The purpose of any worthy award is to recognize and memorialize an extraordinary achievement. For example: the Medal of Honor is the most prestigious military decoration awarded by the American government on behalf of a thankful nation. It is bestowed upon a member of the American armed forces who has distinguished himself “conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while engaged in an action against an enemy of the United States.” Because of its stringent criteria, it is not unusual for the Medal of Honor to be given posthumously. The Medal of Honor was established July 12, 1862 and was first awarded for gallantry during the War Between the States – the Civil War. The next lower military awards are the Army Distinguished Service Cross, the Navy Cross and the Air Force Cross.
And then we have the Purple Heart, commissioned in the 1930s and awarded “in the name of the President of the United States to any member of the Armed Forces of the United States who, while serving under competent authority in any capacity with one of the U.S. Armed Forces after April 5, 1917, has been wounded or killed, or has died after being wounded.”
Please note the absence of any mention of conspicuous gallantry or risk to life: the only qualification for the Purple Heart is personal misfortune, the pure dumb luck of being hit by something. That’s why some wags have suggested re-naming the Purple Heart the Enemy Marksmanship Award.
On January 8th, 2009, the ever-fretful New York Times pouted that “The Pentagon has decided that it will not award the Purple Heart, the hallowed medal given to those wounded or killed by enemy action to war veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder because it is not a physical wound.
“The decision ends the hope of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who have the condition and had hoped that the Purple Hearts could honor their sacrifice and help remove some of the stigma associated with the condition.”
Someone should explain to the girls at the New York Times that it is not the function of military decorations to remove stigmata from vaguely defined psychological disorders. The Times should also stop fabricating such bogus claptrap rhetoric as “wounded or killed by enemy action.” The “enemy” need not participate in any Purple Heart scenario.
John Kerry’s Purple Owies
I offer for your consideration Exhibit A: Senator John Kerry, former Democrat candidate for President of the United States. Back in the 1960s John received a draft notice from the Army. He immediately sought a deferment and then more deferments. When John’s deferments were tapped out, he rushed to a Navy recruiter and enlisted in the Navy with a request for service with the Navy swift boat division, which was not then engaged in any conflict.
John thought his ass was safe, but then the Pentagon deployed the swift boats to active service in the Mekong Delta. Poor John.
Not to worry. Johnny was a college graduate with the smarts to game the system. All he needed for a jet flight back to Massachusetts was three Purple Hearts. No problem. The most minor injuries, even those resulting from “friendly fire,” will qualify for a Purple Heart.
Two of John Kerry’s Purple Heart physical injuries were self-inflicted – not intentionally, but clumsily. He just couldn’t handle munitions. In one instance John fired a fragmentation grenade from an M-79 grenade launcher into a cluster of rocks. The explosion sent thousands of metal fragments ricocheting in all directions. One of these metal splinters flew out and pierced the skin of John Kerry’s arm. John could have pulled the protruding metal splinter out with his thumb and index finger, it was just beneath his skin, but he chose instead to leave it where it was for several hours until a doctor could pluck it out and be a witness for John’s Purple Heart application. The fragment was half an inch long and a sixteenth if an inch wide. The doctor removed the splinter with forceps and applied a Band-Aid to Johnny’s little booboo.
In the second instance, John Kerry tossed a concussion grenade onto a sampan (small boat) full of rice. John wanted to blow that rice away. John should have taken cover, but he just turned his back and left his stupid ass exposed. When the concussion grenade exploded it blew rice in all directions. John Kerry’s protruding butt was riddled with high-velocity grains of rice. Ouch! John immediately applied for a Purple Heart. His game plan was on track.
These decorations were John Kerry’s express ticket out of Vietnam; he distinguished himself by being one of the rare few who ditched his shipmates in mid-campaign by scoring three Purple Heart scrapes. Speaking as a former infantryman, I would have been embarrassed to receive a decoration for such inconsequential injuries. Servicemen in all branches have declined awards for injuries that they themselves considered of no consequence.
My most memorable service injury occurred when the tip of my middle finger was crushed between the rotor-and-base-plate assembly of a 4.2 inch mortar and the tailgate of a three-quarter ton truck. I was on a training exercise. The smashed finger hurt like hell; it turned a nasty purple; eventually the nail detached altogether. But . . . it healed; the nail grew back. That was back in the early ‘60s when JFK was just getting the Vietnam conflict in motion, so no Purple Heart for me. All these decades later, I am appalled to think that at some later date my banged-up finger might have qualified me for a Purple Heart.
Enter the Bleeding Hearts
The Op Ed page of the January 26th, ’09 New York Times featured a commentary by former Marine captain Tyler E. Boudreau. He remembers the ridicule that was heaped upon John Kerry’s Purple Hearts, which were dismissed as “purple owies.” He says that, “In the interests of guarding the nobility of the Purple Heart, many service members, including me, have suggested that not every last physical wound merits a decoration.”
Mr. Boudreau recalled that, “When I was in Iraq, the most common wound behind the many Purple Hearts we awarded was the ‘perforated eardrum,’ an eardrum punctured by the concussion of a nearby explosion. In the vast majority of cases, no blood was ever shed. Seldom did these marines ever miss a day of full duty. And yet they were all awarded the coveted medal.” He added, “The Purple Heart deserves at least one night out of action.” – in a field hospital perhaps.
Mr. Boudreau believes that “approximately one-third of veterans [are] dealing with symptoms of combat stress or major depression. He says that “many Americans are disappointed with the Pentagon’s decision” to deny the Purple Heart to veterans diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome; he says that “many more are appalled.” He goes on to say “That post-traumatic stress can lead to suicide is no longer in question.”
That’s true, but so can a nasty divorce or getting fired from a job. What we’re really talking about is unhappiness. Tender hearted people want the Pentagon to dish out Purple Heart decorations to service personnel whose on-the-job experiences have left then wiser but sadder, sort of like Little League where all the unhappy players are guaranteed a trophy. Well, every service person volunteered for what he knew would be a maturing endeavor; every one of them chose the military life. Like every other choice, this one had consequences. When placed in dangerous environments humans develop new habits and responses; fears linger, unhappy memories accumulate.
The United States Army’s Mental Health Advisory Team undertook a survey of more than one thousand soldiers and marines in September of 2006 and concluded that 17% of them were bothered by P.T.S.D. A similar study by the Rand Corporation pegged the number at 14 percent. That’s half the number that people such as Tyler Boudreau are tossing around: advocates want to inflate their case by including every former soldier who shows any sign of PTSD years after leaving the service, by which time many of them have also experienced painful divorces, the death of loved ones, economic setbacks, career failures, or any combination of countless unpleasant life events. Adding these pummeled-by-life folks to the combat-trauma numbers is just wild speculation.
Also remember that PTSD is not a single and easily identifiable thing. The folks who go hunting for PTSD symptoms are including every imaginable sign of stress or dysfunction in their PTSD statistics – many PTSD “victims” are experiencing only marginal-to-mild stress-related discomfort.
Psychiatrist Frank M. Ochberg, former associate director of the National Institute of Mental Health and editor of Post-traumatic Therapy and Victims of Violence, responded to Tyler Boudreau’s suggestion that service personnel diagnosed with PTSD be awarded a separate and distinctive decoration. “It would be awarded to those whose minds and souls have been sundered by war,” is how Mr. Boudreau had put it. Mr. Boudreau had offered that “The current stigma of post-traumatic stress would likely prevent many soldiers from wearing it initially . . .”
Dr. Ochberg concurred: “A medal for post-traumatic disorder would help those veterans who have the condition, although few would wear it with pride.” He added: “The purple Heart should remain an emblem for service on the battlefield resulting in obvious injury. But veterans deserve a separate symbol for hidden wounds that are honorably earned and equally disabling.”
Both Boudreau and Ochberg are keen to reduce the social stigma that clings to persistent emotional unrest. Boudreau suggests calling this new decoration the Black Heart, which is more than a tad creepy. Another psychiatrist, H.Steven Moffic, professor of psychiatry at the Medical College of Wisconsin, chimed in, “Why not refer to the ‘minds’ noted in [Boudreau’s] article? How about a ‘Mind Medal’ in honor of the damage that can’t be physically seen, to be given out in May, our Mental Health Month?”
Will there be cookies and milk at the ceremony? Will the Boy Scouts create a merit badge for the endurance of childhood sexual abuse? Why not? How about a merit badge for obese scouts who have endured the “hidden wound” of painful ridicule? In the age of Oprah every cause of unhappiness cries out for a therapeutic remedy and lots of very public acknowledgement and sympathy. “My lousy experiences made me a _______. (Fill in the blank.)
Feeling anxious, angry, or homicidal? Then you’re a victim, just like Michael Vick’s dogs. Ivan Pavlov nailed it: lousy conditioning can screw up even the healthiest mammal, dog or human. Life can be a life altering experience.
The Military Order of the Purple Heart has taken a position: they are “strongly oppose to expanding the definition to include psychological symptoms,” believing that this would “debase” the honor.
In truth, the current “definition” is none too definite, including as it does everything from lost limbs to flying rice wounds in the derriere. If even minor wounds warrant a Purple Heart, then how much more debased could the inclusion of PTSD patients make it? All the nicked and scraped Purple Heart lottery winners who didn’t spend a single night in sick bay have already dragged the Purple Heart about as low as it can go.
As it stands, the Pentagon and the Military Order of the Purple Heart want the PTSD people to keep their distance. The psych professors and the bleeding hearts want them all to get Purple Hearts. And some folks have suggested that PTSD people be given a “special” medal. This last suggestion reminded of when the defenders of the Boy Scouts suggested to the homosexual activists that they should just flit away and organize a really fashion-conscious Gay Scouts of America and then start recruiting youngsters. Gays knew that was a non-starter; they were already under suspicion. And so too are people with emotional disabilities “under suspicion.” Physical injuries are finite and comprehendible; psychological disorders are vague and slippery things. A man with a scar and a quirk is an honored veteran, but a guy who is just quirky is a nut, no matter how extreme his nuttiness becomes.
Unhappiness, even extreme emotional distress, is a predictable, though not an inevitable, consequence of the maelstrom of battle. This distress is susceptible to treatment and complete remission after treatment is common. Then again, thousands of guys who got the Purple Heart also healed completely.
None of this confusion will ever attend the Medal of Honor or any of the service cross awards because those decorations are awarded for demonstrated heroism. The Purple Heart is a bad-luck lottery prize; its recipients may be heroes, but being clumsy or luckless will work just as well. It’s a statistical free-fire zone. The Purple Heart is a Post-It note we stick on injured military personnel that says, “Sorry you got hurt. Sorry you won the Bad Luck Lottery.”
The Purple Heart is not an ancient tradition; it has only been around since the 1930s – less than a single human lifetime. It’s not too late to let it just slip away. Let’s end all the confusion and the squabbling over whose random injury is more worthy of sympathy. Let’s shut down the Bad Luck Lottery altogether. After that, let’s put some serious money where our mouths have been. The time has long past to fund a seamless system to identify and rehabilitate everyone harmed while in uniform. It will never be a perfect system, but it would be the honorable thing to make it forever excellent.
Thomas Clough
Copyright 2009
February 2, 2009
Author’s Note: I based my account of John Kerry’s exploits on credible eyewitness testimony. There are conflicting accounts. Nonetheless, even if my account is not exactly as God witnessed these events, my point is still on target: the minor injuries that John Kerry incurred would still have qualified the medal-hungry John Kerry for easy-to-get Purple Hearts and an express flight out of Vietnam.