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Valash83 t1_j9u6i9e wrote

Reply to comment by Crooked_Cock in Pueblo deputy awarded Purple Heart for injuries suffered during shooting of Richard Ward by Drablit

Not to take away from those who earned a Purple Heart but the military loves to give them out for about anything.

When my father was in 'Nam, some drunk on base got ahold of a grenade and thought it would be funny to pull the pin and throw it in the middle of the base trying to scare everyone.

A piece of shrapnel grazed my father's arm, requiring 4 stitches to close up the wound. And while they were sewing him up, someone came and just put a Purple Heart on the table next to him.

He grabbed it, threw it back at the guy and said "save it for those who actually earned it"

And my father said the last he saw of the drunk idiot was an MP walking up and hitting him in the face with the butt of his gun and then they dragged his unconscious body towards the makeshift brig they had.

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DragonOfTartarus t1_j9ug3jp wrote

>Not to take away from those who earned a Purple Heart but the military loves to give them out for about anything.

They had crates full of the things left over after WWII because they were made in expectation of an invasion of the Japanese home islands. Naturally the invasion didn't end up happening, so they were just left with a whole bunch of medals and no one to give them to.

I think they're still using those medals to this day. If that's how many they have, I'm not surprised they hand them out like candy.

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Valash83 t1_j9ugtq0 wrote

That and it makes them look good. Kinda "hey we sent this person to an active warzone and they got hurt/killed. But we gave them this medal to make up for it"

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SliceOfCoffee t1_j9uruc4 wrote

They estimated a minimum 800,000 dead, and a total of 1.5-2 Million casulties by US forces alone, plus another million casulties by other allied forces.

The Japanese casulties would of crippled Japan forever.

10-15 Million dead, and another 10 million wounded on top of the dead.

The Atomic bombs seemed like a slap on the wrist compared to the absolute slaughter of Operation Downfall.

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cowvin t1_j9utsnv wrote

It's not that they give them out for "about anything." You can take a look at the requirements here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_Heart

In the example you described:

Type of injury: caused by shrapnel, so qualifies

Severity of injury: required medical treatment, so qualifies

Source of injury: This is the only real question. The description says that the injury may be caused by an enemy or friendly fire that was intended to harm an enemy. This definitely fails the requirement for friendly fire intended to harm an enemy, so we have to evaluate if the drunk soldier was considered an enemy.

I would say intuitively no, but who knows what they were thinking at that time.

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clarkss12 t1_j9vcha4 wrote

I got my purple heart by being shot by the NVA, the grenadier in front of me got his by being killed.

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Slight-Winner-8597 t1_j9u9hlh wrote

They're honestly taking one of the most sombre and humbling awards a soldier could ever earn and passing them out. Might as well load em into a t-shirt cannon at this point.

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