Cold War Veterans Will Finally Get Their Due

WASHINGTON —  It was a different kind of conflict, a 46-year face-down between adversaries with enough weapons to destroy the world but never willing to use them against each other. Its end brought no peace treaty, no parade of heroes.

But the Cold War was a war, the United States won, and the victors were ignored, Army veteran Mark Vogl insisted.

So Vogl began a letter-writing, signature-gathering crusade in 1994 from his Bay Shore home on New York’s Long Island to get recognition for the men and women who served.

Today, his efforts are being rewarded.

The Defense Department will begin taking applications from those who served during the Cold War for a “Cold War Recognition Certificate.”

“All members of the armed forces and federal government civilian personnel who faithfully served the United States during the Cold War era” are eligible, a Pentagon Web site said. It also specifies the dates: Sept. 2, 1945, the date Japan surrendered after World War II, to Dec. 26, 1991, when Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as Soviet president and the Soviet Union was disbanded.

An estimated 22 million people meet the eligibility requirements. An application letter with a document proving service during the period is enough to show the applicant served honorably, the Pentagon Web site said.

The certificate is symbolic. No financial reward is involved.

But Vogl, 43, said it goes a long way toward showing the role of those who fought to keep the protagonists at bay as the United States and the Soviet Union raced to pump up their nuclear arsenals.

“This is probably the most significant human event since we’ve been alive,” Vogl said of the Cold War. “There was no nuclear war, Germany was reunited, the possibility of a European confederation all of a sudden becomes a real possibility. The whole world is different now because of what happened then.

“But it just sort of went away.”

Vogl began his lobbying effort with a Cold War recognition resolution to his county’s chapter of the veterans’ group AMVETS. The resolution passed and sailed through ratification at the group’s 1995 national convention.

Vogl, whose wife worked for Rep. Rick Lazio (R-N.Y.), approached the congressman about sponsoring legislation. Lazio jumped on board, and the recognition gesture was written into the 1997 defense budget to take effect this year.

Information about the Cold War Recognition Certificate is available by mail at Cold War Recognition, 4035 Ridge Top Road, Fairfax, Va. 22030; or at:

https://coldwar.army.mil/