July 12: When you get the medal
On July 12, 1862, President Lincoln signs the legislation creating the U.S. Army Medal of Honor. Tonight's film: Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope (1977).
Middle of the night, and I was scrolling the phone again. Another conflict, another meeting that ended without agreement, another forecast that will get rewritten in five days anyway. Past a certain age you stop being angry at the news and you just get tired of it. So I close the phone and open the calendar instead. There at least is something that actually happened.
July 12, 1862. Abraham Lincoln signs the legislation that creates the United States Army Medal of Honor. We are in the middle of the Civil War, and until then the enlisted men, the noncommissioned officers and the privates had essentially no recognition for personal bravery. The Navy had already gotten a similar medal in December 1861. The Army followed. In the Senate, Henry Wilson of Massachusetts introduced the resolution on February 17, and Lincoln signed it on July 12. The text said the medal would go to those who most distinguished themselves in battle by gallantry and other soldier-like qualities.
The first recipients came on March 25, 1863, six soldiers from what is known as Andrews’ Raid. They had pulled off the reckless stunt of stealing a Confederate train behind enemy lines and trying to tear up the enemy’s rail network. The first Medal of Honor went to a private named Jacob Parrott, who afterward met Lincoln at the White House. The number is worth knowing: since the medal was created, roughly 41 million Americans have served in the military, and only around three thousand five hundred have received it. This is not an award handed out on a conveyor belt.
And here is the bridge to the film, because sci-fi loves a good ceremony too. On May 25, 1977, Star Wars: Episode IV, A New Hope arrives in theaters. At the end of the film, on the rebel base of Yavin 4, Princess Leia presents the Medal of Bravery to Luke and Han, who have just blown up the Death Star. Soldiers line up, trumpets sound, everyone salutes. It is exactly the kind of scene a person earns after a war, after doing something that gets their name written down.
Honestly: this ceremony is not the film’s strongest moment. It is slow, it is stagey, and Chewbacca, the Wookiee who did at least as much for the victory as the two humans, gets no medal on screen. George Lucas later explained that among Wookiees the custom is not to pin anything on their chest, and in the background story Chewbacca was honored later, on Kashyyyk, the Wookiee homeworld. Fans joked about it for decades. Only in 2019, at the end of The Rise of Skywalker, did Chewie finally get his, handed to him by Maz Kanata.
But let’s be fair. That closing scene works because the whole film builds toward it. A small band of rebels takes down an empire, and then they actually stop for a moment to say, this mattered. The point is not the explosion. It’s that somebody noticed what you did. The medal, the lineup, the music. Small things. But without them the victory is just another headline on the feed that you forget in three days.
That is what I need tonight. Not saving the galaxy. Just a little recognition for whoever earned it, and a film that reminds me why it’s worth getting up off the couch. Tonight, press play.
What else could have been tonight
July 12, 1543. Henry VIII marries Catherine Parr, his sixth and final wife. At Hampton Court, in a private room of the chapel, quietly. Henry is 52, marrying his third Catherine, and Catherine Parr has already been widowed twice. She is the one who survives. The only one of the six still alive after Henry dies in January 1547. If there was ever a woman who learned how to exist beside a man who discarded two of his previous wives, let two marriages be annulled, and had one wife beheaded, it was Catherine Parr. For this day The Stepford Wives (1975) is the match. Directed by Bryan Forbes, based on Ira Levin’s 1972 novel, with a screenplay by William Goldman. It is the story of a Connecticut suburb where husbands quietly replace their wives with compliant, obedient copies. The metaphor is blunt, but the parallel is right there on screen: what does a man do who keeps searching for the perfect partner and is never satisfied. Henry spent eighty years trying. The husbands of Stepford settled for the factory solution. Both of them are working the same fear: that a partner is just a replaceable part.
July 12, 1979. Kiribati becomes independent from the United Kingdom. Thirty-three islands, thirty-two of them atolls, scattered across the Pacific, with a combined land area barely larger than a mid-sized Hungarian county. On independence day you think not about the ocean but about finally having your own name on the map. But Kiribati is the kind of country the sea is slowly losing. The atolls barely rise above the water, and in 2012 the government already bought six thousand acres of land in Fiji, somewhere to move if the water keeps rising. For this day Waterworld (1995) fits. Directed by Kevin Reynolds, starring Kevin Costner, with a budget that ballooned to 175 million dollars, the most expensive film in the world that year. A planet entirely covered by ocean, and the people at its center searching for “dry land,” now remembered only as myth. In Kiribati the dry land is not myth. It is something that could disappear within decades. The film took a lot of mockery on release, but its image, that endless water and those small scattered communities, looks different once you know there is a country out there walking exactly that path.
Sources
Main event, Medal of Honor (1862):
Medal of Honor, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medal_of_Honor (Lincoln’s signing on July 12, 1862, first recipient Jacob Parrott, Andrews’ Raid)
Congressional Medal of Honor Society timeline: https://www.cmohs.org/medal/timeline (March 25, 1863, first presentation, Edwin Stanton)
Arlington National Cemetery, The Medal of Honor: https://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/Portals/0/Docs/medal-of-honor.pdf (S.J.R. 82, Senator Henry Wilson’s resolution)
Medal of Honor Day, Congressional Medal of Honor Society: https://www.cmohs.org/medal/medal-of-honor-day-information (41 million service members, around 3,500 recipients)
Main film, Star Wars: A New Hope (1977):
Star Wars (film), Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_(film) (May 25, 1977, Leia’s medal to Luke and Han)
Royal Award Ceremony, Wookieepedia: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Royal_Award_Ceremony (Yavin 4 ceremony, Shepperton Studios)
Yavin triumph ceremony, Wookieepedia: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Yavin_triumph_ceremony (Chewbacca receives his medal on Kashyyyk)
Medal of Yavin, StarWars.com: https://www.starwars.com/databank/medal-of-yavin (Maz Kanata hands Chewie his medal in The Rise of Skywalker)
Side events:
Catherine Parr, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Parr (July 12, 1543, Hampton Court, sixth wife)
The Anne Boleyn Files, 12 July 1543: https://www.theanneboleynfiles.com/12-july-1543-henry-viii-marries-his-sixth-wife-catherine-parr/ (Queen’s Closet, Chapel Royal)
The Stepford Wives (1975 film), Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stepford_Wives_(1975_film) (Bryan Forbes, William Goldman, Ira Levin’s novel)
Kiribati, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiribati (July 12, 1979, Gilbert Islands, 33 islands)
BBC, How to save a sinking island nation: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190813-how-to-save-a-sinking-island-nation (Kiribati and sea-level rise)
Commonwealth Chamber of Commerce, Kiribati: https://commonwealthchamber.com/member-countries/kiribati/ (2012, 6,000 acres in Fiji)
Waterworld, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterworld (1995, Kevin Reynolds, Kevin Costner, 175 million dollars)
Golden Globes, Forgotten Hollywood, Waterworld: https://goldenglobes.com/articles/forgotten-hollywood-making-waterworld-1995/ (most expensive film at release)