The Purple Heart was awarded retroactively for wounds received during World War 1. MacArthur himself was the first recipient. It was standardized across all services in December of 1942. However, the Purple Heart is a military award no sensible person covets.
Will Dabbs
Show First
Hannie Schaft: The Assassin with the Fiery Red Hair
Updated: August 30, 2024When she came of age, Jo enrolled in law school intending to become a human rights lawyer. While studying law she developed friendships with several Jewish students. In the late 1930’s with persecution of the Jews on the rise across Europe, Jo felt energized to support them.
When Americans and Russians Went to War
Updated: August 24, 2024It is tough to believe that, even this deep into the enlightened Information Age, nations can yet still go to war simply because a single charismatic lunatic wants them to.
CPL Ben Roberts-Smith: Never Meet Your Heroes
Updated: August 18, 2024Maybe it’s the movies. We inexplicably expect life to be clean, tidy, and clear-cut. It just isn’t. It is so much easier to process the world around us when we fractionate people into all good or all bad.
Alec Baldwin: The Gun Control Advocate Who Shot and Killed a Woman
Updated: August 16, 2024Thursday, 21 October 2021, a handgun went off during the filming of the Alec Baldwin Western movie Rust. The cast and crew were rehearsing an upcoming scene inside a chapel used as a set for the film. The weapon was in Baldwin’s hands when it discharged.
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
Updated: August 3, 2024It is difficult to appreciate the scope of World War 2. We modern folk simply have no frame of reference. It was death, tragedy, and destruction on a scale beyond our imagining.
Joe Medicine Crow: The Last American Indian War Chief
Updated: July 25, 2024Joe was raised, for the most part, by his maternal step-grandfather, a respected Indian warrior named White Man Runs Him or simply Yellowtail.
The Assassination of the Saudi King Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud
Updated: July 18, 2024Human beings just suck, like a lot. We have a long and illustrious history of venting our grievances against our leaders through the barrel of a gun
Thomas Richards: The Incredible Hulk
Updated: July 15, 2024I have reliable information that the Incredible Hulk is not technically real. Folks who are inadvertently exposed to massive doses of gamma radiation most typically have their hair fall out, puke up their entrails, and die.
Tom Landry: A Hero From a Generation of Heroes
Updated: July 6, 2024While Landry was indeed a jock, he also enjoyed a brilliant analytical mind. Upon graduation from high school, he enrolled in the University of Texas at Austin studying industrial engineering. However, the vagaries of fate soon intervened.