew would be more creative with them than I ever could.
