Muddle in Medals

Nothing designed to improve fighting morale kicked up more rancor than the World War II system of handing out decorations. In the current issue of the Informtry Journal, Major David E. Milotta produces some figures to support the feeling that there was something wrong.

Taking as his yardstick the ratio of combat awards to the number killed in action, Milotta found that the ist Division handed out 5.1 awards per man killed. But the 3rd Division, which saw more combat, got only 2.0, and the 42nd Division, with relatively little combat, 11.8. Two U.S. airborne divisions, the 82nd and the 101st, had roughly the same number killed in combat, but 101st chests sported more than three times as much fruit salad.

For the Army as a whole, divisions averaged 2.5 medals per battle death; the Air Corps, in which the Air Medal and the Distinguished Flying Cross became semiautomatic for combat missions (five for the Air Medal, usually 25 for the D.F.C.), averaged 40.9 medals. By roughly the same system, the bulk of Navy and Marine Corps decorations also went to the aviators, but the overall rate was 3.4 for the Navy and 2.5 for the Marines.

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