Military Monday - Still basking in last Wednesday

I'm still basking in the glow of the package I received last Wednesday, containing my Grandfather's WWII Military medals. I cannot get my thoughts together as for what to write about today for my Military Monday post.

I will share this photo of my Grandmother as I handed her the medals and she saw them again for the first time on Friday afternoon. What was very interesting to me was her not recalling several of them. "I don't recall ever seeing this one" she said. I asked "really?" then she recalled something that I knew nothing about.

When my Grandfather was discharged, his paperwork stated "Soldier entitled to European-African Middle Eastern Theatre Campaign Medal", what I didn't know was that this meant he was "entitled" to it, not that it had been issued to him. Reading further, it also states "Sol awarded Purple Heart" meaning it had already been awarded to him. Grandma now tells me that there were "a couple" of medals that were due to him that he had never received. Apparently he never followed up on this and he never actually received the medals. Now we've received them for him (the other she'd never seen was the American Campaign Medal). If you're interested in seeing them, you can see the photos at my post of Feb 11th here.