WASHINGTON -- Kenneth Evans of North Little Rock helped storm the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. He and his comrades helped retake much of France and occupied Germany.
It has taken 70 years, a helpful son and two members of Arkansas' congressional delegation to obtain the medals that he earned so many years ago.
Many congressional offices have a staff member whose main job is to work with veterans to get questions answered, cut through red tape, or as in Evans' case, help get the medals they earned but either lost or never received.
Evans, 94, was an Army private in the 115th Infantry Regiment, which was part of the second wave of troops that stormed ashore on June 6, 1944.
The Normandy invasion included more than 5,000 ships, 11,000 airplanes, and 150,000 troops. It hastened the liberation of France and the fall of Nazi Germany.
Evans and his comrades helped restore order in France and occupied Germany after the war, he said. He served from 1942-45.
He spent time as a sniper, learning that he could fire two shots at a target before an enemy soldier would figure out where he was shooting from.
Being a sniper was too high-stress and high-risk for him, though.
"I had it for a month, and I told the company commander that I just couldn't take it any longer," he said. Evans turned in his sniper rifle. "They gave it to another guy, and he stayed in one place for too long." An enemy's bullet cut his replacement down.
Arthur Evans, the son of Kenneth Evans, said it has been no easy task getting his father's medals. He started asking the government about them five years ago as a 90th birthday present for his father.
"I had about six, eight months. I said surely it won't take them that long," he said. "He's what, 94 now, and they still haven't got half of them."
With the help of U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin's office, Evans received the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart and several other medals.
Griffin said red tape kept Evans from getting the medals sooner.
"It is a fundamental principle that veterans should get the recognition that they earned. No one who earned that recognition should be refused it particularly because of some bureaucratic mistake," he said.
U.S. Sen. John Boozman's office is working to get Evans an Army of Occupation Medal from the U.S., and the Legion of Honor and Croix de Guerre (Cross of War) medals from the French government.
It's a time-consuming endeavor, even with help from Capitol Hill.
"If I had to do this full time, I'd have to quit my job," Arthur Evans said.
Kenneth Evans said the medals are more important for his children to have than for him.
"It'd be good for my children to have because I'm 94 years old," he said. "I figured they owed it to me, I earned it. Of course, if I never got it, it'd be all right."
Missy Lambert said each year about 400 veterans or their families contact Boozman's office for help getting medals. Boozman's father was an Air Force master sergeant.
Lambert credited the medal interest to Boozman staff member Steve Gray, a retired U. S. Air Force lieutenant colonel who actively contacts veterans groups, instead of just responding to veterans who go to the senator's office. She said that when it is time to present the medals to veterans, Gray does a detailed presentation on the veteran and the veteran's service.
"It's absolutely moving, and it's such a special thing for the family, and I think word has gotten around," Lambert said.
Veterans approach other members of the state's congressional delegation as well, but not at the same rate.
Claire Burghoff, a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Steve Womack -- a retired Army National Guard colonel -- said 40 veterans have contacted the office about medals since Womack took office in 2010.
World War II veteran requests are increasingly coming from their heirs, she said.
U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton's office has been approached 17 times with medal requests since Cotton took office in January 2013, staff veterans advocate Patricia Herring said. Cotton is a former Army captain. Herring handled veterans issues for former U.S. Rep. Mike Ross for 12 years when he represented the state's 4th Congressional District.
She said many people don't think about whether they've received all the medals they earned before they leave the military.
"Most of the veterans are just ready to go home. Then later on they look at it and say, 'You know I hate that they shorted me on that, and I'd like to pursue it,'" she said. "Usually it's later in life ... when they want to hand it down to their family members when they are gone."
U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor's military/veterans affairs caseworker Robbie Reed said Pryor's office is approached once or twice a month about medals. He said he has about 30 open cases right now, many from veterans who served in Vietnam or Korea.
Congressional offices turn to the National Archives' National Personnel Records Center to research and compile veterans' records. The center houses the paper copies of military personnel records for nearly 100 million veterans.
The records center responds to more than 1.4 million requests for copies of military personnel or medical records each year, according to its website. A spokesman said about 13,000 of those requests come through congressional offices and are fast-tracked.
Reed said the records center typically responds to a congressional request within three weeks. A veteran seeking the record on his own, without congressional help, can wait months, he said.
Reed said the records center can begin an investigation with as little as a Social Security number and a signed form, called Standard Form 180. Still, the more information a person can supply on a veteran the better.
Sometimes the center finds medals that veterans didn't realize they had earned, Reed said.
A recent example is an Army and Air Force veteran who thought he had earned one medal over 20 years of service.
"I asked the National Personnel Records Center just to look at it in just a little more detail, see what all they could find, because there are medals he should have gotten just as a part of his service," Reed said. "They came back with a list of medals that he should have received."
Tracking down lost or missing medals for people who served before 1964 is difficult because of a 1973 fire at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. The fire destroyed as many as 18 million official military personnel files that had not been duplicated.
Herring said proving that a veteran earned a medal can be difficult if the records are gone.
Documentation can include records from the military branch. Herring said sometimes it comes down to testimony from people who served with the veteran, especially in situations where a veteran says he was told he had earned a medal such as a Purple Heart but the paperwork was never filed by his commanding officer.
"Many times that ball is dropped, and it never gets done, so it's always a pleasure to be able to go back and research that and find the documentation that can help the veteran get what they were promised," she said.
Metro on 05/26/2014