Note: We just returned from a short vacation visiting new grandchildren hence the brief interregnum of posting.
The Medal of Honor is the highest citation for combat action in the US military.
It’s premature to say exactly what direction this is going because the DoD is being hazy and coy about what this is all about. If it turns out the reassessment is determining whether extraordinary single combat actions on the part of soldiers was exaggerated, it may hold water but if it is the curious chronological conceit that haunts the historians in academia today, the woke virus may reach back because of the identity of the antagonists but that is a supposition with inadequate information now.
The war on history continues to take bizarre turns.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin directed the Pentagon to review the 20 Medals of Honor awarded to U.S. troops for their actions at Wounded Knee in 1890, when soldiers killed and injured between 350 and 375 Lakota men, women and children.
Austin ordered the creation of a special panel to determine whether to retain or rescind the medals, the Department of Defense announced Wednesday. In a July 19 memorandum ordering the review, Austin said the panel would investigate “each awardee’s individual actions” and also “consider the context of the overall engagement.”
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2024/07/24/pentagon-to-review-20-medals-of-honor-from-wounded-knee-massacre/
Nothing new here.
In 1917, based on the report of the Medal of Honor Review Board, established by Congress in 1916, 911 recipients were stricken from the Army’s Medal of Honor list because the medal had been awarded inappropriately. Among them were William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody and Mary Edwards Walker.
Defense officials noted that the department regularly reviews awards for upgrades. The Executive Branch has also conducted reviews to determine whether previous awards should be rescinded, including one in 1916 [and 1917] that led to 911 Medals of Honor being revoked.
https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3848583/austin-orders-review-of-wounded-knee-medals/
There was a reckoning that rescinded one third of all medals issued to that point.
Of the 2,625 Army Medals of Honor reviewed, the Board chose to rescind 911 of them. Most of those were from two large groups: the 27th Maine Infantry and President Abraham Lincoln’s funeral guards.
The 27th Maine Infantry had been stationed in Washington, D.C., as the Confederates advanced nearby in 1863. The regiment’s enlistments were just coming to an end. The Army offered a Medal of Honor to those who stayed to defend the Union’s capital. About 300 out of 800 soldiers agreed to remain. However, no one kept good records of which soldiers stayed and which went home. As a result, Medals were issued in the name of all the soldiers and Lieutenant Colonel Mark Wentworth was put in charge of distributing the Medals to those who stayed. Due to the confusion, the 1916 Review Board determined that the basis for the awards were suspect and rescinded all 864 awards.
The second large group of Medals revoked were ones that went to the members of President Abraham Lincoln’s funeral guard. This group of 29 soldiers ceremoniously protected the president’s remains as they toured the country. The Review Board decided that those Medals were not awarded for valor and therefore erroneously bestowed.
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