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The Philippines, 1944 – 1945; reported 2002
Reported, not verified: This entry is printed under the house rule for its class, and the distinction is stated before the claim: the decoration below is reported by a newspaper feature and has not been verified against the award record in any register. In 2002 the South Bend Tribune profiled Dan Dzierla of Mishawaka, a wireman who laid communications wire under fire in the Philippines in the Second World War. The feature states that he "received the Silver Star for his bravery when he evacuated some of his wounded buddies under heavy fire." The feature's rendering of his unit reads imperfectly in the surviving copy and is not repeated here as fact.
The standing of the claim: No Hall of Valor record for Dzierla surfaced in the searches run, and no citation or general order was reached. The claim therefore stands exactly where the Tribune left it: a named Mishawaka man, a named decoration, a described act, carried on a hometown newspaper's word fifty-seven years after the war. It is printed because the record of a city's honors is incomplete without its reported claims — and it is labeled because the same record is worthless if the reported and the verified are allowed to blur. The settling sources are named in this section's closing article.
Sources:
- South Bend Tribune feature on Dan Dzierla, 2002 (as indexed in the ProQuest newspaper archive record): Silver Star reported; act described; unit rendering in the surviving copy imperfect.
- Military Times Hall of Valor — searched; no record for Dzierla found.