Four tours in Viet Nam; and a CIB, Bronze Star with no "V" device, Purple Heart, an Air Medal, Good Conduct Medal (one award), and RVN Gallantry Cross (with palm).
Really?
Edited to add: Purple Heart.
The stars aren't tours, they are campaigns. Some campaigns which are officially recognized for this medal were short, some long, but many overlapped in a single one-year tour. Apparently (According to Wiki anyway) there were four recognized campaigns in 1968 alone.
The branch brass is worn officer-style for the time, can't tell what the rank is on the other side though. I also can't tell whether it's infantry or not, but an aviation unit guy might have had any branch, usually armor, infantry, or cav but there were officers from almost every branch in the days before aviation got its WW2 winged prop back as a separate branch.
The CIB rules are a little peculiar, or at least were at the time. I knew a guy who went to VN and got one for listening to trail monitor transmissions at a base camp for his entire tour, but he was in a combat zone in an infantry slot, so he got the award when he left. If he was actually branched infantry and serving in an infantry slot, this DUmmie could have got one without ever leaving the airfield.
The BSM for service was and still generally is the officer and senior NCO version of the MSM for combat zones.
The air medal was routinely awarded to aviators whose birds took fire in VN, even if nobody was wounded, leading to some ridiculous totals of air medal awards in some individual cases.
The RVN Cross of Gallantry was a valor award, but it was also awarded wholesale to units, including large ones, and apparently the Army retroactively awarded it by general order to everyone in the Army who served in the Military Assistance Command for VN between 1968 and 1974.
The purple heart speaks for itself, but so does the lack of any other awards like any ARCOMS, which is hard to square with putting in the three years of enlisted service necessary to get that one award of the GCM.
The stuff he's got on is consistent with someone who was drafted or drifted into the Army, did an unexceptional job for awhile, and then was accepted to a shake-and-bake commissioning course (By an Army desperate to put lieutenants and WOs in the field as infantry and aviators) where he was routinely 'detailed' to the infantry branch after graduation and landed in an AV unit, likely as what we'd call a FOB-rat these days rather than a high-activity flyer, who somehow managed to get hit on a rare trip over hostile territory or during a raid or shelling attack, and then was dumped into the IRR when his one tour was up.
