Whose Rules?

The Pentagon has a medal dilemma: Each service applies its own criteria to awarding the “V” device for valor and the Purple Heart. Officials began work last month to set a single, all encompassing standard for medals and devices that cross service lines. We missed this last month, but the Pentagon’s deputy undersecretary of defense for military personnel policy, Bill Carr, has formed a task force of representatives from each service, the Joint Staff, and the Institute of Heraldry to sort out all applicable directives and, hopefully, reach a consensus for one set of standards for awards procedures, says Carr. The review, expected to take six months, also will explore how each service defines an area of operations for campaign medals.