OT: 9000 Purple Hearts ordered from Texas Medal Making Company

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I just heard this on KSFO (www.ksfo560.com - you can listen on your cpu): The Defense Logistics Agency has just ordered 9000 Purple Hearts from Grayco Industries in Tumball, Texas. They want 1400 in November, 1600 in each of December, January, Februrary, and March, and 1400 in April. Lee Graves said that in the 20 years of making medals, etc, for the services, they have never made Purple Hearts.

But a spokesperson for the Pentagon said that they had ordered 37000 in 1991, gave out 7,000 last year alone, and were only "maintaining supplies."

Now, the Purple Heart is supposed to be given to those who are wounded (life threatening) or killed (posthumously awarded) in battle.

Would somebody care to comment on how we had 7,000 servicepeople killed or wounded seriously in battle in 1998? Or is the Pentagon spinning this story?

If Drudge is correct in his reportage of 90,000 troops to be sent into Kosevo, that would be about 10% casualty, right?

God help us all.

-- Mary (CAgdma@homenoaddress.com), May 28, 1999

Answers

I have a friend who was in the army and got shot in the ass in a bar fight in Alaska. Got a Purple Heart. Still, the timing gives one pause.

-- . (.@...), May 28, 1999.

My father in-law won a purple heart in WWII when he was shot behind enemy lines in Germany.

-- Moore Dinty moore (not@thistime.com), May 28, 1999.

The Clinton Administration finally did something right. They bought the 9000 Purple Hearts when the price of gold is at a 20 year low. The question is why were they purchased? Is a ground war planned and they anticipate 9000 casualities? This does not look good. Perhaps they are hiding the casualities. If there were 50,000 bombing missions, it is hard to believe that no planes have crashed or been shot down other than the 2 helicopters. Clintons popularity has declined drastically during the last month. People are starting to wake up and to not believe all the spin? Curly, Larry and I are keeping busy trying to keep all of this going.

-- Moe (notstupid@bb.gom), May 28, 1999.

Mary,

back in the '70's I served with a guy who'd been awarded a purple heart that was struck (i.e. made) the year he was in third grade...they order a bunch, use them up, order a bunch more, and so on.

nothing to give one pause here, other than the fact that the reporter obviously got that '7000' in the last year figure wrong. One thing they have done in the recent past is award a bunch of PH's from the Vietnam era to guys whose paperwork went in and got lost in that five sided black hole known as the Pentagon...seems like almost every month in my DAV magazine they're showing somebody else getting one retroactively...

just my 2 cents worth on that one, Arlin

-- Arlin H. Adams (ahadams@ix.netcom.com), May 28, 1999.


Not enough! Double that figure, then double it again.

-- (snowleopard6@webtv.net), May 29, 1999.


There was a breif article about this in today's Houston Chronicle. Try houstonchronicle.com. sorry I don't know how to hotlink

-- noname (noname@nolocation.com), May 29, 1999.

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