If you served on Hannah during the final WestPac cruise you may be missing many awards, citations, and medals that you may not even know you were entitled to receive. It took the Navy, the Department of Defense and Congress more than 28 years to finally settle on what awards the crew was eligible to receive, but they closed the books with The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2003 (Public Law 1 07-31 4 -December 2, 2002), Section 542.
Congress finally gave appropriate recognition to the sailors and marines who took part in the last Vietnam operation. Up until the law was enacted, service members who served on board were entitled to an Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal (AFEM) for each of the operations listed in the title above.
The new law changed that and authorized the service member to convert one of the AFEMs for the Vietnam Service medal (VSM). The process to obtain the new medal and a new DD Form 215 is relatively simple.
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or email me at: mverville2005(at)yahoo(Dot)com. My Telephone # is (706) 554-3633.