Purple Heart - Presentation

Presentation

Current active duty personnel are awarded the Purple Heart upon recommendation from their chain of command, stating the injury that was received and the action in which the service member was wounded. The award authority for the Purple Heart is normally at the level of an Army Brigade, Marine Corps Division, Air Force Wing, or Navy Task Force. While the award of the Purple Heart is considered automatic for all wounds received in combat, each award presentation must still be reviewed to ensure that the wounds received were as a result of enemy action. Modern day Purple Heart presentations are recorded in both hardcopy and electronic service records. The annotation of the Purple Heart is denoted both with the service member's parent command and at the headquarters of the military service department. An original citation and award certificate are presented to the service member and filed in the field service record.

During the Vietnam War, Korean War, and World War II, the Purple Heart was often awarded on the spot, with occasional entries made into service records, but this was often not the case. In addition, during the mass demobilizations that followed each of America's major wars of the 20th century, it was a common occurrence for the Purple Heart to be omitted from service records, due to clerical errors, once the service record was closed upon discharge. An added complication is that a number of field commanders would engage in bedside presentations of the Purple Heart which would typically entail a general entering a hospital with a box of Purple Hearts, pinning them on the pillows of wounded service members, and then departing with no official records kept of the visit or the award of the Purple Heart. Service members, themselves, could complicate the issue by leaving hospitals unofficially, returning to their units in haste to rejoin a battle or to not appear as a malingerer. In such cases, even if a service member had received actual wounds in combat, both the award of the Purple Heart, as well as the entire visit to the hospital which treated the enemy wound, would never be recorded in official records.

Service members requesting retroactive awards of the Purple Heart must normally apply through the National Personnel Records Center. Following a review of service records, those Army members so qualified are awarded the Purple Heart by the U.S. Army Human Resources Command in Alexandria, Virginia. Air Force veterans are awarded the Purple Heart by the Awards Office of Randolph Air Force Base while the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard presents Purple Hearts to veterans through the Navy Liaison Officer at the National Personnel Records Center. Simple clerical errors, where a Purple Heart is denoted in military records but was simply omitted from a DD Form 214 (Report of Separation), are corrected on site at the National Personnel Records Center through issuance of a document known as a DD-215.