The Purple Heart is awarded for those injured in combat; it has nothing to do w/valor.
@Absalom Close,but not quit correct. It is an award given to those who are injured by enemy actions. You don't have to be in combat,just injured by the combat actions of an enemy. Many,MANY Purple Hearts were awarded to career rear-echelon officers in WW-2,the Korean War,the VN war,and without a doubt the lesser actions of today who tripped and fell down,scraping a knee and causing it to bleed while running towards a bunker in a rocket attack,for example. Or were maybe injured when the jeep they were riding in ran into a parked car when the driver was startled by a car bomb going off nearby.
People who are not combat arms soldiers but who ARE proffesional soldiers are desperate to get awards so they can get promoted,and if you are an officer,it is almost essential if you hope to obtain field grade rank and remain in the army on active duty.
The CIB is a perfect example of this. To get one,according to army regulations,you MUST be serving in an infantry MOS in an infantry unit in combat,be fired on,AND return fire. Being a passenger in a helicopter or airplane that is fired on doesn't cut the mustard because you MUST fire back at the enemy. I had one friend on a recon team that was VERY pissed because he had been fired on by the NVA with probing fire on 3 different missions,but never had the opportunity to fire back,so he still didn't have a CIB. I suppose he finally got one,but can't remember.
The Lt Col in charge of my camp in VN had been a tanker in the Korean war,and had a chestful of medals including a couple of Purple Hearts,but no CIB. He went into SF after the Korean War,and became an infantry branch officer,but with no declared conflict going on,he felt like the retarded child sitting in a corner at a party at all the official unit mess meetings because he was virtually the only senior officer there that didn't have at least one CIB. Many of his peers had two,or even 3 CIB awards.
What made this worse is generally speaking,field grade officers (Majors and higher) are NOT supposed to subject themselves to ground combat because the thinking is with their experience they are too valuable to lose in combat. In other words,if you don't already have one by the time you are a Major,chances are you will never have one.
BUT.......in VN he was the camp commander,so who was going to order him to not go on a mission?
So he asked one of the Staff Sergeants who ran a recon team if he could go out on a mission with him and his team. Joe,the team leader told him "Yeah,but you are going to have to carry the radio". Usually there is one reason for that. It gives the usual radio operator a MUCH appreciated break,but in this case it served two purposes. The other being that being the radio op meant he would always be right next to Joe,and if it looked like the team was going to be overran,it was Joe's responsibility to kill the Colonel. He just knew too much and was too important to allow him to be capture,and the Colonel knew this and agreed to it if necessary.
Anyhow,it just happened that I was taking my turn on radio duty at our remote radio relay site on a mountain top in Laos when the Colonel came up on the radio to tell me they were under fire. That was all he got out before the handset was shot out of his hands,and we pretty much lost contact with them for several hours. Nobody knew for sure what happened until they could get a covey to overfly the area and pick up on a short range survival radio and talk directly with them. Other than a few minor wounds they were all ok,and still trying to evade the NVA,who were still chasing them. Took them 3 days to get away and find a open space big enough for a helicopter to land,but they all got out.
So,that Colonel did INDEED earn his CIB,and he wore it proudly with justification. Nobody "gave" it to him. He EARNED it on a patrol with a 12 man recon team inside Laos on a covert mission.
I don't remember ever seeing him wearing it,although I know he must have when he had to leave the camp to go to Saigon for briefings. Around camp he generally wore bermuda shorts and stuff like a Beethoven t-shirt. He was a huge Beethoven fan,and must have had multiple Beethoven t-shirts. Everybody there knew who he was,so it wasn't really necessary for him to wear his rank.
