Comment Re:"ubiquity"? Been there, done that (Score 2) 290
Bronze Star Medals have a lot of cache, so the officers got together and made those the end of tour awards for E7 and up. E6 and below got ARCOM's. Thing is, people who know, know that the BSM without a "V" device (for valor, indicating it's for a combat action) is just BS. I'm sure they'd go for higher awards, but you can get a BSM for non-combat action, and that's not true with higher awards what the Silver Star.
My experience was a bit odd. Getting an ARCOM with false information (maybe just confusion as to the part I played on that mission) for not getting NJP'd on the deployment is cool; but a Combat Action Badge for what I actually did during a rocket attack would somehow "cheapen" the award. However, it's not new. I remember my grandfather mentioning how messed up the award system was during WWII, and my guess is there's some dudes at Valley Forge that didn't get anything because they're Platoon SGT thought they were a shit bird.
It happened in the Marines, too, but it wasn't as bad, I think because promotion points weren't tied to awards. When they help you get promoted faster, there's more incentive to game the system to get more awards. Oh, well, I ETS'd a while back, so all those awards don't really mean a damn thing now, anyway.