Decoration Inflation

Today’s lecture is on phaleristics. We’ll pause while you Google that and discover that it’s a term from the Greek for the study of medals, ribbons, and other decorations. Since most of those things in America are involved with the military, that’s where we’ll be going with this. Just to set the tone, I’ll be bitching and whining vociferously about decoration inflation and proliferation in our military services which makes your average modern PFC in dress uniform look like some kind of trumped up middle eastern colonel about to stage a coup.

While milling around at an Air Force base exchange in San Antonio recently, I made the acquaintance of a young airman who said he had been in service for three years, most of which he’d spent right there in Texas. Pinned on the left chest of his blue uniform was a display of seven ribbons. I recognized the National Defense Service ribbon but the rest was just a blur of gaudy colors. He noticed me eyeing that rack and tried to clarify. There was a ribbon for just being in the Air Force and another one for successfully completing basic training. Another one he said had to do with a year he spent out on Okinawa. About the rest he wasn’t really sure but they represented, you know, just military stuff.

That encounter set me searching around for official military portraits of people in various dress uniforms. Starting with generals and admirals, I found myself staring at men and women with ribbon racks so thick they could have served as flak jackets. There was barely space on their uniforms for attendant badges that apparently signified something that all those ribbons did not. All that was missing was an electric cord that could be plugged into a socket turning their dress uniforms into Christmas trees.

And these were not isolated images. Nor were they much good for spotting people who actually did heroic things which, I seemed to recall, was one of the intended purposes of military decorations. What we have here, I determined quickly, was a proliferation of military ribbons of the been there-did that variety signifying not much more than the ability to fog a mirror and avoid court-martial.

Seems like we’ve cheapened the business of military awards and decorations to a point of being meaningless without a handy chart that helps differentiate the bureaucrats in uniform from those folks who rolled the dice and won in actual combat. Spotting a Purple Heart helps if you can pick one out of the gaudy display of noncombat markers, but those are rare and scarce these days. Study it for a while and you’ll quickly conclude that there are more awards for paper shufflers than for trigger pullers.

All this profusion of military ribbons and badges started around the end of World War II and has crept steadily toward the ridiculous situation today. Prior to the Civil War, most soldiers of all ranks didn’t wear much more on their uniforms other than some symbol of their rank if they had any. Then the rear echelon types who never got a chance to prove their mettle in combat, often through no fault of their own, started adding nice-job cookies to the mix. That’s one thing and fairly understandable given human ego, but they didn’t stop there. We wound up with a system of priorities that actually put some of these I held a big job and didn’t screw it up awards senior to decorations for combat heroism. Now we’ve got officers and enlisted men wearing so many enigmatic awards on their chests that it’s nearly impossible to tell the self-centered careerist from the folks who earned commendation by risking their lives above and beyond standard expectations.

In my research of previous military luminaries, I noted a lot of distinguished officers and enlisted men wearing just a few ribbons on their uniforms. There was a certain admirable modesty to it, seeing even very senior leaders—George Patton was a notable exception—wearing just a few rows of ribbons or often just individual awards for valor even in their most official portraits. I noted that General of the Army Dwight Eisenhower had received only 10 American ribbons during his entire military career culminating with five stars in World War II.

As enough of a realist to understand trying to stop a runaway train is a losing proposition, I’m not suggesting we do away with meritorious service awards. History has shown that Napoleon was right when he said, “A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.” And that bit of colored ribbon should be mainly reserved for our military people who do that long, hard fighting. 

Rewarding really great, out-of-the-ordinary work is an entirely appropriate application of the occasional military medal, particularly for younger folks who get little enough recognition anyhow. I’m complaining about the proliferation of high-level gongs like the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, which by the way, outranks the Silver Star, the third-highest medal for heroism involving actual combat. Things like the DSM are supposed to be given to senior officers who “contribute service of exceptional value to national defense.” Isn’t that what high-ranking generals and admirals are supposed to do? Superior performance by senior military men and women should be expected as a matter of routine. A medal for that just makes it seem like a trophy for participation.

Final exam coming up, so here’s a review of my primary points. ln all our military services today, we have way, way too damn many participation ribbons that really don’t mean anything important or significant. And that bright bouquet of ribbons adorning the uniform of even most junior troops is ludicrous and embarrassing, often even to the person wearing them. Awarding senior officers and enlisted people ribbons or medals for routine work in routine jobs rather than saving that for actions in combat or ultra-risky military endeavors is just plain wrong. Class dismissed.

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