mostly.
I was a platoon leader in 2004 and I was in a position to give and write awards for the Soldiers in my platoon. I got into big fight with battalion over a bunch of medals I put my Soldiers in for. At the beginning of our deployment a bunch of guys in HHC totally redid the TOC and spread a bunch of wire all over our FOB. They were put in for ARCOMs as that was the lowest award that was going to be given out by my division. So a few weeks later my platoon was involved in a 24-hour firefight in which we killed 26 and wounded 75.
It was a total shit-storm. One of my vehicles got hit with 10 RPGs, and I personally evacuated two wounded Soldiers under fire while the commander of the company I was attached to that day froze up and wouldn't make a decision or answer his radio for more than an hour. That guy, CPT Davenport (I don't remember his first name, but if I recall correctly he was the commander of C / 1-6 FA BN / 3 BDE / 1 ID) was a total piece of shit and was relieved of command the next day. He kept 3 platoons held up inside of a walled compound while he left my platoon outside of the perimeter to provide security for him. The original plan was that he was going to send a platoon to make and maintain contact with enemy elements, fix them, and then my platoon would go in for the kill. I have no idea why he didn't follow his initial plan. A wave of guys would come up and attack us, we would return fire and fuck 'em up, they'd break contact, retreat, regroup, then come attack us again a little while later. Waves of this went on all day. I was ordered to keep my platoon put instead of maintaining contact, pursuing them, and crushing them.
After seeing that laying commo wire on a FOB was worthy of an ARCOM, I put 20 guys in my platoon in for Bronze Stars and my Platoon Sergeant in for a Silver Star. Needless to say battalion downgraded them all to ARCOMs and we were all thoroughly pissed. Apparently laying commo wire inside of the perimeter of a FOB is on par with shooting, killing, and stuffing body bags.
However, I did learn a valuable lesson about writing awards from that experience. Nobody outside of the Army has any idea what different medals are. The only thing that gives anyone any indication about the value of the award is the actual citation that goes with it. Regardless of what the medals were ultimately downgraded to I went out of my way to write the best citations I could so that one day the grandkids of my Soldiers could be proud of the men that they were. They'll be able to show their families what they did and went through and the type of people they were.
The only award that I have actually means anything to me is my CIB. I'm sure I got my BSM mostly because of my rank and position. I didn't do anything more worthy of a BSM than any of my subordinate Soldiers did. The driver and gunner of my Bradley Fighting Vehicle did the same exact crap I did but received ARCOMs while I got a BSM. In my opinion, that is a bunch of b.s.
To add further insult to injury, I lost a Bradley Fighting Vehicle 6 months later. 5 of the 7 guys in the vehicle were killed. The guys who died all received BSMs. However the two guys that lived got ARCOMs. The only difference was that the 2 guys who lived survived the ordeal. All 7 of them went through the same experience. Honestly, I thought all 7 of them were dead when I saw them. I didn't think there was anyway anyone could survive what I saw. In my opinion they all should have received the same BSM for their service award.
Military awards suck and just piss me off.
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