Military News - Military Times

Awards records nowhere to be found

The Air Force has claimed for decades that 2nd Lt. Samuel R. Keesler, an aerial observer killed in a dogfight behind enemy lines during World War I — and namesake of the Air Force base in Mississippi — was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army’s highest honor and the equivalent of the Air Force Cross.

The award is mentioned in the official Air Force biography of Keesler, a member of the Aviation Section of the Army Signal Corps when he was killed in October 1918. It’s also mentioned on the base’s Web site.

But now the Air Force is not so sure he got the medal.

After months of research, amateur military historian Doug Sterner has been unable to find documentation for the award, and neither has the Air Force Historical Research Agency. The agency recently told Sterner it may have been wrong all along.

Sterner, who compiles military award records for his Web site, HomeOfHeroes.com, says the Air Force’s inability to back up claims about one of its early heroes is more than just an embarrassment. It’s the tip of the iceberg.

There’s the case of an AC-47 gunship shot down over Vietnam in 1967. All seven airmen aboard were killed and awarded posthumous Silver Stars, but no Silver Stars are included in the men’s records, and the Air Force hasn’t been able to find the citations.

And there’s retired Col. Elmo Baker, a highly decorated F-105 pilot in Vietnam who was shot down near Hanoi in 1967 and held prisoner by the North Vietnamese for nearly six years. He received the Distinguished Service Medal, the Air Force’s second-highest award, at his retirement ceremony in 1978, but there is no record of it.

“It is an important issue because obviously I did the service, and I got the award,” Baker said. “They’re holding [the records] in some sort of place.”

Sterner, a Vietnam vet, said the issue is bigger than just individuals who can’t prove they earned their awards. He said he sees it as the loss of our nation’s history.

Erich Anderson, who runs the Web site VeteranTributes.org and shares information with Sterner, agrees.

“You have a guy awarded a Medal of Honor or Distinguished Service Cross living right next to you, and you wouldn’t know,” Anderson said. “It’s instantly lost history the day he dies because you don’t have his word of mouth any more and ... the military doesn’t have the documentation.”

Among all the services, Sterner said, “the Air Force enumeration of awards ... is absolutely the worst.”

The Air Force Cross is the service’s highest honor and the rarest of all military awards, with only 192 awarded since it came into being in 1960. Or so it seems.

Sterner said the Air Force cannot find records for five of the 192 Silver Stars. The awards are not listed in the airmen’s personnel files, and researchers at the Air Force Historical Research Agency cannot locate the citations.

Sterner sent a letter June 24 to acting Air Force Secretary Michael Donley asking him to address the problem, but said he has not received a response. Lt. Col. Brenda Campbell, Donley’s spokeswoman, said the Air Staff is gathering information on how the Air Force tracks award records so the secretary can personally respond to Sterner.

Sterner is now pushing Congress to pass bills pending in the House and Senate requiring the Defense Department to create a national database of all military award winners.

The Defense Department says Sterner’s idea for a database, while laudable, is impractical.

“Although the idea of establishing such a database is noble, the creation of an accurate and complete historical database (name and citation) of all past valorous award recipients is unattainable and cost-prohibitive,” Defense Department spokeswoman Eileen Lainez said in an e-mail.

Lainez said creating such a database would require reviewing personnel records of each of the millions of people who have served, a task that she said would take an estimated 8 million man-hours just for the World War II period.

Not so, Sterner said. He said he has created digital records of about 120,000 of the 750,000 or so valor awards issued. Besides, he said, recovering history should be a national priority no matter the cost.

“Bottom line is this needs to be done so that heroes are not forgotten,” he said.