The services are engaged in a long overdue effort to clarify rules for the Purple Heart, one of the military’s most coveted medals.
All four branches are studying an Army-led push to declare that troops who suffer concussions as a result of combat actions are entitled to a Purple Heart.
That means, for example, that soldiers in a vehicle that hits a bomb buried in the road qualify if they suffer a concussion.
In theory, the rules already allow for that. But in practice, it’s clear that few such head injuries have earned wounded service members a Purple Heart.
In the Army alone, some 114,000 soldiers have suffered concussions since the wars began. While not all were the result of combat, the fact that only 26,000 Purple Hearts have been awarded in that period is telling. Clearly, thousands — perhaps as many as 50,000 — soldiers may have merited a Purple Heart for serious combat wounds, yet never received that recognition because the injury was invisible.
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