Flash Post #10
The National Defense Service Medal (NDSM) was established under President Dwight Eisenhower, pursuant to Executive Order #10448, on July 15, 1953, at the tail end of the Korean War. It was awarded for “[h]norable active service as a member of the armed forces for any period between 27 June 1950 and a terminal date to be announced” with later guidance establishing an end date of July 27, 1954 (one year exactly after the armistice that effectively ended the Korean War went into effect).
However, this was not the end of the NDSM, as it effectively became a general wartime service award. As a result, subsequent orders and regulations established additional periods of eligibility for the award roughly coinciding with the Vietnam War (period of eligibility: January 1, 1961 to August 14, 1974), the Persian Gulf War (August 2, 1990 to November 30, 1995), and–most recently–the Global War on Terror. This latter period of eligibility was established a few months after the September 11th attacks, but made retroactive to September 11, 2001, and to a date which was–at least initially–to be determined (so, it took a few months for the Department of Defense to decide that, yes, the country really was in a period of sustained armed conflict after 9/11, and naturally no one had a crystal ball to look into and see when the war–or rather wars–would actually end).
But now here we are, and it’s the future. Today is December 31, 2022, and I can report that the Iraq War ended in 2011, and the War in Afghanistan was supposed to have ended just last year. But what of this so-called “Global War on Terror”? Well, the official story is that it’s still not completely over, but, as of this year, eligibility for the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal has been greatly reduced, and–while substantial numbers of US troops remain deployed to or are based in what are nominally still combat zones–the level of actual combat activity is greatly reduced, with what actual combat remains mostly involving small-scale special operations. The Global War on Terror may not be over over, but the period of sustained armed conflict associated with it essentially is. All that to say, pursuant to a Department of Defense memo dated August 30, 2022, the last day for the award of the NDSM under the GWOT period of eligibility has been set at December 31, 2022. That is today. At twenty-one years, three months, and twenty days, it is the longest period of eligibility in the history of the award, and if it were a person I might take it out for a drink to celebrate the New Year.
Beyond that recitation of the facts, this award is deeply personal to me. Not simply because I have it, but because of the people I have known who had it, and the extent to which my respect for them has translated into a respect for the NDSM.
At this point, the veterans reading could be forgiven for rolling their eyes. After all, everyone who has served in the military in any capacity for the last twenty years (and change) has received this award. Heck, I know people who washed out of the Naval Academy who got this award just for showing up and dropping out. Point being, it’s hardly a prestigious award, and in that regard it does bare some resemblance to that most detested of all commemorative devices: the participation trophy. You don’t have to do anything meritorious, brave, or otherwise exceptional to get it. You don’t even have to deploy. In fact–if I may be permitted to once more stray briefly into “the facts”–as of Executive Order 13293 dated March 28, 2003, you didn’t even have to serve on active duty between September 11, 2001 and today to receive it. All you had to do was be on active duty or in the selected reserve for all of one day and, congratulations!, here’s you’re freaking medal.
And yet I respect it.
I respect it because, circa 2002/2003 when the award was reinstituted for the Global War on Terror, I was a cadet at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI). At VMI, like a great many other military schools, we wore uniforms to class, but unlike every other military school I am aware of–apart from the federal service academies, who do their own weird thing–we did not wear made up ribbons and medals associated with the Corps of Cadets or the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) on our uniforms. The only awards we had authorized for wear were those awarded by the US military and actually for service in the military: no fake medals for learning how to lace your boots, no flashy ribbons for showing up to class every day, only proper military awards. Of course, most of us–apart from being in some flavor of ROTC, which was mandatory–were not actually in the military, and so we had no awards to wear on our uniforms.
The only people who did have awards on their uniform were cadets who happened to be reservists or in the national guard. I might have guessed we had a few, but I didn’t know how many and who until I started seeing some of my fellow cadets showing up to formation and walking around with what at the time–to me–just looked like a nifty piece of colored ribbon on their chest (some may disparagingly refer to the NDSM as “the pizza stain” for is resemblance to the same–
–but I never will, because I respect it too much). What that ribbon meant was that, unlike myself and every other cadet who wasn’t a reservist or guardsman, their lives could be interrupted at any moment. At any moment, even mid-semester, they might get the order to drop out of school, report to their reserve or guard unit, and ultimately deploy to a combat zone, never mind college. And this was not merely a theoretical possibility: many of them got those orders. This was not the Vietnam Era, where draftees got shipped off to war even as well-connected individuals got deferments or enlisted into the reserves or national guard and almost never got called up. Some of my classmates lost years between pre-deployment training, extensions on deployment, and just bad timing (they might be called up and have to leave school mid-semester, earning no credits, but if they came home mid-semester a year and a half later they couldn’t just step right back into things: they had to wait a few more months on the back end for another semester to start). During that time, while I was carrying along smartly towards my bachelor’s degree and ultimately a commission in the United States Navy, their lives were… not on hold, but on a bit of a sidetrack as they donned uniforms and served on active duty as enlisted (mostly as privates, specialists, and–on the USMC side–lance corporals) in active combat zones. Many of them actually in combat.
So… when I reached the end of my uninterrupted course of study at VMI and finally commissioned as an Ensign in the United States Navy, already with one medal on my chest just for finally putting on a real uniform, it meant something to me, even if the idea of a boot Ensign already having a medal might seem a bit ridiculous. It meant something to me because my classmates and other cadets who had already been called up and sent down range meant something to me. And while I can’t now say, twenty-odd years plus a few more medals and a PTSD diagnosis of my own to show for it, that I consider our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to have been justified, the National Defense Service Medal still means something to me. It still means something to me because those people still mean something to me.
In closing, farewell, National Defense Service Medal, and may we never meet again.
Time to go hold up a light for peace.
Songs of Babylon 