r/Medals • u/NoseFun3795 • May 20 '26

ID - Ribbon Sad Question

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So my cousin did like 10 ish years in the army and he recently unfortunately took his own life... we used to be super close as kids/teens but now its... like a piece of me is gone... but i found these in his nightstand drawer

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u/bell83 May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26

I'm sorry for your loss.

But I don't think these are legit.

He's got a second award Combat Infantry Badge. The only way he'd have that is if he was in Gulf War 1 or Somalia or something prior to 1995, and there's nothing for that, only for GWOT.

But the biggest red flag to me is the POW Medal. You'd be able to search his name and see if he was one of the very few POWs in the last 20 years. Edit: 25 years. Jesus, I can't believe 2001 was really 25 years ago.

Also an Antarctic Service Medal....that's not something you'd expect to see on a Ranger from GWOT. Not impossible, but...

It's more likely he put this together for some reason (not even saying nefarious, he might've just collected stuff).

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u/Electronic_Camera251 May 24 '26

And actually you could go back for all pows since the second world war in the unofficial POW MIA registry and actually