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1st Battalion, 6th Infantry
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Heroes Hall - Background
Heroes Hall is a project for
all members of the 1st Battalion 6th Infantry,
United States Army who served from 1967 through 1971. The first phase of this project, which
covers the years 1967 through 1969, is almost complete. On the attached pages you will find the
record of awards and decorations from the published general orders of Task
Force Oregon and the Americal Division.
Located at the National Archives II, in College Park, Maryland, are
the records of the Americal Division.
Part of that collection comprises over 44,000 general orders, which
include an estimated 100, 000 awards and decorations from the Good Conduct
Medal to the Silver Star. Other
military collections at the Archives complete the record for the Distinguished Service Cross and Congressional Medal of Honor. We hope this digital collection
will give you some of the experience of visiting the Archives without all of the cost and effort. This project was started to help one man
find information on the military service of a boyhood friend who was killed
in action on May 15, 1968. The effort
expanded to help a company find detailed information on hundreds of unit
members. In the end we hope it helps
many soldiers find valuable information on those buddies and events from so
long ago. In talking with researchers at the
Archives and after reviewing the first 27,000 general orders, we know that
heroic acts and periods of outstanding service were not always
acknowledged. There is no way to
follow up on award recommendations because there are no award-recommendation
files for the Americal Division – only published general orders. The researcher never found his “missing”
service award he hoped was on file at the Archives, but he did find a lot of
long lost friends. He also was able to
fill in the dates and locations of all those actions he could never quite
recall. The National Archives II at College Park
has only unit records – not personnel records. There is no master index to show
who-got-what-award-when. The
researcher went through every published award looking for units of the 1st Battalion 6th Infantry.
He also read every valor award from the 1st Battalion 14th Artillery
looking for those Forward Observers and Artillery Recon Sergeants
who served with the 1st
Battalion 6th Infantry in the field.
The list is not complete! If you were not assigned or
attached to the 1st Battalion 6th Infantry when you got
your awards we will not be looking for your orders at the Archives. We
will need your help. If
you served with the 1st Battalion 6th Infantry, but got that Purple Heart awarded by some medical
command in Japan or stateside, please let us know.
Many of you were transferred to other battalions or other
brigades for the last part of your tours.
Please contact us and we can update the record. If some period of your service was with the
1st Battalion 6th Infantry we want to include you. We will need your general order number,
issue date and the name of the command issuing the order. If you do not have that information go to
this web site and request the your military records from the National Personnel
Records Center (St. Louis, MO): http://www.archives.gov/facilities/mo/st_louis/military_personnel_records/standard_form_180.html
This project is just starting.
Over the next few years we will link a copy of every general order
published to every entry in our lists.
We will also search other collections at the Archives for the almost
500 orders that are missing from the Americal Division folders for 1967 thru
1969. There will be some “human error”
introduced during this project. Please
help us correct the record if you identify a blunder – see the “Correct the
Record” tab at the top of the page. We
hope to add 1970 through 1971 and complete this project in 2007. |
