Maryland Gov. Wes Moore received a Bronze Star Friday evening for his deployment to Afghanistan 18 years ago, a belated honor bestowed after a roiling controversy that blemished his rising political career.

Moore's close friend and former commander, Lt. Gen. Michael R. Fenzel, who had recommended Moore for the medal, on Friday pinned the Bronze Star for "meritorious service" onto the governor's chest during an emotional private ceremony at the governor's mansion in Annapolis.

Moore - dressed in the blue suit of a politician and not the uniform of a soldier - beamed.

Fenzel, the top U.S. general in Israel, personally walked Moore's award recommendation through the process this fall after the charismatic governor became embroiled in controversy over revelations that he had on a 2006 application to a White House fellowship claimed to have been awarded the Bronze Star. In fact, the paperwork had not been fully processed.

"I'm so happy to be in a position to right a wrong," Fenzel said during the ceremony.

While deployed, Moore had been recommended for the medal by his superiors, including Fenzel, and Fenzel encouraged Moore to include it in the application because it had received the necessary approvals, both men said. Moore, then 27, questioned it, but said Fenzel assured him it would be awarded by the time fellows were selected. Yet the award paperwork never went through. Around the time Moore ended his 11-month deployment, he won the fellowship.

While the Bronze Star is awarded only for service in a combat environment, it does not necessarily require battlefield heroics. The rarer version of the award comes with a "V" device denoting valor in combat. The more common version, which Moore received, is for commendable job performance, or "meritorious service" in military parlance.

The meritorious version of the award was issued somewhat liberally to officers like Moore during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, military experts say.

Fenzel said Friday that the controversy was the first time he learned that Moore, a former captain, had never received the Bronze Star. (The pair stayed in touch long after Moore's deployment ended; Moore had asked Fenzel to be a groomsman in his 2007 wedding).

On hearing this in August, the lieutenant general said, he immediately called the chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth to notify her that he planned to recommend Moore for the award again and create the paperwork anew, including collecting approval from Moore's old chain of command.

The citation was signed on Nov. 19. But Moore learned he received the medal Dec. 14, when Wormuth personally told him at the Army-Navy football game, according to the governor's staff.

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Eighteen years and one controversy later, Wes Moore gets a Bronze Star(https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/12/21/wes-moore-bronze-star/)