I don’t know how these things come up on my radar. But they do. I keep lists of things to look up and usually that just leads to more things to look up. Not complaining, but curiosity can be a harsh taskmaster.
The medal was created by executive order in 1965 to
recognize the deployment of military personnel to Southeast Asia (specifically
think Vietnam) prior to that time. Over the years it has been authorized for twenty
deployments around the world during the Cold War and after. By definition: “The
Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal can be earned through U.S. military
operations, operations in direct support of the United Nations and U.S.
operations of assistance to friendly foreign nations.”
The list of operations begins with Lebanon, Vietnam, and the
Taiwan Straits in 1958. It concludes with Operation JOINT GUARDIAN in Kosovo after
1 Jan 2014 and continues. In between are several deployments to Haiti, the Berlin Crisis, two
deployments to the Congo. Stuff I wasn’t even familiar with. If you want to see
the whole list, here’s
a link to a pdf provided by the Department of Defense Personnel and Readiness
website.
I’m glad I looked this up. It was a little exercise in
reminding myself that everyone’s service is important. We should not forget the
men and women who earned this service ribbon any more than we should fail to
recognize the sacrifices of veterans of any declared war. And you can bet I'll be looking up some of the items on this list. ;-)
