Notice Nearby

Decorations register · Notice Nearby

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

Vale Harless

1925–2007

Soldier (10th Mountain Division; wartime enlisted rank not stated on VA profile)

U.S. Army; 10th Mountain Division (Camp Hale training; Apennine Mountains north of Pisa / Italy, 1945); earlier mortar training burns at Camp Wolters, Texas

Documented decorations

Vale Harless’s Bronze Star Medal and three Purple Hearts are named in the Department of Veterans Affairs’ #VeteranOfTheDay profile of his 10th Mountain Division service in Italy. This decorations page records those types from that VA list. It will not invent a Combat “V” or a fourth Purple Heart the paragraph does not carry.

Drafted in the fall of 1943, Harless refused a medical discharge after mortar-range burns, joined the 10th at Camp Hale, and fought in the Apennines after landing near Naples. The VA account describes frostbite treatment, a leg wound, and later shrapnel before hospital recovery through German surrender. He returned to Indiana real-estate work and died in May 2007. The Bronze Star Medal and three Purple Hearts are the published decoration names from the VA account.

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.