Presidential Accolade “AT” question

[tdogchristy90]

I have pondered this question for years and thought I might finally ask about it.
 

On Presidential Accolades you see the “at” in “Who died in services to his country at” sometimes crossed out and sometimes not. There’s the obvious answer of it being a grammatical choice. Does anyone know if there was a rhyme or reason, maybe a service branch choice for why or when the “at” was crossed out?

 

 

[Allan H.]

I believe that the "AT" was supposed to be followed by the place of death- "at Bastogne, Belgium," "at sea," etc. The reality is that it was probably way too overwhelming to keep everyone's particulars accurate, and anytime you can have a discrepancy, you have opportunity to cause angst with the surviving family members. 

 

Allan

[tdogchristy90]

38 minutes ago, Allan H. said:

I believe that the "AT" was supposed to be followed by the place of death- "at Bastogne, Belgium," "at sea," etc. The reality is that it was probably way too overwhelming to keep everyone's particulars accurate, and anytime you can have a discrepancy, you have opportunity to cause angst with the surviving family members. 

 

Allan

Allen, you bring up a good point and looking at some more examples I see your point. In most where there is a location it is “at sea”, “at Bastogne”, “at Iwo Jima”. It seems like the “AT” was crossed out when there was not a specific location and it says “IN” “in the European area”, “in the Pacific area”, ect. 

[dpast32]

I personally feel believe that this bit of information was purposely kept off any such official, & also non-official documents in the interest of 'operational security'. ( Non-Official, as in why U.S. G.I.'s letters home were routinely 'censored' by their Officers. )  Any information which 'may' have been of use to the enemy was mandated to be eliminated from U.S. military documents, & what's why you will find either an eliminated, redacted, or deleted references to location, unit, casualty figures, & or any other data which might assist our enemies in assessing our forces. That my Friends is my particular belief as to why such information was left out. 

 

           Best,    Dom P.  

[Dave]

I probably have correspondence about this somewhere, but it appears that the late Roosevelt Accolades have the AT crossed out. The Truman Accolades have no AT at all. I'm assuming someone in mid-to-late 1944 made the call to remove the AT on the accolades. I will see if I can find something about these for sure.