Showing posts with label Legion of Merit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Legion of Merit. Show all posts

Friday, October 10, 2014

France Presents Legion of Merit to Boston WWII Veteran

Boston WWII veteran to receive France’s highest honor
Boston Globe
By Kiera Blessing
GLOBE CORRESPONDENT
OCTOBER 10, 2014

David Charter is pictured (right) in this undated photo.

A 90-year-old World War II veteran from Boston is to be named a Knight of the French Legion of Honor, the highest distinction in France, on Thursday.

David Charter, born and raised in Dorchester, enlisted in the US Army Air Forces at 18 and flew 43 missions, fighting in infamous battles like D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge.

“I was always frightened,” Charter said of his time at war. But “it was a job that had to be done, and I did it. ... France understood what we had to go through.”

The Legion of Honor, established in 1802 by Napoleon Bonaparte, was opened to US military veterans 10 years ago, on the 60th anniversary of D-Day. Charter is one of hundreds of veterans in New England to have received the honor since, and one of about 100 from Boston, said Timothy Deer, assistant to the consul general at the French consulate in Boston.
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Sunday, December 30, 2012

Formerly homeless vet finds a place in a widow's heart and home

Ken Reusser obituary in the LA Times brings a lot more meaning to this already wonderful story about his widow Trudy.
He received 59 medals during his career, and his 253 combat missions are considered the most ever by a Marine pilot.
After his retirement, he worked for Lockheed Aircraft, where he helped develop the U-2 spy plane, and then the Piasecki Helicopter Co. Retiring to his native Oregon, he was active in veterans groups.
He and his wife, Trudy, made headlines in 2004 when they defiantly refused to leave their home after it went into foreclosure. The couple had lost much of their retirement savings in a high-risk investment and then a swindle by a bookkeeper. Ultimately they were forced to obey a court order.


Now that you know the backstory on this, read what Trudy Reusser did.

Formerly homeless vet finds a place in a widow's heart and home
Published: Tuesday, December 25, 2012
By Mike Francis
The Oregonian

If there's one thing on which everyone -- activists, columnists, elected officials, cabinet secretaries, even the president of the United States -- seems to agree, it's that Americans should support military veterans.

Bind their wounds. Give them jobs. Provide them counseling. Welcome them home. Easy to say, harder to do.

This is the story of one welcoming. It involves a 73-year-old Milwaukie widow and her housemate, a 67-year-old Vietnam veteran.

She was married for almost 35 years to a legendary military aviator, living in a place she and her husband built before he died three years ago.

And he is her helper, sleeping in a warm bed in her spare bedroom, out of the cold and the rain since she invited him in.

If Trudy Reusser and Norm Gotovac seem an unlikely pair, that's because you don't know Reusser.

"She is a wonderful lady," says her friend, Kay Saddler of Hemlock, Ore. "She would give the shirt off her back and the shoes and socks off her feet if it would help a veteran."

Reusser. Why is that name familiar?

Military history buffs will know instantly: Ken Reusser is the most decorated Marine pilot in history. He displayed extraordinary bravery in combat not once, but repeatedly, across decades. He is, it is believed, the only pilot to have survived being downed in World War II, the Korean War and in Vietnam. He was awarded the Navy Cross twice, the Legion of Merit with V twice, the Distinguished Flying Cross five times, four Purple Hearts and numerous other commendations.
read more here

Sunday, August 2, 2009

In Ranks of Heroes, Finding the Fakes

I don't know if these people will ever understand how many other people they are hurting. Worse is that I don't even know if they care at all.

Because of these fakes and frauds, it makes it all the more harder on the real heroes. They not only had to prove themselves in combat, they had to prove themselves with claims to the VA, to veterans organizations and now, they have to prove it all over again. A data base would be very helpful with this however, that is, as long as what it put in is right and all paperwork errors have been found and fixed.

I don't want to bore you with the story of my husband all over again, so the short version is, his award for a Bronze Star had the wrong social security number typed in. This caused a cluster of accusations, his VA claim to be denied and a lot of doubt. We had a newspaper clipping his mother kept from a local paper announcing the award. We had all the paper work with all the official seals and signatures. What we didn't have was the right social security number. That was pretty hard on him to have to prove it all over again, but when I was put in contact with a general's office, all the paperwork supported the truth, it was corrected and his claim was finally approved. How many others did this happen to? How many others didn't keep all their paperwork after Vietnam? What if my husband tossed his paperwork in the trash the way he wanted to over 30 years ago? We'd have no proof of anything even though he was telling the truth. We have the fact his mother raised him to be a pack rat the way she was with saving papers.

Too many others are not so lucky.

The only way a massive data base could ever be a good thing is if they went through everyone's files to make sure all the pieces of paper in the file belonged to them and not someone else. I'm sure somewhere there is a veteran with papers that belong to someone else but because the social security number came up it was attached to someone else's name. Can they do that? Can they go through every piece of paper for every service man or woman before they even attempt to do it? I doubt it. No one has that kind of time.

We can't even trust some of the data bases we use. Most of them have a disclaimer saying their information is not complete. With the Medal of Honor, it is easy to have an accurate data base since so few really received the award. The lower the award, the more recipients of it and it gets harder to find all the information. It would be so much easier on the veterans if they didn't have to go through any of this unless there was a technicality but because of the frauds wanting to use what they did not earn, it makes it all the more difficult for them. It is a betrayal, a theft and should be treated like a crime, which it is but somehow I doubt all the frauds out there have been found. While they wanted publicity for what they stole, they should get publicity for it when they have been found to be lying. For the others with possible mistakes on their records, their claims should be treated as if it is possible and taken seriously. Knowing a fraud that got away with it for a time does not make up for a real veteran suffering for a mistake he did not make. What is justice in this case and how do we arrive at it as soon as possible?

This article points out that the Internet is very helpful in all of this but no site can have every single piece of information no matter how good they are at it. It takes diligence from the rest of us.

If you ever talk to someone claiming to be a veteran with awards, do some checking to see if they are telling the truth. You never know when you can help catch a fraud or help a veteran with no clue errors were made in their case.

In Ranks of Heroes, Finding the Fakes

By IAN URBINA
Published: August 1, 2009

Last August, the Texas Department of Transportation started asking applicants for more documentation after discovering that at least 11 of the 67 Legion of Merit license plates on the roads had been issued to people who never earned the medal.

Last September, the House of Representatives passed a bill naming a post office in Las Vegas after a World War II veteran who, it later turned out, had lied when he claimed he had been awarded a Silver Star. The legislation was rescinded.

In May, one of the most prominent veterans’ advocates in Colorado was detained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation after it was discovered that his story about heroic service in Iraq and severe injuries from a roadside bomb was an elaborate hoax.

Military imposters are nothing new. But the problem has grown or at least become more obvious as charlatans are easily able to find fake military documents, medals and uniforms on auction Web sites.

Last month, The Marine Corps Times found 40 erroneous profiles in this year’s Marine Corps Association Directory, including false claims of 16 Medals of Honor, 16 Navy Crosses and 8 Silver Stars.

read more here

In Ranks of Heroes, Finding the Fakes