South Bend War Heroes: The Decoration Record and the Honor Rolls

War Heroes · The Decoration Record and the Honor Rolls

This section holds South Bend's honor record: the decorated and the fallen whose names the record itself honors. It opens with the Medal of Honor test, run first and printed at its true result. That result is positive, and narrow: two recipients belong to this record — one who entered service at South Bend and one who died and is buried here — and the Civil War, the war that fills most cities' Medal of Honor lists, contributes none. Below them stand the cross-level records the registers carry for this ground: the only man ever awarded the Air Force Cross three times, who was born here; a Navy Cross earned in command of a cruiser by a South Bend-born admiral; the Silver Stars the Hall of Valor carries for men of this ground, each at the size its citation or register entry supports. The prisoners stand on their own documented record. The fallen stand on the rolls that actually exist: the county's 1921 Gold Star roll for the First World War, printed at its counted size, and the home-of-record roll of the thirty-one South Bend dead of Vietnam. For the Second World War and Korea no compiled county roll was reached, and the file prints that gap with the route to the count rather than borrowing a number. The section closes with the memorials the city and county themselves raised, each naming verified to its man or stated as a general honor where no man is named. Full lives belong to the People section, campaigns to the Wars and Unrest section; what belongs here is the decoration, the act as the citation states it, and the roll of honor.