Tracking Down False Heros
“
Instead, say the real recipients, the point is to expose the frauds and let the public know that the medal is not awarded for any one person, but, in a sense, for everyone who ever went to battle and particularly for those who did not come home.
To comprehend what makes Paige and the other recipients so angry about impostors, it helps to understand the aura that surrounds the medal, the mystique it has generated ever since it was created in 1861.
Nearly 40 million men and women have fought in America’s wars since the start of the Civil War — including more than 16 million in World War II and nearly 9 million in Vietnam — but only 3,410 have been recipients of the Medal of Honor, 574 of them posthumously.
The medal is awarded for such selfless and demanding service that it is, as the saying goes and as the citations read, “above and beyond” the call of normal duty.
It is no prettier than lesser medals — the Silver Star, the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star — but when an enlisted man walks into a