The Foreign Service Journal, February 2005

F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 7 A Medal Tarnished Patrick G. Halperin’s letter in the Washington Post (Dec. 18) on General Franks’ receipt of the Presidential Medal of Freedom was right on the mark, asking whether it was given to reward the general’s sole contribution as a civilian — endorsing President Bush for re-election. Halperin correctly explained that the Presidential Medal of Freedom was instituted during World War II to recognize the outstanding efforts of certain civilians in support of the mil- itary campaigns against the Axis Powers. These medals were awarded by the president on recommendation from the War Department. There were obviously a plethora of military medals and decorations awarded to military personnel who performed exceptionally in the war effort. The Medal of Freedomwas the only major wartime medal for civilians. It was seriously debased by the three medals awarded by President Bush in December. My father, James Hugh Keeley Jr., was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Truman in 1945, for his service as the American consul general in Antwerp from the late summer of 1944 through the end of the war in Europe. The citation for my father’s Presidential Medal of Freedom reads: “James H. Keeley, American Civilian, for exceptionally meritorious achieve- ment which aided the United States in the prosecution of the war against the enemy in Continental Europe, as United States Consul General, Antwerp, Belgium, from 7 November 1944 to 30 March 1945. He con- tributed greatly to the maintaining of security and the averting of panic among the civilian population of Antwerp. His successful efforts great- ly aided the war effort and reflect high credit upon him.” Dec 16, 2004, was the 60th anniversary of the terrible and deci- sive Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes Forest of eastern Belgium. This was Hitler’s last serious attempt to turn the tide of the war. Both sides suffered immense losses (the Americans had 40,000 casualties), but in the aftermath the Allies prevailed and drove on into Germany to end the war on the Western front. The port of Antwerp was crucial to logistical and other support for the Allied drive on the northern sector of the front lines. Hitler tried in advance of the Battle of the Bulge to destroy the port of Antwerp with a barrage of V2 rockets on the city, numbering at least 2,000, starting on Oct. 12, 1944. These were “terror” weapons, because they killed almost exclusively civilians, were minimally guided and totally indiscriminate. In December 1944, over a hundred V2 rockets a week were launched on Antwerp. There was no effective defense. Each rocket delivered nearly a ton of high explosives at a speed of 3,500 feet per second. When my mother and I joined my father in Antwerp in the summer of 1945, his only comment on the V2 ter- rorism of the previous winter was that the Belgian people had shown incred- ible courage in the face of this cruel assault on their second city. My strongest recollection of that period is that there was no glass in the windows of the consulate building nor in the house we were assigned to live in; all the glass had been replaced by ply- wood panels. I know that my father was proud- est of this single official recognition of his 40 years as a Foreign Service offi- cer. I found the medal in its some- what worn, felt-lined, black leather box, along with a carbon copy of the citation, in a drawer in the hospital room where he died in 1985 at age 89. I have donated the medal and citation to the Museum of Diplomacy being established in the Department of State, as an illustration of how our diplomats have been recognized for their contributions to our war efforts of the past. The final sentence of the museum curator’s detailed descrip- tion of the medal and its housing reads: “Medal somewhat tarnished but in good condition.” Sixty years on, the Presidential Medal of Freedom itself has now been seriously tarnished. Robert V. Keeley FSO, retired Washington, D.C. Authors in Context I enjoyed looking through the mul- tiplicity of books by Foreign Service associated folks in the November Journal . One of the most pleasing L ETTERS