…after this rather terse story on CNN.com:
Ailing WWII veteran finally gets medals
Saturday, April 9, 2005 Posted: 2041 GMT (0441 HKT)
ROSEMEAD, California (AP) — A gravely ill World War II veteran who was wounded in the Normandy invasion has been honored with a Bronze Star and other medals more than six decades after he stormed the coast of France.
“I’m bewildered, I’m excited. I’m confused. I’m not used to talking this much,” former Army Pvt. Manuel Lopez Sanchez said Friday. Sanchez, 84, suffers from brain tumors and doctors told him he has about six months to live.
His wife, Amelia, said she sought out the medals after U.S. Rep. Hilda Solis, D-California, spoke at a local senior center and encouraged veterans to come forward to receive overdue awards.
Sanchez, a machine gunner and instructor, was shot in the right shoulder in North Africa and wounded by shrapnel at Normandy, requiring 17 blood transfusions, according to Solis’ office.
Solis said her office expedited the award process when she heard how serious his illness was. “After 60 years, we wanted to try to make sure we could get his medals to him before anything else happened,” she said.
One is forced to ask, what took so long?
I am not denying that what this man did is worthy of recognition, I am merely wondering why it took 60 years for the recognition.
Has there been a change in the criteria for awarding the medals this man has recently received?
Are the changes retroactive?
Or instead, was he wrongly overlooked 60 years ago, and we are just now rectifying the errors?
The reporters at CNN did a lousy job of explaining these issues, since they are not addressed at all in this story.
Does anyone have any additional information?