Displaying heroism worthy of receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor is hard. Having that distinction taken away from you is even harder.

A century ago, the U.S. Army told almost 1,000 aging veterans they weren’t qualified for our nation’s highest military honor which they had been presented decades before. It’s a sad, sad story.

The Congressional Medal of Honor was created in 1861 and awarded during the Civil War. More were presented during the Indian and Spanish-American Wars.

But as the 20th century began, there was grumbling in the ranks. Not all of recipients deserved the honor, and that rankled some people.

In 1916, Congress established the Medal of Honor Review Board, a panel of five former generals, and tasked it with determining “what Medals of Honor, if any, had been awarded or issued for any cause other than distinguished conduct.”

The board reviewed all 2,625 recipients (1,520 from the Civil War, all 443 Indian Wars recipients, plus the 662 from the Spanish-American War).

Each case was reviewed individually. Board members based their decision on one criterion: Did the presentation meet the letter of the law?

The final report that came out in 1917 was a bombshell. A total of 911 names were removed from the nation’s Roll of Honor, whose members receive the Medal of Honor.

Some never should have got the Medal in the first place. The most absurd example was Civil War veteran Asa Bird Gardiner, who simply wrote to the War Department saying, “I understand there are a number of bronze medals for distribution to soldiers of the late War, and request I be allowed one as a souvenir of memorable times past.” And Gardiner was given the Congressional Medal of Honor on September 23, 1872!

All 29 of the soldiers in the honor guard at President Lincoln’s funeral received the Medal. Was that service significant? Yes. Was it heroic? Not at all.

Then there was the strange case of the Maine infantrymen.

The Union was in crisis in June 1863 as the Confederate Army was barreling into Pennsylvania. The Federal response to the invasion left Washington, DC almost defenseless.

At that very moment the enlistments of two infantry regiments stationed in the capital were expiring. Lincoln begged the 25th Maine Infantry to stick around a little longer. The men essentially said, “Sorry, Abe, we’re out of here” and went home.

Desperate, Lincoln (ever the master politician) offered the Medal to anyone in the 27th Maine who stayed on until the crisis had passed. Of its 864 officers and men, 311 remained in the ranks. They hung around D.C. for four extra days (during which they saw no combat) until Robert E. Lee’s defeat at Gettysburg.

And for those four days, they got a Medal.

But instead of giving it to just the 311 men who stayed on, in 1865 the War Department sent 864 Medals to Maine’s governor, one for each man in the regiment. He didn’t know what to do, so he forwarded them to Colonel Mark Wentworth, who had commanded the 27th during its “four days of meritorious service.”

Wentworth knew the Medal should mean something and shouldn’t be handed out willy-nilly. He tracked down as many of the 311 as he could and gave them their Medal. He put the more than 500 others in his barn, where thieves stole a good many. Nobody knows what happened to the rest after Wentworth died.

The Board revoked 12 Medals because the recipients just didn’t deserve it. One had put out a fire in a warehouse. Another turned out to be a British citizen, and thus ineligible. Still another was cited for simply delivering a message (and not under fire, either).

Board members were genuinely pained to rescind the Medal for six others who had performed heroic duties. But as civilians, not military members.

Take Buffalo Bill Cody. The legendary Wild West Show creator had been a scout on the Great Plains and provided valuable information — at great personal risk — to the cavalry. But he was a civilian employee, and thus ineligible to receive the Medal.

Have comments, questions or suggestions you’d like to share with Mark? Message him at jmp.press@gmail.com.