tangent
Here is the regulation criteria for an AFEM, following on Robert's good thoughts:
"3. Criteria: a. The Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal may be awarded to members of the Armed Forces of the United States who after 1 July 1958 participate as members of U.S. military units in a U.S. military operation in which service members of any Military Department participate, in the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), in significant numbers and encounter during such participation foreign armed opposition, or are otherwise place in such a position that in the opinion of the JCS, hostile action by foreign armed forces was imminent even though it does not materialize.
b. The Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal may be authorized for three categories of operations: U.S. military operations; U.S. military operations in direct support of the United Nations; and U.S. operations of assistance to friendly foreign nations.
c. The medal shall be awarded only for operations for which no other U.S. campaign medal is approved."
I devote the better part of every retirement day writing biographies (818 so far) for fallen and deceased airmen, which necessarily involves reading a lot of obituary material - where, I can testify, having served "in/during the Vietnam [etc] war" is not something I can take for granted as meaning the presence of a VSM. To know that I have to know what units and time spans and AFSC/MOS were involved. One does get well acquainted with and fussy about ribbon criteria.
It's all made more complicated by the official DOD beginning and end dates of wars, and by various other stipulations of criteria such as (most notably, e.g.) the thousands of airmen who served in SEA theater in places like Guam and Philippines and at sea, or who did repeated TDY in-country on ferrying or MATS details etc etc etc not amounting to the required length (30 days) of assignment to qualify for a ribbon. If a GI was KIA in less than 24 hours of boots on the ground in VN, then technically he would not rate the VSM either - though I feel sure a commander could make it happen for him. I feel for those guys, as for the ones who served 2 days less than qualifying for a Longevity award.
Anyhow, I think the current statistic is that about 10 times the number who actually served in-country are claiming to have done so; for a combination of reasons from survivor's guilt, to being in the TDY slot, to outright deception or the family/mortuaries/journalists not knowing the difference between "in" and "during" a war when the obituary is written.
This isn't any special news to anyone else, but may be something interesting many of us deal with who have served in any capacity at all.
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