I got a new military decoration the other day.

A few years back, I got an email from a shipmate that we were awarded another medal. The Combat Action Medal (CAM) and we were to write to some bureaucrat in St. Louis to receive it. Now you may, or you may not, know that you can't just run down to Medals R Us and buy these things. They are, with a few exceptions, awarded and are not a commodity to be bought and sold. If you loose your medals and want to replace them, it's a fairly big bureaucratic deal. Anyway, I wrote the cival servant in St. Lou and gave him all of the pertinent information that I was instructed to convey. Name, rank and serial number. Name of ship dates of service aboard said ship and deployment dates were all dutifully noted. That was three years ago and I still haven't heard back. The medal was first created in 1969 with "retroactive presentation" to March 1961. So I guess in the grand scheme of things, three years wait isn't a sin.

The ribbon, is quite another thing however.

When you get a medal awarded to you, you get just that, the medal. You then have to go out immediately and buy the ribbon for your dress uniform for inspections, or even liberty call.

Well I was in Oceanside last week. Oceanside is just south of Camp Pendleton and is a Marine town. I was walking past a Jarhead uniform store and went in for he hell of it. I told the guy that I wanted to buy a ribbon for a Combat Action Medal and asked if he had them. The Marine Corps is, after all, part of the US Navy and we have the same decorations apart from Army or Air Force stuff. Suddenly, the guy starting calling me sir and showed me one. I also got a triple ribbon bar for my new top row. There was a chart on the wall which showed the placement of the various medals on the uniform. There is a pecking order in how the awards are placed and in what order. The Congressional Medal of Honor is on top etc. I couldn't find the CAM on the chart. I asked where the medal was on the chart as I couldn't find it. The clerk explained that it wasn't on the chart. That was because there is no medal for the Combat Action Medal. Only the ribbon and the chart was for the medals. So I bought the stinking ribbon but I probably will never wear it as I haven't worn my uniform since a 1986 Halloween party.

I started thinking about the old WW2 term SNAFU.