Purple Heart Medal
Possibility #1-Decoration was awarded by a different command:
During World War II the the Purple Heart Medal was awarded
by many commands. Most of the time if the solider or airman was wounded serve
enough to warrant evacuation, then their Purple Herat Medals were issued by one
of the hospital in which they were treated. Since the organization of the
American Army in the field changed very frequently, it is very difficult to
track these awards down. That is until I get these hospital command's general
orders indexed.
Those who were lightly wounded mostly had their Purple Heart
Medals awarded in their organization's general orders. Some divisional
commanders authorized their subordinate commanders to award the Purple Heart
Medals and some did not, this compounds the problem of locating specific Purple
Heart Medal general orders.
It is also my understanding that there were no general orders
for posthumous Purple Heart Medals awards issued through the War Department to
the next of kin.
Possibility #2-The decoration was awarded years after the action in which it was earned:
As such it is announced in generals issued beyond the scope of this particular work. Try looking in the General Orders of the appropriate Defense Department, department.
Possibility #3-The general order issuing the decoration is missing from the files at the National Archives:
Please consult the web pages for the book you purchased, to see if any general orders were missing. Just because there are missing general orders does not prove that the claimed decoration was actually issued. Try locating a copy of the veterans discharge to see if it has the general order number listed after the decoration.
Possibility #4- There may be an error in the spelling in the original document or error may have occurred while transcribing the information from the original source:
Statistically the transcription error rate is 5%, I try my best to reduce the possibility of errors, but they do occur.