Army of Puerto Rican Occupation Medal

The Army of Puerto Rican Occupation Medal was a military decoration of the United States Army which was created by an act of the United States War Department on February 4, 1919.


The medal recognized those service members who had performed military occupation duty in Puerto Rico after the close of the Spanish-American War. For those service members who performed duty both during and subsequent to the Spanish-American War, the Spanish Campaign Medal was also authorized.

The qualifying dates for the Army of Puerto Rican Occupation Medal were from August 14 through December 10, 1898. The United States Navy and Marine Corps had no equivalent to the Army of Puerto Rican Occupation Medal.

The Army of Puerto Rican Occupation Medal was commemorative by nature although was approved for wear on active military uniforms. A similar decoration, the Army of Cuban Occupation Medal was created for occupation service in Cuba following the Spanish-American War.

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Famous quotes containing the words army and/or occupation:

    Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell them at parties, and suddenly we realize that those two very difficult years of our lives have become lumped together into a few episodes that have lodged in our memory in a standardized form, and are always told in a standardized way, in the same words. But in fact that lump of memories has nothing whatsoever to do with our experience of those two years in the army and what it has made of us.
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    ... possibly there is no needful occupation which is wholly unbeautiful. The beauty of work depends upon the way we meet it—whether we arm ourselves each morning to attack it as an enemy that must be vanquished before night comes, or whether we open our eyes with the sunrise to welcome it as an approaching friend who will keep us delightful company all day, and who will make us feel, at evening, that the day was well worth its fatigues.
    Lucy Larcom (1824–1893)