Truth be told lots of people in wars do lots of incredibly heroic things and are never recognized for it.
My "brother" was a Marine grunt around An Hoa in 1969 and some of the experiences he had are pretty hair raising. Near misses, hand to hand combat, assaulting entrenched positions single handed, continuing to fight even after being wounded (bullet in the arm), etc. And this was just for a run of the mill grunt, no special super secret ops guy.
Not denigrating the things that decorated veterans got decorated for, except for a few political posers every one of them deserved the recognition. But as far as I'm concerned any man wearing a CIB and particularly a Purple Heart deserves as much respect as we can give.
One T. Lee's posts had a great line about Vietnam Vets.
"Every day Soldiers in Vietnam earned medals for valor. Some of them were actually awarded with one."
