The story of Marine Staff Sgt. Robert Arellano's wound is not exactly heroic. He was sitting in a tent in southern Iraq when the 9mm handgun he was repairing went off, sending a bullet through his left leg.
That's why his heart sank in spring 2003, when he heard that he would receive the Purple Heart as he recovered at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda.
Protests to superior officers were brushed aside.
"I told them I didn't think I deserved it," said Arellano, 38, of Oceanside, Calif. The thought of wearing a medal he didn't earn "was eating me alive."
Then a letter arrived two months ago making things even worse. The Purple Heart pinned on him nearly two years earlier had been "an administrative error" because his wound was not "caused directly or indirectly by enemy action." Ten other Marines who sustained noncombat injuries got the same news, from the office of the commandant of the Marine Corps.
'Slap in the face'
For a branch of the service that considers itself the most rigorous in the awarding of medals, such revocations are exceptionally rare, according to military historians and veterans. And for the 11 Marines, this was a final indignity added to the shattered bones, crushed intestines and broken teeth they suffered in a war zone.
Even worse, they said, in a culture in which careers are chronicled by decorations on uniforms, was the shame they felt at having worn the medals for almost two years.
"It was a slap in the face. The way it was handled was atrocious," said 1st Lt. Dustin Ferrell, who was badly injured when his Humvee crashed into an Army truck. Gen. William Nyland, assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, pinned the medal on his green hospital gown at the Bethesda medical center.
The Purple Heart, based on an award created by George Washington, is bestowed much more frequently than medals such as the Silver and Bronze stars, which are given for exceptional acts of heroism and are based on nominations. Purple Hearts are awarded to those who meet guidelines for having sustained injuries related to combat with enemy forces.
Rush to honor first casualties
Still, Cpl. Travis Eichelberger, 22, was featured on the local news and it seemed like everyone in his home town of Atchison, Kan., knew he had been awarded the medal. He even received the state-issued Purple Heart license plate when he bought his new GMC truck in 2003.
"When you wear it, people look at you and give you respect," said Eichelberger, still recovering from a broken pelvis and intestinal damage from being run over by an Abrams tank. "And now it's been taken away from us. What are we supposed to tell people? If they don't know the story, it makes us look as if we were lying."
The mistake grew out of confusion over the circumstances of the injuries, specifically the difference between wounds sustained in a combat zone and those caused by hostile action, said Charles Mugno, head of the Marine Corps Awards Branch. The injured Marines were among the first wave of casualties to return from Iraq, he said, and there was a rush to honor them.
Ferrell was injured in the first days of the war when his Humvee, racing through the desert at night to secure a bridge in Nasiriyah, crashed into an Army truck. The driver was killed and two others were severely injured.
It was unclear from the casualty reports whether Ferrell deserved the award, Mugno said. An e-mail from an administrative officer said that he probably did meet the criteria, but it also was inconclusive.
In a statement, Nyland said: "While my recollection of the exact circumstances of the presentation of the Purple Heart to Lt. Ferrell long ago is not clear, I would not have presented a Purple Heart without having been advised that the Marine rated one."
Previous controversy
Once the Marines Corps realized the error, it had no choice but to remove the awards from the Marines' records, officials said. They did not require that the medals be returned.
"The most important point is that the revocation was the right thing to do in order to maintain the sanctity and the specialness of the award," said Lt. Col. T.V. Johnson, a Marine Corps spokesman. "You don't want to be identified as someone wearing their medals incorrectly, or worse, wearing something you don't deserve."
Purple Hearts have triggered controversy before, most recently in the 2004 presidential campaign. Some veterans challenged the three Purple Hearts, as well as the Silver Star, that Democratic nominee John F. Kerry received for his service as a Navy swift boat commander in the Vietnam War.
The Navy's inspector general said after an inquiry in September that Kerry's senior officers "correctly followed the procedures in place at the time" for approving his awards.
Arellano said he felt so guilty about the medal that he refused to wear it. During a uniform inspection, "my sergeant major, who knew about the Purple Heart, said, 'Hey, you're not wearing it.' And I said, 'You know how I feel about that.' "
The sergeant major ordered him to pin it on.
Relief and anger
Knowing the fierce emotions surrounding military decorations, Arellano felt like a fraud wearing his medal. So when it was finally taken off his official record, "it relieved me of my guilt," he said.
Relieved though he may have been to have it finally revoked, Arellano also was angry. He had been ordered to accept the medal against his wishes, and he felt as though the Marines had forced him to shame himself every time he put it on.
"Nobody's perfect, and a lot of people make mistakes," he said. "But when it's such high-ranking officers, they should know better."
Ferrell felt the same way. With no memory of how he was injured, Ferrell said, he was told by medical staff that the Humvee he had been riding in was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. About three months later, as the rest of his unit returned to Camp Lejeune, N.C., he learned what had really happened: There had been no RPG, his fellow Marines told him. He was in a traffic accident.
After hearing that his Humvee crashed into an Army truck, Ferrell felt that he still deserved to wear the medal, even if the circumstances under which it was awarded had changed. He was in a combat zone, after all, with the war raging all around.
And his wounds were extensive: Fourteen of his teeth had been knocked out. The shattered bones in his face were being held together by an assortment of screws and titanium plates. His left hip had been knocked out of its socket. And he still has a blind spot in his right eye.
Bewildered over treatment
Just to make sure, he raised the issue with superiors, who confirmed that he was eligible for the award. And so he wore it proudly.
When it was revoked, he felt as if he had "disgraced" himself by wearing it in front of his fellow Marines, and he chastised higher-ups for the mistake.
"I would not dishonor that medal or myself by wearing the thing again, though sloppy admin allowed me to wear it and shame myself at TWO Marine Corps Birthday Balls," he wrote in an angry e-mail to an administrative officer last month.
The Marines' treatment of the entire incident bewildered him. The medals awarded the two other injured occupants of the Humvee were revoked as well. But not the medal given to the driver who was killed in the crash.
Capt. Christopher B. Logan, a Marine spokesman, said the Marines "weren't going to revoke that award from the deceased and give more undue stress to that Marine's family."
Ferrell continues to undergo physical therapy, but he keeps his Purple Heart shut away in a closet. Once a source of solace, it taunts him now.
"I could always look at the medal as a recognition that the pains I had gone through meant something to my country and the Marine Corps."
Staff researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.