Pentagon draws flak for rarity of Medal of Honor

Pentagon draws flak for rarity of MoH
Services say they’re ‘satisfied’ with numbers, even though today’s veterans get 10 times fewer top medals
By Andrew Tilghman - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Oct 3, 2011 13:54:34 EDT
Sgt. 1st Class Alwyn “Al” Cashe was in the gunner’s turret when a massive roadside bomb struck his Bradley fighting vehicle.

As the vehicle went up in flames, small-arms fire began to rain down. A ruptured fuel cell spewed gasoline, soaking Cashe’s uniform as the flames spread.

Cashe didn’t run.

Instead, he dragged a burning soldier from the driver’s hatch and extinguished the fire that was gripping the driver’s clothes.

Then he went to the back of the vehicle and crawled into a troop compartment that was engulfed in flames — and stayed inside until he had helped pull six soldiers from the vehicle.

Cashe saved seven lives that day, Oct. 17, 2005, while sustaining second- and third-degree burns all over his body. He died several weeks later.

For the Army, that was enough to merit a Silver Star — but not a Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for military valor.

Cashe’s courageous actions are at the heart of a growing debate about whether the Pentagon is shortchanging today’s troops on the medals that were bestowed far more frequently in past wars.
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Recognition sought for soldier’s heroic acts
By LEO SHANE III
Stars and Stripes
Published: October 2, 2011
WASHINGTON — When the roadside bomb detonated, it ripped through the fuel tank of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle and ignited like napalm. The seven men seated inside were knocked unconscious and had no chance to escape the fire.

But the gunner, Sgt. 1st Class Alwyn Cashe, managed to crawl out of the burning wreckage. Wounded and drenched in diesel fuel, he pulled the Bradley’s driver from his seat before the flames reached there, dragging him to safety.

And then he went back.

The 16-year Army veteran had seen a dozen of his men die on that tour in Iraq, and he couldn’t bear to lose another. His uniform caught fire as he desperately tried to open the Bradley’s hatch.

By the time he got in, all he had on was his body armor and helmet, the rest of his uniform in ashes or seared to his skin. With help, he carried one of his dying men out of the fire and back to horrified medics trying to triage their charred colleagues.

And then he went back.

Soldiers couldn’t tell what rounds pinging off the Bradley were from insurgents’ weapons and which ones were from their own ammunition ablaze in the vehicle. As he reached the next soldier, Cashe tried to douse the fire on his uniform, only to realize that his own skin was peeling off from the heat. As another soldier helped pat out the flames, Cashe moved the next wounded friend to safety.

And then he went back.

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Sister fights to win Medal of Honor for deceased brother
February 04, 2011|By Darryl E. Owens, COMMENTARY
It's a label overused to knight everyone from athletes with long rap sheets to miners who survived a cave-in without going postal.

Hero.

There's less ambiguity on the battlefield, where real heroes earn the Medal of Honor for "gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of one's own life above and beyond the call of duty."

In September, a soldier from Oviedo became the third recipient of the award for valor in Afghanistan. But another Oviedo soldier is deserving, too. His name: Army Sgt. 1st Class Alwyn "Al" Cashe.

Maureen Miller, who knows a little something about heroes, thinks Cashe merits strong consideration. Last month, hundreds at All Faiths Memorial Cemetery watched as a special marker — signifying a Medal of Honor recipient — was placed at the grave of the woman's son, U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Miller. He was killed Jan. 25, 2008, in Afghanistan after drawing enemy fire and taking on ambushers so his teammates could find cover.

The same distinction has so far eluded Cashe, a 1988 Oviedo High graduate, frustrating his sister who's on a mission to see her baby brother properly honored.

Cashe's story adds kindling to the hot debate about whether the Pentagon is shortchanging today's heroes, considering that fewer Medals of Honor have emerged from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan than any of America's other major conflicts.

On Oct. 20, 2005, when Kasinal Cashe White and her family arrived at Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas, all she knew was that her brother had been burned. Badly.
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