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Navy Plans Award for Merchant
Marine
Following closely on the adoption
of four new medals by Congress for United States Merchant Marine personnel,
the Navy has now authorized awarding of the Navy's Silver Star Medal and
the Navy and Marine Corps Medal to merchant seamen and officers.
Navy Department Bulletin R-1391
provides for the following:
(a) Navy awards may be made
to U.S. Merchant Marine personnel only when direct combat with the enemy
is involved, or in case of especially meritorious service under combat
conditions when members of a naval expedition. The latter is not to
be construed as covering normal overseas convoys.
(b) In such cases, Navy awards
will be limited to the Silver Star Medal and the Navy and Marine Corps
Medal, as appropriate.
(c) Major naval commanders
to whom this authority is delegated are authorized to award these naval
decorations on the spot as is now done for naval personnel.
(d) All naval commanders,
if not authorized to make awards themselves, will be meticulous in forwarding
recommendations for awards to Merchant Marine personnel of such medals
as may be considered appropriate. Such commanders, if serving directly
under an officer authorized to make awards, will submit recommendations
to that officer. Other naval commanders will submit such recommendations
to the Secretary of the Navy.
(e) All naval commanders
wil be meticulous in forwarding recommendations for awards to Merchant
Marine personnel of War Shipping Administration medals to the Navy Department
for further transmission to the War Shipping Administration.
The bulletin carries the signature
of Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox.
Source: Neptune,
publication of Alameda U.S. Maritime Service Officer Training School,
November 1943
Merchant Seamen Eligible for Army Decorations
U.S. Merchant seamen are eligible
to receive certain Army decorations according to a recent letter sent
to the President by Secretary of War Stimson which stated that merchant
seamen serving with the Army are eligible to receive the Distinguished
Service Medal, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star, the Bronze
Star, the Air Medal, and the Purple Heart. Navy decorations which can
also be awarded to merchant seamen are the Navy Cross, the Distinguished
Service Medal, the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, the Navy and Marine Corps
Medal, and the Air Medal. In order to be eligible for these latter, the
seamen must have served in a definite capacity with the Navy since December
6, 1941.
City Merchant Sailor Given
Purple Heart
Purple hearts are rarely awarded to merchant seamen, but Douglas C.
Shepperd, 22, 3433 Garfield Avenue [Minneapolis], home Thursday from
a hospital in Chicago, was able to tell friends how he was presented the
armed forces' oldest medal.
One of the few Northwest merchant
mariners entitled to wear the purple heart, possibly the only one, Shepperd
was wounded by a V2 bomb while ashore in Antwerp last December from the
first American convoy to enter the Belgian port.
Part of his foot was cut off
by shrapnel. He has not fully recovered from the injury after treatment
in hospitals in Antwerp, Paris, England, Boston and Chicago.
He also wears three ribbons
for service in every war theater and a combat bar with a star for being
aboard a ship torpedoed and sunk off India in December, 1943.
Discharged from the merchant
marine this summer, Shepperd is attempting to qualify for trade schooling
under provisions of the merchant marine rehabilitation program. He is
a graduate of Howard Lake, Minn., high school. His parents are Mr. and
Mrs. Shepperd.
"QUIT KIDDING!"
was the only thing ordinary seaman Lorenzo Noto could say when
an Army captain told him, he was going to receive the Purple Heart for
wounds received in a bombed theater in Antwerp.
But the captain wasn't kidding
and Noto, a Sheepshead Bay graduate, received the decoration. He was on
shore liberty with four other Merchant Seamen and two gun crew members
the day the Germans made their break-through around Belgium, December
16, 1944.
It was a gray, foggy, bleak
day. Rockets and buzz bombs could be heard exploding in the vicinity while
the twenty-two- year-old seaman watched and listened to the gunfire around
Gary Cooper in "The Plainsman."
Suddenly a bomb hit the theater
and brought the beams and walls tumbling down. "The roof," said
Noto, "seemed to be torn off and the theater was momentarily lighted
by daylight."
For six hours Noto lay pinned
under the wreckage, lapsing into unconsciousness several times, until
rescuers were able to tunnel under the debris and drag him to safety.
Noto, whose home is in Brooklyn,
N. Y. thought it a strange coincidence that he, a 4F, should receive the
Purple Heart.
Regulations
and Executive Orders re medals; Purple Heart Award to Cadet Scruggs
Sources:
Official list of Purple Heart medals awarded by Army on January 14, 1944
Battle Report (The Atlantic War), Cdr. Walter Karig, New York: Farrar
& Rinehart, 1946
Decorations, Medals and Insignia of the United States Navy: World War
II to Present, James G. Thompson, fountain Inn, SC: Medals of America
Press, 2000
Mast Magazine: February 1945, March 1946
Maritime Murmurs [Avalon USMSTS Newsletter], September 9, 1944
Minneapolis Tribune, September 8, 1945
The Official Chronology of the U. S. Navy in World War II, Robert
J. Cressman, Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 2000
We'll Deliver: Early History of the United States Merchant Marine Academy,
1938-1956, C. Bradford Mitchell, Kings Point, New York: U.S. Merchant
Marine Academy Alumni Association, 1977
War Shipping Administration Press Releases 2112, 2133, 2134
Martin P. Skrocki. "More than 30 Years Later... Academy POW is Decorated,"
Kings Pointer. Winter 1978
Gibson, Charles Dana and Gibson, E. Kay. Over Seas: U.S. Army
Maritime Operations, 1989 through the Fall of the Philippines.
Camden, Maine: Ensign Press, 2002
"Capt. Hauffman is Cited," New York Times, Jan. 25, 1946
Merchant
Marine Medals
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Bronze Star
Purple Heart