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.

Van T. Barfoot

1919–2012

Colonel (retired; wartime ranks include Technical Sergeant / Second Lieutenant)

3d Platoon, Company L, 3d Battalion, 157th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division (WWII Italy/France); later Korea and Vietnam service, retiring as colonel

Documented decorations

Van T. Barfoot’s Silver Star and Purple Heart are named in the National Museum of the U.S. Army biography of his World War II service in Italy. The Veterans Affairs Veterans Legacy Memorial page for Colonel Barfoot lists Bronze Star Medal, Purple Heart, and Silver Star among his decorations. This decorations page records those three types from those sources. It will not invent a device count the NMSA opening sentence does not carry, and it will not place a Medal of Honor chip on this awards row.

The Medal of Honor citation — near Carano, Italy, May 23, 1944 — covers the lone flank movement against machine-gun nests, the bazooka shot that stopped a Mark VI tank, and the 1,700-yard carry of wounded men. That citation is the public record of valor. The Silver Star for the December 1943 night patrol, and the Purple Heart and Bronze Star Medal named on institutional lists, are the published decoration record this page is built from.

He is not yet on a war-roll essay. Later Army aviation service, the Fort Barfoot redesignation, and his Choctaw ancestry are public history. They are not printed here as medals.

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.