"Korean War US decorations for British Troops" Topic

I've been reading the excellent Scorched Earth, Black Snow by Andrew Salmon, in which he mentions a Royal Marine being offered a purple heart in hospital in Japan.

Did British troops serving under USMC or US Army command receive US decorations, as opposed to unit citations etc?

Not sure, but there were several unit citations for British units

Just popped an order in for the Kindle version. Thanks for the heads up.

An awful lot of British troops have received US decorations when serving under US command. from WW1 to Afghanistan. I used to know an RAF Wg Cdr with a Silver Star (I think), won while flying F-117As over Yugoslavia.

Foreign nationals who were attached to U.S. units would be able to receive the award, just as they could be awarded medals for gallantry.

There is also a difference between "offered" and "awarded." Offered implies that while the officer was at the hospital with a box of purple hearts he found a Brit who had been wounded and said, "hey, do you want one of these while I'm passing them out?"

Purple Hearts weren't a usual decoration for British troops, but I know of several who received them 'by accident' when recovering in US hospitals.

Here's a Canadian Para receiving the Silver Star during WW2:

Here's a sequence of photos in the IWM collection showing General Bradley awarding US decorations to British officers in Normandy:

link

Curiously these awards were to 6th Airborne Division, which did not come under direct US command and indeed, were as far from US forces as was possible to get within the Normandy Bridgehead. I can only assume that as they came under Eisenhower, everyone in the Allied Expeditionary Force was elligible for US awards.

Mark Davies and 79thPA are dead right – if attached to a US unit Commonwealth personnel could 'receive but not accept' – specific permission was needed from the Sovereign and this was sparingly given. This situation caused some real difficulties during the Vietnam war for Australian troops, especially advisors, and was only changed with the wholesale changes to the honours and awards system here in the 1990s.

My father was a platoon commander in Korea and was 'awarded' a Purple Heart while in post op in a US medical facility. An embarrassed American officer came back a few hours later and reclaimed it after recognising the error.

Sorry, that should read 'accept but not receive'.

On the subject of Presidential Unit Citations; I know that the Notts (Sherwood Rangers) Yeomanry were awarded one in WW2 (for supporting 82nd Airborne at Nijmegen) and the Glosters were awarded one for their stand at the Imjin River in Korea. I don't know if either unit was allowed to actually wear the badge.

That's pretty typical rules for accepting any foreign decoration. It's actually pretty easy to get things like jump wings and several German awards are offered at US training bases in the States, but typically to get a decoration the recieving country's higher command (or even government in some cases) has to approve of the award before it can be made official and the decoration can be worn.

Sundance is right, though at least within the Commonwealth system it has become less rigid in recent years. Quite a few of my Australian Army friends with (often multiple) tours in Iraq and AFG sport US (and Iraqi, Afghan and in one case, Romanian) decorations earned there. In the 1960s it would have been unthinkable to wear them in uniform, but long coalition wars tend to strip at least some of the inessentials out (while doubtless replacing them with others).
US unit citations were general regarded differently from individual awards. 3RAR was awarded a presidential citation for Kapyong (as was PPCLI), while the NZ gunners had to make do with a Korean presidential citation for the same battle. 6RAR and 8RAR were both awarded unit citations in Vietnam – all of these were recognised by the Australian government and worn on dress uniforms from then on.

There are plenty of medal groups in British regimental museums showing US decorations and especially French decorations and other foreign allied decorations – especially from WW1. So this isn't really anything new and has been permitted foe nearly 100 years, depending on the nationality. Orders of chivalry and decorations for bravery are generally permitted, but campaign medals and other decorations were/are not.

Foreign decorations are always 'junior' to Commonwealth decorations, so are worn toward the left shoulder-end of the rack.

Foreign qualification badges (such as para wings) have never been permitted, however.

The two world wars are a little bit different, especially WWI. The various allied powers allocated a certain number of various levels of gallantry awards and these were awarded to soldiers from allied armies – sometimes on a very arbitrary basis if the stories are to be believed. I've seen several medal groups with Imperial Russian decorations on the bar on this basis, and the same thing happened with French and Belgian CdeGs. Wars in which inter-allied niceties were less important or underwritten by different criteria (I think Korea falls into this group) did not see nearly so much easy interchange of awards. I also understand that in the Australian case, at least, some of these foreign awards – especially from the Vietnam War – were only posted on the medal bars by the soldiers concerned after they had retired and Queen's Regulations could no longer be enforced against them. What may be on display in a regimental museum, therefore, reflects reality but not as it was worn in uniform, necessarily.

That British general, Flashman was awarded several US medals from memory.

While serving in the British Army, my dad went to Jordan in '73 as part of the UN peace keeping force. He got a lovely big shiney medal from the Jordanians but wasn't allowed to wear it on uniform with his other gongs.
After leaving the Army in '82 he went out to Oman as a 'contract' officer, and got another medal from the Sultan to comemerate 15 years (?) in power. (the Sultan, not my dad)
After retiring, dad got involved in the Army Cadet Force, and served as an admin/training officer, being awarded the Queen's Golden Jubilee medal but still wasn't allowed to wear 'all' his medals together.
He's just been presented with another one by the Malaysians for his service during the Emergency, but he's not so bothered anymore coz he reckons, at 75, that his days in uniform may be over!

Oddly enough, the Malaysian one IS permitted to be worn :o)

UN and NATO campaign medals are always permitted for wear, but foreign campaign medals (e.g. the Saudi and Kuwaiti Gulf War medals, which everyone in Op Granby received) are not, unless specificlly authorised, such as the Malaysian one.

Well, the Kuwaiti medals had to be re-struck before the US allowed them to be given to the troops. They were originally a couple ounces of solid gold!

I've only met a few 'Murricans wearing foreign decorations. The one I really respect is the Brit submarine command dolphins.