Bronze Stars at the time was really the circle jerk award not everyone gets it, a lot of people did, but the ones who did is usually in the clique and their boys.

Not trying to reply to every comment but

Now I'm starting to think less on the "abandoned his men" narrative and more along the lines of "his men were better off without him".

Personally, I'll withhold judgement on that but if I were a betting man, something tells me he takes the modified PT test. And if he does, that tells me all I need to know about this senior nco.