Except for the Medal of Honor, the Department of Defense never made centralized
lists of those who were awarded
military medals during the Vietnam War. In most cases, the awards were recorded
only in each casualty's personnel records. Since 1991 a team of volunteers have worked
thousands of hours creating the Coffelt Database of Vietnam War Casualties. They
have pored over books and thousands of documents requested from the government and other sources.
The Coffelt Team also records the unit of assignment and circumstances of death.
This web site named The Virtual Wall® uses the Coffelt Database for military information
about each casualty including selecting the graphics of military medals. The Virtual Wall gets updated
periodically from the Coffelt Database, currently every two weeks.
We assume some medals that all casualties would have been awarded, specifically the
National Defense Service Medal,
the Vietnam Service Medal, and the Vietnam Campaign Medal.
Many, but not all, casualties had earned the Purple Heart Medal. The death must have been the result
of enemy action. Death by sickness or accident, for example, do not qualify for the Purple Heart.
Some memorial pages on The Virtual Wall show a Purple Heart Medal awarded because
the casualty had been injured sometime before the incident that caused his death.
When worn on a uniform, multiple awards of a medal are indicated on the medal by adding
leaf clusters or numbers to the medal. On The Virtual Wall we can not indicate multiple
awards because there would be too many combinations of graphics.
The Virtual Wall does not show ribbons that would be worn on the right breast pocket,
including unit citations, Combat Action Ribbon, and foreign medals. Among the foreign medals
that we do not show on The Virtual Wall are the Vietnam Gallantry Cross and
the Vietnam Military Merit Medal.
If you know of a medal not yet shown on a casualty's memorial page:
We want to add that information to the Coffelt Database and properly display the medals.
We do not have the authority to issue medals, therefore we need proof.
Either:
- One official source (General Orders or Citation, military grave marker, etc.). OR
- Two unofficial and unrelated sources (personal knowledge, news articles, etc.).
Documentation in either form can be sent to us by email or to the postal address at the bottom of this page.
We need photographic copies of original documents, not transcriptions of the text.
The best document to send us will be named "General Orders" since that is the actual
authority for the award and contains other information about the incident. Citations and
Award Certifcates will be accepted in lieu of the General Orders.
A photograph of a military grave marker that shows the award, usually abbreviated, is sufficient
proof because the awards are verified by the Veterans Administration before insciption.
If sending us a photograph of a grave marker, please tell us the name of the cemetery, city, and state.
If we have found proof of an award or somebody like you has already sent proof to us, it will be in
our database. If you know of an award that
we have not yet found, we ask you to find the proof and send it to us. The Virtual Wall is run
by a handful of part-time volunteers. We have been backlogged since 1997, so we ask your help to
properly record the legacy of your friend or relative. A statement from you like
"I know he earned the Silver Star." is not sufficient proof without supporting
documents.
A photograph of the medals or possession of medals is not proof they were awarded or who they were
awarded to because all medals except for the Medal of Honor can be purchased at military or
commercial stores.
Due to privacy laws, next-of-kin are allowed to get more detailed records from the government
than we can.
If you know of a medal but do not have proving documents, you can request copies from the
National Archives web site, then send copies to us.
You can also Download form FS-180,
print it, complete it, and mail it to the address on the form.
Please click here
to send us the information and documents by email.
Please tell us the casualty's full name and other identifying information, the award,
your name and relationship, some circumstances of the award, and how you know about the award.
On receipt of the documentation we will consider its strength and
decide if it satisfies our criteria.
We are very backlogged at this time, so we can not promise how long the process
may take.
If you send copies of documents by US Mail, please send to the address below:
The Virtual Wall
c/o Jim Schueckler
8219 Parmelee Road
Le Roy, NY, 14482-9346
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