Sub School Earns MUC

For those of you who served on the staff of the Navy Submarine School in Groton between July 2005 and June 2007 -- Congratulations! You just earned a MUC. From an article in The New London Day:

Vice Adm. Mark E. Ferguson, chief of naval personnel and deputy chief of naval operations, presented the commendation to Capt. Daniel Forney, Naval Submarine School commanding officer, on Jan. 9.
The commendation for meritorious service, from July 2005 to June 2007, states that, “Naval Submarine School consistently demonstrated unparalleled success by instilling advanced submarine technologies, procedures, and dynamic initiatives in the provision of team and self-paced learning to more than 4,000 students enrolled in more than 200 courses and team trainers.”

The Meritorious Unit Commendation is awarded to a unit that "...distinguished itself, under combat or non-combat conditions, by either valorous or meritorious achievement which renders the unit outstanding compared to other units performing similar service, but not sufficient to justify the award of the Navy Unit Commendation. .. To justify this award, the unit must have performed service of a character comparable to that which would merit the award of a Bronze Star Medal, or achievement of like caliber in a non-combat situation, to an individual."

I've written about this before, and I'm wondering what some of the new commenters think about the practice of awarding MUCs to shore stations. The two components of my fruit salad of ribbons of which I'm most proud are the Battle "E" and MUC I got from USS Topeka (SSN 754) during my JO tour -- they're the ones that I felt I had to go "above and beyond" my normal job to help earn. I'm not sure I would have felt that way had I gotten one for shore duty. That being said, I'm sure Sub School did a good job during that 2 year period, so congratulations to all the awardees.