Navy Secretary Ray Mabus on Friday upgraded valor medals for 17 previously honored troops, including a fallen Navy SEAL who was based in Coronado, as part of a review of commendations for special-operations personnel who served in Iraq or Afghanistan.
During a ceremony in Virginia Beach, Va., Mabus presented eight Navy Crosses and eight Silver Stars to veterans, active-duty service members assigned to the Naval Special Warfare Command and, in the case of two deceased honorees, their families.
The final recipient wasn’t able to attend that ceremony to receive a Silver Star, said Lt. Cmdr. Mark Walton, a spokesman for the command, which is headquartered on the Silver Strand but has units stationed on both of the nation’s coasts.
The Navy Cross is the nation’s second-highest medal for combat bravery, while the Silver Star is just one step below it.
Retired SEAL training officer Ed Hiner of San Diego, who did tours of duty in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Philippines, applauded the medal upgrades. He noted that in the early going of Operation Enduring Freedom, criteria for the awarding of valor medals weren’t as well-established and standardized as they should have been.
“There were some people doing some amazingly courageous stuff, and I don’t think they’ve gotten the recognition they deserve,” Hiner said, adding that this is the prevailing feeling among America’s close-knit special-operations community.
Officials didn’t identify most of the honorees due to security concerns for special-operations personnel, who typically keep their identities secret because of the often-clandestine nature of their work.
The Navy did confirm that a Navy Cross went to Charles Keating IV, who was killed on May 3 in northern Iraq after the jihadist group Islamic State used bulldozers and car bombs to penetrate the front lines of Kurdish peshmerga forces. Like other U.S. forces near the battle site that day, Keating was helping to train and advise the Kurds but also understood how American troops could quickly and abruptly be pulled into combat there.
Keating, whose family couldn’t be reached Friday, initially received a Silver Star for his bravery in battle. According to his official military citation, his actions included leading a team in intercepting a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device, neutralizing the threat with sniper and rocket fire.
The Navy didn’t explain why Mabus decided that Keating, who had deployed three times to Iraq and once to Afghanistan, merited a Navy Cross upon closer inspection.
Last year, the SEAL’s death inspired a public memorial ceremony at Coronado Tidelands Park that was attended by more than 1,000 people, along with a procession through the city’s streets.
Overall, the medal upgrades stem from the Navy’s Post-9/11 Valor Awards Review Panel, which looked at 300 previous awards because then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered a military-wide medals re-evaluation process starting in 2014. The program was established in response to criticism from troop advocates, some lawmakers and others that not enough Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans were receiving top-level commendations.
The secretaries of each branch of the military have until Sept. 30 to re-examine previous awards below the Medal of Honor. Those include an estimated 1,000 Silver Stars and 100 service crosses.
Hiner, the retired SEAL in San Diego, said he’s personally rooting for fellow SEAL Stephen Bass to get the nation’s top valor medal.
The Coronado-stationed Bass — who walked through an al-Qaeda and Taliban mine field at the Quala-I-Jangi fortress in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan to rescue a captured American citizen in November 2001 — has been recognized with the Navy Cross. At one point, he advanced nearly a quarter-mile into the heart of the facility on his own amid heavy enemy fire.
“No one has showed that much bad-ass battlefield courage that I’ve seen,” Hiner said. “What he did was just unbelievable.”
In a separate ceremony Friday at the Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station in North Carolina, Mabus upgraded the medals of three Marines and a sailor.
Because those honorees aren’t special-operations service members, the Navy released their names: Staff Sgt. Michael Mendoza received the Navy Cross, while Master Sgt. Steven Davis, Hospital Corpsman First Class Michael Atkinson, Sgt. Nicholas Brandau and Sgt. Edward Huth were each awarded the Silver Star.
The Navy Cross is given for “extraordinary heroism while engaged in an action against an enemy of the United States” that’s performed in the presence of great danger and/or personal risk. The Silver Star is awarded for, among other things, gallantry in action.
paul.sisson@sduniountribune.com
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