WASHINGTON -- They stepped forward solemnly Sunday across the lush green Arlington National Cemetery lawn -- a wife here, a son there, several teenage children in one case, a graying father and mother in another -- all to receive military service awards for loved ones who died years ago in a Central American war where U.S. forces were not supposed to be fighting, or so the U.S. government said at the time.
But U.S. troops did come under fire in El Salvador, and fired back, as U.S. authorities now acknowledge. Dozens of soldiers who were there, many of them still in uniform, watched Sunday as Salvadoran children, escorted by U.S. commandos, placed tiny American flags beside the names of 21 killed in action.
Later at an Arlington hotel, about 50 of the more than 5,000 U.S. veterans of El Salvador's civil war were honored for service in sometimes hazardous operations for which they have never received the kinds of badges and patches normally issued to U.S. forces after combat.
"For too long, we have failed to recognize the contributions, the sacrifices, of those who served with distinction under the most dangerous conditions," William Walker, U.S. ambassador to El Salvador from 1988 to 1992, told the cemetery crowd. "Only today, a full four years after the achievement of peace, are we finally and officially proclaiming that whose who served and those who died did so for the noblest, the most unselfish of reasons."
Just what U.S. forces were doing in El Salvador generated some of the most heated political battles in Washington in the 1980s. Determined to draw a line in El Salvador against leftist insurgents after Nicaragua fell to the Sandinistas, the Reagan administration in 1981 beefed up Special Forces teams sent to train Salvadoran government troops.
But Republicans worried that news of U.S. troops engaging in combat in El Salvador, even in self-defense, would recall the ill-fated mission creep into Vietnam and prompt the Democratic-controlled Congress to cancel aid programs.
So critical was maintaining at least the appearance of a non-combat U.S. role that a U.S. colonel, videotaped by a TV crew carrying an M-16 rifle in El Salvador in 1982, was whisked out of the country before too many questions could be asked. Reports of firefights involving U.S. troops were closely held, and field commanders were told in no uncertain terms not to nominate soldiers for combat awards.
By the time a Salvadoran peace accord was signed in 1992 and Democrats had taken charge of the White House, there was little interest in Washington for setting the record straight about U.S. military actions in El Salvador and considerable hesitation among Army leaders about doing so.
Particularly troubling for many who knew the truth were the incomplete or outright false official reports relatives received about the circumstances surrounding the deaths of those killed in action in El Salvador.
The turnaround in the official U.S. line about America's military involvement in El Salvador came in February when President Bill Clinton signed the 1996 defense authorization act.
A provision, pushed through by California Representative Robert Dornan, who credits a CBS "60 Minutes" program last May highlighting the Salvadoran story, ordered the Pentagon to give Armed Forces Expeditionary Medals to all who served in El Salvador from January 1981 to February 1992.
But U.S. troops did come under fire in El Salvador, and fired back, as U.S. authorities now acknowledge. Dozens of soldiers who were there, many of them still in uniform, watched Sunday as Salvadoran children, escorted by U.S. commandos, placed tiny American flags beside the names of 21 killed in action.
Later at an Arlington hotel, about 50 of the more than 5,000 U.S. veterans of El Salvador's civil war were honored for service in sometimes hazardous operations for which they have never received the kinds of badges and patches normally issued to U.S. forces after combat.
"For too long, we have failed to recognize the contributions, the sacrifices, of those who served with distinction under the most dangerous conditions," William Walker, U.S. ambassador to El Salvador from 1988 to 1992, told the cemetery crowd. "Only today, a full four years after the achievement of peace, are we finally and officially proclaiming that whose who served and those who died did so for the noblest, the most unselfish of reasons."
Just what U.S. forces were doing in El Salvador generated some of the most heated political battles in Washington in the 1980s. Determined to draw a line in El Salvador against leftist insurgents after Nicaragua fell to the Sandinistas, the Reagan administration in 1981 beefed up Special Forces teams sent to train Salvadoran government troops.
But Republicans worried that news of U.S. troops engaging in combat in El Salvador, even in self-defense, would recall the ill-fated mission creep into Vietnam and prompt the Democratic-controlled Congress to cancel aid programs.
So critical was maintaining at least the appearance of a non-combat U.S. role that a U.S. colonel, videotaped by a TV crew carrying an M-16 rifle in El Salvador in 1982, was whisked out of the country before too many questions could be asked. Reports of firefights involving U.S. troops were closely held, and field commanders were told in no uncertain terms not to nominate soldiers for combat awards.
By the time a Salvadoran peace accord was signed in 1992 and Democrats had taken charge of the White House, there was little interest in Washington for setting the record straight about U.S. military actions in El Salvador and considerable hesitation among Army leaders about doing so.
Particularly troubling for many who knew the truth were the incomplete or outright false official reports relatives received about the circumstances surrounding the deaths of those killed in action in El Salvador.
The turnaround in the official U.S. line about America's military involvement in El Salvador came in February when President Bill Clinton signed the 1996 defense authorization act.
A provision, pushed through by California Representative Robert Dornan, who credits a CBS "60 Minutes" program last May highlighting the Salvadoran story, ordered the Pentagon to give Armed Forces Expeditionary Medals to all who served in El Salvador from January 1981 to February 1992.