4 ms·
60% of medal of honor recipients are Irish or Irish-American
- gregwebs 1y agoThe book Born Fighting by Jim Webb explains the historical and cultural background of the Scotch Irish including how they value bravery and have been ready to fight for their freedom and beliefs.
- lwo32k 1y agoThis has something to do with Irish whiskey.
- analognoise 1y agoOn the Wikipedia page for Irish inventions, there’s nothing listed for 300 years after the invention of whiskey. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Irish_inventions_and_discoveries https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Irish_inventions...
- Macha 1y agoPeople were a little preoccupied in the following centuries: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_laws_(Ireland) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_laws_(Ireland) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Cromwell https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Cromwell
- rfl890 1y agoFor 300 years, they were running around too fucking hammered to invent anything!
- pavel_lishin 1y agoMy understanding is that for 300 years, they were being too busy being hammered by the Brits.
- pavel_lishin 1y agoAs I recall, other things were happening in Ireland at the time that were perhaps more relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poynings%27_Law_(on_certification_of_acts) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poynings%27_Law_(on_certificat...
- stevenfoster 1y ago[flagged]
- burnt-resistor 1y agoTIL: The Deserter's Stamp was a brand of nails shaped liked the letter "D" heated and applied to the hips of lesser punished (not shot or hung) deserters until 1871. https://www.harveyhistoryonline.com/?p=4549 https://www.harveyhistoryonline.com/?p=4549
- Balinares 1y agoHonorable is honorable, one supposes.
- kayodelycaon 1y ago[flagged]
- bl0rg 1y agoYes - only the Irish are brave.
- jeffbee 1y agoIt means that Irish immigration to the USA was massive around 1850 and the standards for the Medal of Honor in the Civil War were less than they have been afterward, due to the lack of other awards.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoI don't know of any MOH recipients in my Irish-American family, but I lost 3 great uncles in WW2 and my grandfather was a paratrooper who survived the war but was wounded in combat (but didn't receive a purple heart) and also injured in a jump. Maybe there is/was an Irish cultural tendency to take the initiative. Also, some aspects of the stereotype are true: we're violent as fuck, but perhaps that's true of all h. sapiens sapiens.
- matwood 1y agoMy great grandfather, also Irish-American, is buried in Epinal, France. He died fighting in the battle of the bulge. I wonder what part of the US population was Irish-Americans during WW2, and furthermore what percentage of lower incomes were made up by Irish-Americans. That could explain the over representation.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- michaelt 1y agoYeah, in the UK there have been 1,355 recipients of ‘Victoria Cross’ their highest medal. You know how many there have been since WW2? Fifteen. Recipients who are alive today? Five. So the demographics of recipients are more reflective of them Britain of a century ago than of modern Britain.
- hbarka 1y ago1 Medal of Honor for every 850 men. https://www.army.mil/article/283793/key_military_unit_the_442nd_regimental_combat_team#:~:text=The%204%2C000%20men%2C%20who%20initially,unprecedented%20eight%20Presidential%20Unit%20Citations. https://www.army.mil/article/283793/key_military_unit_the_44...
- oh_my_goodness 1y agoI'm Irish-American. Why is this posted here?
- jghn 1y agoWhy not?
- oh_my_goodness 1y agoBecause it has nothing to do with this forum. It's completely random.
- bombcar 1y agoWe’re revealing all your secrets. The fact that the Irish control the world is going to be known by all!
- guywithahat 1y agoSo I know if we're sent off to war I should join your platoon
- LarMachinarum 1y agosure about that? maybe he'll be the very risk-inclined, hot-headed, reckless platoon sergeant who will have a higher chance of earning a medal but also a higher chance of getting you and most of the platoon killed.
- CodingJeebus 1y agoHistorically, the infantry ranks in the US military tend to come from the working class, not the wealthy. If MOH recipients disproportionately come more from forward deployed troops than the officer commissioned class, it makes sense that there’s a larger contingent of recipients who are immigrants or come from immigrant families.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- rileymat2 1y agoEven if it is not disproportionate in the recipients, the numbers will still skew because they are not equal sized populations.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- throwaway1004 1y agoApologies for repeating myself but this directly addresses a question I posed in a sub-comment: of the total population, at the time, what proportion were considered working class? The reason being, class distinction would only count if non-working classes were very statistically significant. Having never examined this before, I'm having a hard time getting solid information, and it appears superfically that the class distinctions of today may not quite apply. I'm operating under the hypothesis that the vast majority of the population would have been considered "working class", probably with a variety of sub-strata within (think hobo who occassionaly works vs. prosperous sustenance farm who's a pillar of the community). Was there an excess of places in officer school for middle class+, or did they have to compete for their place? If they couldn't break in, was it socially acceptable to choose not to fight with the troops?
- morninglight 1y agoA Medal of Honor is actually worth a lot on ebay A Presidential Medal of Freedom has value as scrap metal.
- nodesocket 1y agoWho sells a medal of honor on ebay? That’s disgusting.
- wl 1y agoI know you’re trying to make a quip, but the Medal of Honor is of little monetary value as they are illegal to buy or sell.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- potato3732842 1y agoThey gave the MoH out like candy in the 1860s during which time units were sourced from a common location. That inject a A LOT of noise into the statistics.
- antonymoose 1y agoUnfortunately I do not have the source to back it up, but I recall a Jocko or Jocko-adjacent podcast discussing changes in medals of valor at or just after WWII, shifting away from “charged a machine gun” acts of valor to “saved his team’s life” style events, not just for the MOH but for all prestigious medals.
- xorbax 1y agoIs that noise or data?
- pw6hv 1y agoNoise, if it does not support the claim. Signal otherwise.
- jt2190 1y ago> I remember meeting a WWII veteran of the Big Red One [U.S. First Infantry Division] who served in North Africa, Sicily, Normandy, all the way through Germany and into Czechoslovakia – over three years of almost continuous combat and came out of the war with three ribbons on his chest to show for it – and he never did get the actual medals at all. Topic: “Too Many Medals?” U.S. Militaria Forum. https://www.usmilitariaforum.com/forums/index.php?/topic/23315-too-many-medals/ https://www.usmilitariaforum.com/forums/index.php?/topic/233...
- danielvf 1y agoAs others have pointed out, this is primarily due to the American Civil War when the Medal of Honors was given out much more freely than today. Here's the breakdown on more recent conflicts: WWII, 625 total recipients, 13 Irish, 2.1%. In the Korean War, there were 152 Medal of Honors, 3 given to Irish, or 1.9%. In the Vietnam War, there were 271 Medal of Honors, 13 given to Irish, or 4.8%. There were 36 Medal of Honor medals given out in the wars in Iraq and Afganistan. Of these, 3 are marked as Irish on that page, or 10.7%.
- dyauspitr 1y agoWell don’t leave me hanging, what are the numbers for the civil war? Edit: according to gpt5 1522 were given out with roughly 10% or 150 were given to the Irish.
- MrAlex94 1y agoThat figure from GPT-5 seems to be slightly off, according to the Irish Times: “At least 258 Irish-born soldiers have won the Medal of Honor since its inception. Of those, 148 won them during the civil war – 14 in one day when the Union Navy raided the Confederate port of Mobile, Alabama, in 1864.” https://web.archive.org/web/20250504103715/https://www.irish https://web.archive.org/web/20250504103715/https://www.irish...
- dyauspitr 1y agoYes, the GPT5 numbers are specifically about the Civil War so at 150 it was really close to the 148.