Medal of Honor

[LongBlade]

Wow.

"Adkins rushed through intense enemy fire and manned a mortar position defending the camp," the Army report says. "He continued to mount a defense even while incurring wounds from several direct hits from enemy mortars. Upon learning that several soldiers were wounded near the center of camp, he temporarily turned the mortar over to another soldier, ran through exploding mortar rounds and dragged several comrades to safety. As the hostile fire subsided, Adkins exposed himself to sporadic sniper fire and carried his wounded comrades to a more secure position."

Later, under enemy fire, some of it coming from South Vietnamese allies who had defected to the North during the battle, Adkins took wounded troops to an airstrip outside the camp for evacuation and drew enemy fire away from the evacuation aircraft. He went outside the camp again to retrieve supplies from an airdrop that fell into a minefield. And that was just day one.

"The bottom line is that it was just not my day to go," Adkins said in an Army interview at Fort Benning, Georgia, last week.

Much more at the link: http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/15/us/adkins-medal-of-honor/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

[jejo68]

Damn  O0

[JudgeDredd]

KUDOS! One hard, brave bastard! 

[airboy]

He lives in my county (Lee County - Alabama).  Lengthy write-up about him in the local paper.  I've not met him (that I know of).  I met General Hal Moore.

Obama has done well by giving Medals of Honor to people who survived.

[Martok]

Badass.  Thanks for sharing LB. 

[Boggit]

The truth is often stranger than fiction. It does beg the question why it took so long for the two soldiers to get their awards? The guy from the civil war will be lucky if his great great great grand children get to know of his courage, and the poor guy in Vietnam had to wait so long for him (and his buddies) to get any recognition at all. He could have easily passed away given the lapse of time. I'm glad they got their awards, but the US government has been shamefully slow on this.

[airboy]

The truth is often stranger than fiction. It does beg the question why it took so long for the two soldiers to get their awards? The guy from the civil war will be lucky if his great great great grand children get to know of his courage, and the poor guy in Vietnam had to wait so long for him (and his buddies) to get any recognition at all. He could have easily passed away given the lapse of time. I'm glad they got their awards, but the US government has been shamefully slow on this.

The US Military had fallen into the habit that the only Congressional Medal of Honor medals that would be given would be to people who died in combat.  Obama reversed this.

The Congressional Medal of Honor has had all sorts of different standards for obtaining the award over its history.  For Union Troops during the Civil War, the Medal of Honor was given very liberally.  This was tightened up considerably after the Spanish-American War.  It is hard for me to see how many people who deserved it for the Civil War actually did not get it.  The number of medals they gave for that conflict compared to the number of troops in battle is pretty loose.  Perhaps they did not have the other medals for valor at that time?

[bayonetbrant]

The Silver Star wasn't authorized until the 1930s, and the Bronze Star came about in WWII.  The Distinguished Flying Cross obviously wasn't around back then, either.  So your thought about lack of options back then is probably well-founded.

[LongBlade]

Somewhere around here I have a book dedicated to MoH awardees during the ACW.

Yeah, it was used liberally then. Your reasoning sounds good. If I ever knew the reason, I have forgotten it, but something tells me that my book might have some insight. I'll look around later and see if I can find it.

[bayonetbrant]

http://www.cmohs.org/medal-history.php