Log In or Sign Up to View

https://www.facebook.com/infantryfollowme/photos/a [login to see] 50 [login to see] [login to see] 66559759/ [login to see] 62996/?type=3
New Defense Medal approved for millennials

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Senior Defense Department officials are bracing for criticism after they announced plans to create another new medal—one that doesn’t require service in any of the nation’s branches of the armed forces. The medal will formally recognize the desire many young Americans have to serve, even if they never actually signed up.
“Not everyone has the courage or commitment required for actual service in our armed forces,” said Alexander Hornesphlaeger, Assistant Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Unnecessary Programs. “This medal will honor the men and women who wished to serve but, for various reasons, chose other paths,” Hornesphlaeger said.
The first medal will be awarded at a Pentagon ceremony next month to Roger Jackson, 23, of Winter Park, Fla.
“I used to watch a lot of war movies when I was growing up and I always wanted to wear a uniform,” Jackson said. “When I was thinking about joining the Army right after high school I wasn’t going to go for some desk job, I wanted infantry or cavalry or public affairs. You know, something that would put me right in the thick of things,” he said.
Jackson even considered joining the Marine Corps or becoming a Navy SEAL, but his dreams of military service were crushed when he landed a job at a local Taco Bell and was accepted into community college.
The medal, which looks exactly like the Pentagon's popular new Distinguished Warfare Medal, will rank just above the armed services’ medals for achievement, but below commendation medals. Recipients who considered joining more than one branch of service will be awarded a bronze elm leaf cluster for each additional branch considered. A silver elm leaf is awarded if all six armed services—Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and Postal Service—are considered.
Those who can document their actual intentions to join one or more services qualify for a bronze “I” device.
“I wish the medal ranked a little higher, maybe right around the Purple Heart or whatever you call that medal you get when you’re wounded,” Jackson said. “If I had joined the infantry I probably would have got shot or something, or maybe even blown up by one of those IUDs,” he noted.
Hornesphlaeger said that Roger Jackson and thousands like him exemplify the “noblest intentions of a new generation of potential heroes.”