The AWOL Bronze Star – Part One

The AWOL Bronze Star

PART ONE

1969

The night of August 28, 1969 Andy Kach and Pedro Rodrigues were pulling guard duty in Tower 2. They had been alerted to a possible attack that night. Shortly after the watch began the mortars started falling, their explosions marching through the battery with uncanny accuracy. One hit behind Tower 2, sending shrapnel into Andy’s shoulder. Then another made a direct hit on their tower, spraying sand and shrapnel into Rodrigues’ face, blowing both of them out the rear of the tower and burying them under a pile of sandbags. For this they both earned Purple Hearts.

What Andy did next also earned him a Bronze Star Medal for Valor. With a wounded shoulder and more pain in his jaw from the fall, Andy found Rodrigues. “His face looked like a piece of raw meat.” Andy dug out from the sandbags and under continuing mortar fire got Rodrigues to the medic, blind but able to stumble along. Andy hurried back to the tower and went to climbing back up, not sure the damaged and swaying structure would hold him. He pulled the M60 machine gun from underneath sandbag debris and put it back into action, raking his sector of fire against a possible ground attack. He kept at it alone all night until it was nearly dawn.

A few weeks later Andy was called in from trash duty to get his Purple Heart. The Bronze Star Medal would have to wait 45 years.

Rebuilding Tower 2

2010

Andy:

My old battery commander, Hank Parker, helped me get qualified for treatment at the VA, mostly for my teeth and hearing issues. You have to prove your condition is from Vietnam; otherwise you go way down on the list. Hank has helped a lot of guys over the years. He knows who to talk to, what forms to fill out, and he goes to bat for guys.

The VA sends me a packet of paperwork, and in my records there is an evidence page that tells the doctors and medical staff something about what happened to you in Vietnam. This evidence page also lists all my awards. They put on there that I had a Purple Heart, a Commendation Medal, and a Bronze Star. I look at that and think they’re mistaken because I never got a Bronze Star.

I haul out my DD 214 (discharge papers) and in the awards box down at the bottom I see BS for Bronze Star, but that’s not the medal. It has to say BSM in capital letters for it to be a Bronze Star Medal. So I figure maybe some clerk typist just forgot to hit the M. The VA already told me I had a Bronze Star Medal, so why isn’t it on my discharge papers?

Now I’m more confused, so I call Hank Parker, my old battery commander. He said to send him the evidence page and my DD 214. He said they had put numerous people in for bronze stars at LZ Sherry, and a lot of them never went through. So Hank and First Sargent Durant got together, compared notes, and then Hank pursued it. Hank said,” I’m just going to pin it on you, and that’s the way it’s going to be.”

I said, “I don’t want to wear anything that I don’t have orders for.” I did not want to be one of those guys that gets thrown in jail for a valor offense. So Hank said okay we will pursue it through the awards department, through channels. They’ll do an investigation and whatever they come up with, that’s what we’ll live with. It took three years. Every six months or so I would get an update on what they were doing.

Captain Hank Parker:

It started when I wrote a statement of support of claim for Andy back in 2010. He had filed a medical claim with the VA, and he needed someone to back up the events, so I wrote a statement to the Veterans Administration describing him being blown out of the tower. He got a statement then from the Veterans Administration with the rating decision and it was dated January 21 2011, and in that they list his awards. They say he’s got the National Defense medal, the Purple Heart, Republic of Vietnam campaign medal with device, Vietnam Service Medal, Bronze Star Medal, and Army Commendation Medal. That was part of the evidence that the VA referred to in establishing his claim for medical care. So Andy says, ”Where’s my Bronze Star? I never got it.”

I told him I remember putting him in for the Bronze Star.

Then he said, “Well it’s on my DD 214. “

So I said, “Send me a copy of your DD 214 and let me look at it.” So he sent me a copy, and I said, “No Andy, what that’s referring to is your Vietnam Service Medal with three bronze service stars. That did not refer to the Bronze Star Medal.” On our Vietnam Service Medal, every time you were in a campaign you goy a bronze service star. During the course of the 10 years, there were something like 18 campaigns. So in Andy’s one year he got three bronze service stars on his Vietnamese Service Medal. 

But clearly somebody at the VA found it in his record. The evidence sheet they sent Andy is very specific. It documents Bronze Star Medal and Army Commendation Medal in the proper manner and sequence. I was convinced Andy had been awarded the BSM and for some reason never received it.

From there we go to the 27th Field Artillery Alumni reunion (October 2011 at Fort Sill) and Andy’s got his uniform on. I said, “Andy, where’s your Bronze Star Medal?”

He said, “I don’t have it.”

That’s when I went to the PX and bought a Bronze Star Medal, and I awarded it to him that night in a formal ceremony, Colonel Munnelly presiding. After Fort Sill I said, “Andy, now order your full military record and there should be evidence of your having been awarded the Bronze Star Medal.” So he gets his records from the Personnel Records Center in St. Louis and there is no evidence of any Bronze Star Medal award.

So I said to Andy, “What we need to do now is for you to sign a release for me so I can contact the Personnel Records Center and asked them to look on specific dates when a Bronze Star Medal should have been awarded.”

At that point I thought I’m going to have to take some action to find out what is going on here. The VA and the Personnel Records Center in St. Louis have independent sets of records. What’s in one file is not necessarily in the other file. They can be different. St. Louis has military files with original paperwork: requests for award, battalion and headquarters company commanders approvals, documentation that they’ve been forwarded to corps and then to field force levels, and finally award authorizations – the whole paper trail. I find no record of a BSM in Andy’s military file.

But clearly somebody at the VA found it in his record, because its report is very specific. They wrote Bronze Star Medal and Army Commendation Medal in the proper manner and sequence. So I figured somebody lost the paperwork. Back when I used to do comp and pension exams it was not unusual to go through a military file and find someone else’s records. If it got put into the wrong file, you’re never going to see it again. Sad to say but that happens.

So at that point St. Louis tells me to begin from scratch. I had to complete DA Form 638 for Recommendation for Award. It had to be completed and signed by a major general (two stars) or higher. I also had to provide an award narrative describing the event leading to the Bronze Star Medal award. And I had to include DA Form 1594, the official daily staff journal for 28 August 1969, to show that there was in fact a mortar attack on LZ Sherry on that date.

Further they said I had to diagram LZ Sherry and provide them with two eyewitness reports. Fortunately Rik Groves had drawn that wonderful diagram of our LZ. I took that and I marked where the attack was. And then I called First Sergeant Durant to see if he remembered the incident, and he did. He provided me with an eyewitness account and signed affidavit. I did my own eyewitness account, for which I signed an affidavit. I then contacted Lieutenant General John Crosby (three stars) and asked him if he could sign off on the application. Lt. Col. Crosby, at the time, had left battalion but was still in Vietnam on August 28 and he remembered the incident. So he wrote a statement and also signed an affidavit signing off on the application. All that then went to St. Louis, to a review board of the Awards and Decorations Branch.

The review board came back told me that I needed to contact the original chain of command. I said, “Meaning what?” They wanted me to locate Lieutenant Colonel Judd, who was battalion commander. I learned he was deceased, which meant I had to prove he was deceased. I had to get the date of death and where he was buried. It took forever to get this information. Even with his Social Security number the records are very hard to get anymore. I searched and searched and finally I went to ancestery.com, and there found when he died and where he was buried.

I then had to locate what they called “intermediate authority:” Brigadier General Siddell and Lieutenant General Charles Corcoran, commander of First Field Forces.

I found General Siddell, but had a hard time finding General Corcoran. I knew the general had come out to our firebase for a visit. Again I ran into the dilemma of privacy policies. Nobody will give you information even though they may have it, they cannot release it. So I goggled General Corcoran and my goodness, the name goes back to British generals, through the American Revolution and through the Civil War to the present day family. Finally I found a colonel who had gone to The Citadel. So I called The Citadel and talked to a very nice secretary there. I said, “I am in a dilemma. I know that the Corcoran I am looking for is probably his uncle or his father.

She said, “I cannot give you his contact information but your request is very reasonable. I will call him and leave your name, number and email and then it will be up to him whether he contacts you are not.”

Lo and behold about three weeks later and I get a call from this colonel. He said that his father was alive, that’s why I could not find any death record. He is 99 years old and he is in a nursing home facility because he has Alzheimer’s. The colonel had talked to his father and said his father had some good memories and recollections of Vietnam. It was important to his father that if he had not followed through on a reward for one of his soldiers, he wanted that to happen. The colonel wrote me a letter on the condition of his father, where he was residing, and a telephone number to give to the to satisfy the review board’s requirement for intermediate authorities.

I still wonder why I needed documentation on the intermediate chain of command. I just needed to find out where they were, dead or alive, without any requirement for affidavits. By this point I’d quit asking why.

Next I get a call from a young lady about some discrepancy in dates. I was aware of that. An award for Pedro Rodrigues, who was blown from the tower with Andy, was dated September 6. I said that could happen, because even though he was wounded with Andy Kach on August 28, we Medevac’d him to the rear, where the medic’s report could have had a later date on it, leading someone to mistake it for the date of the incident. She said that if I could clarify that, it would make the review board happy.

Next I get a letter from a major that kind of tics me off. In the salutation she says, “Dear Mr. Rambo.” I had given them everything they needed, and in the salutation to me she is a smart ass. I am a retired captain. She is supposed to at least recognize me by my rank. I wrote her back, and I told Andy afterward I may have screwed up his chances. I write to her that the salutation of Rambo puzzled me. I say that Rambo is a fictional character made up by the movie industry and stereotypical, and does not characterize Vietnam veterans. I tell her she’d be better served in the awards branch if she read the book Stolen Valor and see why this award is important, not to me but for the man I am trying to get it for. That’s when she is pulled off of this case and I get a call that everything is moving forward.

At this point I decided I’m going to get Andy’s Congressman involved. Mike Rogers, U.S. Representative from the 8th District of Michigan, is dedicated to veterans. He has a full time person on his staff working exclusively on veterans affairs: awards, medals, medical treatment and anything else that needs attention from Washington.

Eventually I get word from Congressman Rogers’ office that the award has been approved and now we just have to wait for the orders to come through.