The Army Distinguished Service Medal 1918-1940
This is a companion to the series of indexes of general orders of divisions, corps, armies and commands of the US Army in WWII. Those indexes are published as they are completed.
This is an alphabetical listing of recipients of the Army Distinguished Service Medal awarded prior to the United States’ entry into World War II. It is combination of facts from “American Decorations, A list of Awards of the Congressional Medal of Honor the Distinguished Service Cross and the Distinguished Service Medal, Awarded Under Authority of the Congress of the United States, 1862-1926” and supplement to thereof, “Army DSM Issues 1919-1925” and numerous additional sources.
A number of people have asked me to combine the facts contained in these sources and present the information in an easy to use form. “American Decorations, A list of Awards of the Congressional Medal of Honor the Distinguished Service Cross and the Distinguished Service Medal, Awarded Under Authority of the Congress of the United States, 1862-1926” and it’s supplements do not give the medal numbers and the late Albert F. Gliem and John E. Lelle’s “Army DSM Issues 1919-1925” only gives names and medal numbers in numeric order.
As the vast majority of pre World War II awards of the Distinguished Service Medal were for service during World War I, therefore I have only included the dates of service for awards prior to and after World War I. (example: Abele, Joseph E., PVT, Company E, 12th Infantry (1898) DSM, Certificate of Merit). Most Distinguished Service Medal awarded for service prior to World War I are conversions made by the recipients of the Certificate of Merit Medal, after that award was abolished. Many of these men also received Gold or Silver Lifesaving Medals for the same act.
I consulted well over a hundred additional sources for additional information on assignments of recipients during World War I to attempt to locate additional medal numbers not included in “Army DSM Issues 1919-1925”. Mr. Gliem and Mr. Lelle did an outstanding job in compiling their work. I was only able to locate the medal number to the Regimental Commander’s DSM of the 13th Field Artillery Regiment, which is mentioned in that unit’s history and the medal number to Malin Craig’s DSM which appeared on eBay recently.
As with any work of this type I did find some issues and have attempted to correct the errors when I did find them. In “Army DSM Issues 1919-1925” the authors list some foreign recipients by their titles of nobility. But in “American Decorations, A list of Awards of the Congressional Medal of Honor the Distinguished Service Cross and the Distinguished Service Medal, Awarded Under Authority of the Congress of the United States, 1862-1926” the recipients are list by their names. I researched the recipients of nobility as to assertain their proper names. By doing so it makes it easier to locate their citation in “American Decorations, A list of Awards of the Congressional Medal of Honor the Distinguished Service Cross and the Distinguished Service Medal, Awarded Under Authority of the Congress of the United States, 1862-1926”. The problem occurred when I attempted to find the names of the Earl of Cavan and the Viscount of Peel. Once I ascertained their proper names, there was nobody in “American Decorations, A list of Awards of the Congressional Medal of Honor the Distinguished Service Cross and the Distinguished Service Medal, Awarded Under Authority of the Congress of the United States, 1862-1926” by that name, after further examining the issue I found that “American Decorations, A list of Awards of the Congressional Medal of Honor the Distinguished Service Cross and the Distinguished Service Medal, Awarded Under Authority of the Congress of the United States, 1862-1926” had somehow dropped their surnames and listed their second middle name as being their surname. I have no way of knowing if this happened to some of the other British officers who received the DSM during WWI, where there is no medal number attributed to them.
I have taken the time to distinguish between the two Jonathan Wainwrights that received the DSM for service during WWI. I based my determination on the general order date and is issuance date to determine which Matthew Wainwright received each specifically numbered medal.
Additionally there are several medals attributed to the following recipients in “Army DSM Issues 1919-1925”, I have not located general order awarding the Distinguished Service Medal to them.
Embury, Aymar, CPT DSM #1573
Goodridge, George A., ?, YMCA New York DSM #778 & 779
The medals attributed to Goodridge, George A. are likely exhibition specimens as there is no general order issuing the Distinguished Service Medal
I don’t have an explanation for the medal attributed to Embury, Aymar.
Anyone with additional information is encouraged to contact the author.
Every effort has been made to minimize errors and misspelled names. An error may be attributable to the source document, or may have occurred while transcribing the names/units. Some of the original documents are of very poor print quality, making them difficult to decipher.
Distinguished Service Medal 2,191
Certificate of Merit 269
Total Awards 2,460
This book has 56 pages
ISBN 978-1-932891-37-9
ISBN 1-932891-37-4
Library of Congress
Control Number Pending