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Decorations register · Notice Nearby

No rights-safe contemporary likeness is on file. The record is the decoration and the writing, not an invented face.

Thomas Zayas

1931–2018

Staff Sergeant (discharged; VA #VeteranOfTheDay)

U.S. Marine Corps; Fox Company, 1st Marines; machine gunner; Battle of the Punchbowl, Korean War; honorably discharged 1960 as staff sergeant

Documented decorations

Thomas Zayas’s Purple Heart and Bronze Star Medal are named in the Department of Veterans Affairs’ #VeteranOfTheDay profile of his Marine infantry service in Korea. This decorations page records those two types from that VA account. It will not invent devices the paragraph does not carry.

Born in Fresno in 1931 and raised near Clarksville, California, Zayas enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1951 and shipped to Korea at nineteen as a machine gunner with Fox Company, 1st Marines. During an assault in the Battle of the Punchbowl, he and his squad leader knocked out two enemy machine guns so their platoon could pull back under heavy fire. The Corps honorably discharged him in 1960 as a staff sergeant. He later lived in Sacramento and died there on 18 November 2018. The Purple Heart and Bronze Star Medal are the published decoration names here.

This name is not yet on a war-roll essay. The decorations above are the documented public record this register will stand on until that essay is written.

A publisher register — not a verification

This decorations register is publisher-curated from public records — Medal of Honor Society citations, published general orders, and official Army, Navy, and Marine Corps biographies. It is not a verified-veteran product. Notice Nearby does not certify service and does not issue badges.

A paid or unpaid memorial does not enroll anyone here. Checkout, VET50, and a family’s mention of service on an obituary are not applications to this list. We add a name only when a public official source names the decoration.

Claiming a decoration that was not awarded is stolen valor. It is a disrespect to those who earned the medal and, in some cases, a federal crime. This register will not invent an award to fill a page.

These pages are a historical register. They are not Legal Publication, not a newspaper notice, and not proof that a statute was satisfied.