History
At the start of World War I, the Navy had the Medal of Honor as the only decoration with which to recognize heroism. To recognize acts deserving recognition, but at a level below that required for the Medal of Honor, the Navy Distinguished Service Medal and the Navy Cross were created by Public Law 253 on 4 February 1919. The law made the award retroactive to 6 April 1917. The first award of the decoration was a posthumous presentation to Brigadier General Charles A. Doyen, USMC, on 13 March 1919. Originally, senior in precedence to the Navy Cross, the Navy Distinguished Service Medal assumed it current place below the Navy Cross by congressional action on 7 August 1942
Read more about this topic: Navy Distinguished Service Medal
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“As History stands, it is a sort of Chinese Play, without end and without lesson.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1874–1945)
“Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)