Between 1947 and 1991, during the years of the Cold War, a large number of military awards and decorations were created by various nations to recognize the undeclared hostilities of the era. Military medals of the Vietnam War and the Korean War are the best known due to the extreme level of the conflicts.
The following is a list of military decorations of the Cold War based on the various time periods and specific nations involved.
Famous quotes containing the words military, decorations, cold and/or war:
“The transformation of the impossible into reality is always the mark of a demonic will. The only way to recognize a military genius is by the fact that, during the war, he will mock the rules of warfare and will employ creative improvisation instead of tested methods and he will do so at the right moment.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“Let the realist not mind appearances. Let him delegate to others the costly courtesies and decorations of social life. The virtues are economists, but some of the vices are also. Thus, next to humility, I have noticed that pride is a pretty good husband. A good pride is, as I reckon it, worth from five hundred to fifteen hundred a year.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The wonderful scope and variety of female loveliness, if too long suffered to sway us without decision, shall finally confound all power of selection. The confirmed bachelor is, in America, at least, quite as often the victim of a too profound appreciation of the infinite charmingness of woman, as made solitary for life by the legitimate empire of a cold and tasteless temperament.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“In peacetime, they had all been normal decent, cowards, frightened of their wives, trembling before their bosses, terrified at the passing of the years, but war had made them gallant. They had been greedy men. Now they were self-sacrificing. They had been selfish. Now they were generous. War isn’t hell at all. It’s man at his best, the highest morality he is capable of.”
—Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981)