Navy Secretary to upgrade awards
Military.com reports that four members of the Navy Department are having their valor awards upgraded by the outgoing Navy Secretary, Ray Mabus. Sgt. Michael Mendoza, will receive the Navy Cross, Sgt. Nicholas Brandau, Master Sgt. Steven Davis, Lance Cpl. Edward Huth, and Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael Atkinson will receive Silver Stars;
Mendoza, who previously received the Silver Star for bravery in Anbar province, Iraq, in April 2004 as a member of 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, is credited with leading five Marines in a heroic charge across an open field after his vehicle was disabled by a rocket-propelled grenade.
According to his citation, obtained by Military.com, the “vigor” of the assault resulted in the deaths of 10 enemy fighters and forced the retreat of many others. When his commander was wounded, Mendoza took out the assailant and laid down cover fire until an armored vehicle could arrive to evacuate the officer.
[…]
Atkinson, a Navy corpsman serving with the Marines’ 3rd Assault Amphibian Battalion in Iraq in April 2003, exposed himself to enemy fire on four different occasions to offer lifesaving care for two wounded Marines, according to his citation. At one point, he dismounted from his vehicle and braved hostile fire to pull his wounded first sergeant from his vehicle and render aid.
Huth, who was recognized for bravery in 2010 while serving as a machine gunner with 2nd Battalion, 6th Marines, in Afghanistan, continued to lay down suppressive fire on the enemy with his M240B medium machine gun even after receiving a gunshot wound. After being shot in the right arm, he moved the gun to his left arm and kept shooting, according to his citation.
Brandau, who served in Afghanistan with 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, also braved enemy fire, engaging enemy fighters by throwing grenades between bursts of machine-gun fire, and later directed suppressive fire to allow for a fallen Marine to be evacuated.
In Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004, Davis distinguished himself while providing security for armored ambulances evacuating casualties from the heart of the war-torn city, according to his citation. When another Marine was wounded by gunfire, Davis departed the safety of the vehicle and braved “a hail of enemy fire” to reach him. When Davis himself was wounded by gunfire, he used his own body to shield the other wounded Marine.
Category: Navy
Brian Chontosh should have his Navy Cross upgraded to the MOH as well (as should Stephen Sanford his DSC), but that is beyond the discretion of Mabus or his successor.
Congratulations to each of these deserving individuals.
I’m still waiting for LCPL Peralta’s family to receive his (IMHO deserved) MOH.
I would love to see any of these SV shitstains do any real heroic acts like any of these brave soldiers? BZ to all of these fine men!
I never understood this upgrade business. The only time I believe it to be justified is when new information is learned about the action. The question that these upgrades can’t answer otherwise is this: Who got it wrong, the first examiners of the record or the second?
In my experience, the Marine Corps has been notorious for down-grading combat awards as they go through the approval process, so the ‘upgraded’ awards that these men are receiving now are most likely the original awards that they were recommended for in the first place.
Hence the cynical USMC joke that I’ve heard over the years: “They recommended me for the Navy Cross, but by the time that the award got to me, it had been down-graded to a Punitive Letter of Caution”.
These are all part of a DOD review of the top three valor awards. I believe there was a story a few months back that 2 or three of the current Navy Crosses are going forward to DOD for possible upgrade.
This is all in response to a SECDEF review and memo of around a year ago. Basically, DOD and the services have some concerns that the standards between the start of the war and today may have shifted a little, with the early years of the war having perhaps higher standards in past war (possible) and individuals with less experience navigating the combat awards process (absolutely) writing, recommending, and processing the awards.
DOD’s review has included looking at the source evidence (witness statements and such) to determine if the award may have been to low when initially awarded.
On a related note, and an example of the inexperience with the process in the early days of the conflict, I’ve been working with a retired LTC and former BN CDR to get his organization unit award fixed. The unit’s companies were task organized/broken up shortly after arrival in theater in 2003. When all of the Army elements supporting OIF were credited with the Meritorious Unit Citation, his organization was listed as Detachment XYZ BN and his companies in some cases included under the brigades they were task organized to. As a result his unit doesn’t get credit to display the citation on its flag nor in the historical record. This was solely of the result of how the initial unit awards request was submitted, even though all the units soldiers participated in the period of action for the citation.
I suspect that in the case of many high-level valor awards, subordinate commands not authorized to grabt the target award instead award the highest one that they can award.
This guarantees the awardee immediate recognition, where otherwise they might have nothing, for years, as a DSC or MOH winds its way through the paperwork maze.
A BSMwV or SS now, versus a DSC two years from now. The “interim” award is recinded in the orders for the higher award.
Given the many cases of late or downgraded, why not award what can be done, now?
There’s an easy solution allowing both immediate recognition as well as preserving the original award recommendation. It’s called an interim award. Example: a person recommended for one of the service crosses can be awarded the Silver Star as an interim award while the cross recommendation continues through channels for approval/disapproval.
How often that’s done, I can’t say. But it’s at least theoretically possible.
We do not deserve such men, but stand in grateful debt to them for all they do.
^^This^^
Grateful debt, and awe. Absolutely awe struck.
These guys are unquestionably heroes. However, this looks to me like Mabus’s final pathetic attempt to do something that doesn’t make every Sailor and Marine hate his guts.
Too little, too late for that.
+100!
Maybe he’ll change the names of some ships too…
HA!
Every SINKEX target to be renamed USS Ray Mabus.
Wow… Mabus did something that didn’t involve social justice/social experimentation?
He’s still a motherfucking cocksucker… along with former MCPON, E-9 Mike Stewart
That’s the spirit. Screw that forgive and forget shit. I feel the same way about everybody in The Emperor’s administration and Harry “The Embalmed” Reid and a slew of others. Every one a phuker.
Forgiving’s one thing. Forgetting’s another.
This made my day to see a 1st Recon guy and a corpsman get upgraded medals! Semper Fi to all of these fine gentlemen.
BZ.
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