The issue of Awards & Decotations that were given, and not given, is an important topic when discussing the era of the Centaurs
What are your thoughts? 2025
Bruce Powell, Frank Dillon, Jim Hoag, Brian Harrison, Tom Fleming, Tom Dooling, Bob Tegelman, Carl Betsill, John Moore
If you would like to review all our Centaur pages that reference the word Awards, then type this in the search field of Google or other search engines: site:centaursinvietnam.org awards
Bruce Powell (Pilot webmaster): In past years it has been discussed with Board Members about how to handle the issue of Awards & Decorations. Many awards were not given, many should not have been given and many were more favorable to men of rank or pilots. Some thought that the overuse of mentioning of Awards and even the rank and position was a possible negative to our mission of getting the attention of all Centaurs. Guys that were not pilots, crewmembers or high ranking offficers were not often given many opportunities to show their bravery. Some seemed to be not comfortable associating with a group of ranking officers. So this subject has been relatively low keyed in the presentations on our website.
We want to tell the whole story to future generations of our personal feelings concerning Awards. It needs to be addressed. Here is your chance. send to powellcentaur@gmail.com
Frank Dillon (Avionics Mechanic): We might consider a special page for men like:
Ron Radcliffe recommended for MOH twice. Awarded the Silver Star and DSC.
Pappy Jones recommended for MOH awarded the Silver Star.
Frank Walker recommended for MOH awarded DSC.
and several who were awarded the Distingwished Service Cross
JIm Hoag (Crewmember): it seems only pilots mostly got awards while often the enlisted got nothing even when on the same aircraft with said officer. It always upset my apple cart to see the enlisted guys slighted because they weren’t officers. It happened all throughout my career.
Brian Harrison (Crewmember): I don’t think a single “Most Awarded Centaurs” page would be a negative to the rest of us. example from 3/4 website. On the other hand, if the awards bar is set "too low" it would be a lot of work and just another thing for our webmaster to deal with and could become contentious for those left off the list just because they hadn’t checked in and the rest of us were unknowing of their award(s), verification, etc etc etc...…
Tom Fleming (Commander/Pilot): I like the idea of recognizing MOH Awardees and those recommended but not Awarded MOH. We shoud all be proud of these well verrified awards. They alone are testament to our 4th Cavalry moto "Prepared and Loyal "
Tom Dooling (Pilot): For me, I think each and every one of us who served honorably as a Centaur, whether as a commander or as a cook, has a right to be proud of their service.
One of the things that haunts those that served in VN is the lack of acknowledgement of our service. The popular expression these days when you wear something that signifies you served is “Thanks for your service”. The first time this was said to me was over 20 years after my service in VN. If one of the goals of our webpage/organization is to acknowledge those that served, then surely a part of that acknowledgement should be for awards “earned” during that service.
The word “earned” above is really the catchpoint for some of this discussion. All of us know guys that should have received medals and did not, and some that received medals and did not earn them. A lot had to do with Army level politics – it seemed to me that several of the “received, not earned” guys were what we all called “lifers” in those days – I can think of a few instances I witnessed, and virtually all of them were RLOs. Alternately, I witnessed instances where someone went way beyond the call and received little or no recognition, sometimes even being scolded for doing something stupid.
For a good example of the politics involved in awards, read my essay titled “LRRP Rescue.” Another example is the award of the Bronze Star to virtually every officer (including Warrants) that served in VN. When most people think of the Bronze Star, in is in the context of valor (or Bronze Star with V device). But the Bronze star basic award is for service – in the case of most of us officers, it was simply am officer Good Conduct Medal – all you had to do to “earn” it was show up and behave yourself (with fairly broad scope on the behavior part). Whenever I think about Bronze Star, President Joe Biden’s son Beau comes to mind – President Biden was very proud that his son had earned a Bronze Star and wanted his to wear it all of the time. Beau, to his credit, knew the earning part of his award was nothing other than behaving himself – and gave the award the proper acknowledgement.
From the length of my response above, I clearly have too much time on my hands. From my perspective, perhaps the approach should be that when the webmaster builds the “My Page”, one of the things he should include in the lefthand pane is any awards the individual wants acknowledged for his service – something like “Received 2 DFCs, 35 Air Medals, including one for Valor”. That way each individual can control what he wants displayed. Frankly, after 50+ years, many of us simply don’t care about publicly acknowledgement of these honorariums, just having our loved ones know is enough.
Bob Tegelman (Infantryman): Being a ground pounder in the infantry we got the CIB, some got an air medal,and some others got the purple heart. The helicopters got shot down and we got the pilots out safely. We stayed till another chopper came to lift the wreck out. I believe it should be checked into more about the efforts we endure.
Carl Betsill (Avionics Mechanic) I think Brian Harrison has the best approach.
John Moore: (A Trp Webmaster) No matter how you decide to go it will take a lot of work. I just went with an individual awards page tshe includes everyone for A Trp and then just add names in when an award comes to my attention. Just info so you can see how I did it but I don't have individual "my pages" for our guys to do what you are doing. http://www.atrp3-4cav.org/Individual.html