Valor......'stolen' or 'throwin'

A lot of people throw past achievements around, especially as time stretches out following some of life's more tumultuous events.
Sometimes?
Tales get taller, as memories grow more dim.

The fictional editor of the Shinbone Star newspaper in the 1962 film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance said:
"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

It's a universal, a very human thing.

As we wonder next year about how many people can actually fit on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, or the difference between a US Army Ranger tab or service in a Ranger battalion, or the difference between a Bronze Star or a Bronze Service star, I offer the story of one itty bitty little USN ship.
USS Bannon_(DD-450)
She was a lucky ship.
I cannot tell her story faster or better than Lance does below, but I will offer two points:
If you want a poignant glimpse of mechanized combat in the 20th or even 21st century, read just the first two pages of the prologue of Neptune's Inferno, by the late James D. Hornfischer.
You don't even have to buy the book.
Amazon will let you read everything up to Chapter Two for free.
If you don't read the rest of the book, know just this.

War is hell.

I've heard 81mm mortars howling overhead before in practice, from friendly folks.
I've also heard active sonar inside a boat underwater with no friendlies about ANYWHERE during peacetime.
I cannot possibly imagine the sights, sounds, and smells when you're in a night surface action having, literally, put Admiral Nelson's quote to the ultimate test:
"No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy."
ESPECIALLY when THEY are 12 times bigger than you are.

Me?
I don't care whether they threw spuds or not.

There WAS a point in time when sailors aboard the largest and most heavily armed battleship in the history of the world ACTUALLY DID throw potatoes at US sailors who were floating in the Pacific a couple of years latter - but they did this out of RESPECT for a worthy vanquished (?) opponent.
Legends, are sometimes based in Truth, and Truth is often stranger than fiction!

"when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

PS: DD467 pictured above is the USS Strong, not O'Bannon.
She was not nearly as lucky as her sister who was present when an IJN Type-93 (Long Lance) torpedo tore Strong in half, killing a third of her crew.
The only reason MOST of her crew survived was that Obannon and another tin can (USS Chevalier DD-451) engaged in some of the typical destroyermen bravery on display by both sides in that Pacific war.

USS Chevalier (DD-451) didn't survive the war either.