In the back of every veteran’s closet, you’re likely to find some old uniforms, dusty caps, a stack of medical, training, and discharge records... maybe a few ribbons or medals. But these are just a few of the typical things that separated or retired service members keep with them. Other things, they’re stuck with forever.

So we compiled a list of the more non-traditional things that veterans carry for life.

1. An incessant need to roll socks

2. Bad knees

3. The misguided idea that ibuprofen and fresh socks will cure any ailment

4. Tinnitis. ZNNNNNNNNNG.

5. The ability to sleep anywhere

6. The plight of not being able to sleep at all

7. Old combat boots. They’re great for mowing the lawn or a trip to Home Depot.

8. Fear of tape tests

9. Issues with authority figures

10. Back pain

11. T-shirts from strange events and places they don’t remember going

12. A woobie that has seen better days.

13. A swearing problem that is FUBAR

14. A love/hate relationship with acronyms

15. Total disdain for PowerPoint

16. Scars from barracks shenanigans gone awry

17, A few ugly divorces

18. A truck they bought after gaining some sense and selling that Camaro they financed at 27% APR

19. Some weird strip club stories

20. Sleep apnea

21. Bad tattoos that seemed like a really good idea at the time

22. Boxy brown t-shirts that somehow have sweat stains in a different, more gross shade of brown

23. A deeply stained, never-before-washed coffee mug that they tell everyone is “seasoned”

Now their lifesaving work has earned them Bronze Stars.

Capt. Carlos Mendoza and Staff Sgt. Morgan Reed, who were assigned to the 379th Expeditionary Operations Group during the U.S. military’s evacuation from Afghanistan after two decades of war there, received the medals Nov. 9 at the Airlift/Tanker Association’s annual conference, the Air Force said Friday.

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The Bronze Star is one of the top U.S. military honors for troops that have accomplished heroic or meritorious feats, outside of flight operations, when fighting an armed enemy.

Mendoza and Reed were members of an aeromedical evacuation team that deployed to Kabul from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar to assist with Operation Allies Refuge — the historic evacuation of more than 124,000 non-combatants seeking to escape Taliban rule as the U.S. left Afghanistan.

They became part of the select few who cared for patients injured and killed in the attack outside Hamid Karzai International Airport, on the front lines of the withdrawal’s most catastrophic 48 hours for American troops.

The Aug. 26, 2021, suicide bombing by an Islamic State militant killed 13 U.S. troops and wounded at least 160 nearby civilians.

Saving as many Americans and Afghans as possible required all hands on deck. Reed, a communications specialist with limited medical training, rushed to the emergency room to begin identifying and triaging patients.

The men stemmed bleeding, inserted IVs and opened new airways so patients could breathe as chaos unfolded around them.

Reed began moving bodies into a makeshift morgue tent, and came across two mortuary affairs soldiers who were overwhelmed by the dead troops, whose remains they were tasked to handle, according to his citation. He helped search for his fallen comrades’ identification cards and dog tags, and wrapped them in body bags.

“Over the next several hours, without rest, he made several trips transporting patients, medical supplies, equipment and blood back and forth to the emergency room,” Reed’s citation said. “His rapid assessments and remarkable selflessness undoubtedly enhanced his team’s success and saved lives.”

Mendoza, an aeromedical evacuation liaison officer, and an Air Force doctor scrambled to figure out why a wounded Marine couldn’t breathe. After cracking open the man’s chest, Mendoza noticed his heartbeat begin to die away.

“I was holding up his ribcage … trying to expose as much as I could so the doctor could see it,” Mendoza told Air Force Times in an interview last year. “When I was holding his heart, I could see [it] slowly stop beating.”

He massaged the Marine’s heart with his bare hand, reviving blood flow to the man’s brain and other vital organs, his citation said. The Marine ultimately lived.

Together, Mendoza and Reed saved 38 patients in critical condition and 40 Afghan family members, the Air Force said.

The pair joins a growing number of troops who have received Bronze Stars in the aftermath of the historic evacuation. Recipients include airmen who led search-and-rescue operations from Bagram Air Base as the Taliban overtook the country, coordinated outbound flights from the Kabul airfield, and multiple others across the armed forces.

The Air Force has awarded at least 14 Bronze Stars related to the withdrawal so far.

Air Mobility Command also confirmed Wednesday that it will bestow the Distinguished Flying Cross upon the maintainers and security forces whose pilot and loadmaster teammates have already been recognized for contributions to Allies Refuge.

For instance, the Air Force Reserve in April 2022 gave the DFC to four members of a C-17 Globemaster III airlifter crew, but not the team’s flying crew chief. That irked airmen who viewed their unrecognized wingmen as equally deserving of military honors.

“We didn’t fly unless our crew chiefs had their shit together,” Reddit user janxus posted that month. “And they always did.”

Air Mobility Command, which oversees the airlift and aerial refueling enterprise, said it will award 355 medals in all. They include eight Distinguished Flying Crosses, the Pentagon’s highest award for extraordinary aerial achievement; two Bronze Stars; 229 Air Medals, for especially noteworthy acts in flight; and 98 Meritorious Service Medals, for heroism or similarly significant accomplishments.

The announcement marks the latest round of recognition — and the largest batch of awards to date — for the pilots, maintainers, loadmasters, security forces, medics and others who participated in what the Air Force believes is the largest air evacuation of noncombatants in U.S. history.

“It is with great humility, gratitude and honor that I have the opportunity to recognize the actions of these mobility heroes,” Air Force mobility boss Gen. Mike Minihan said in a release. “This recognition is long overdue, but I hope everyone involved in this incredible operation knows our deepest appreciation for their sacrifice.”

Airmen worked nonstop for weeks to carry more than 124,000 American and Afghan citizens to safety as the Taliban reclaimed control of the country after two decades at war with a U.S.-led military coalition.

As Washington scrambled to make sense of the unfolding chaos, airmen pieced together evacuation missions with little sleep or clarity about the situation on the ground. They tended to U.S. troops and civilians, diplomatic staff, fearful and ill Afghans and the victims of the Aug. 26, 2021, suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members and at least 160 Afghans outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.

More than two years later, some airmen will receive their medals at the Airlift/Tanker Association’s annual convention in Texas on Thursday, the Air Force said. Officials will review another slate of award nominees next week.

“We continue to reveal incredible actions taken to carry out this mission and it is our duty to recognize each and every one of them,” Minihan said. “Airmen proved, once again, that they can make the impossible possible. But it came with great personal sacrifice and risk.”

The Air Force last year unveiled a similarly large tranche of medals that spanned 96 Distinguished Flying Crosses, 12 Bronze Stars and a Gallant Unit Citation, plus nearly 250 lower-level awards.

Still, airmen have struggled to earn the same high-level recognition as soldiers and Marines who were in charge of operations on the ground in Kabul.

In August, the Defense Department announced that Army and Marine Corps units that helped close down the U.S. presence in Afghanistan would receive the Presidential Unit Citation, the nation’s highest unit-level award for collective courage.

Airmen who played key roles in the evacuation were not included in that group because they fell under a different chain of command than the soldiers and Marines who were honored, raising questions about the fairness of the award process.

Minihan pledged in September to fix the apparent snub by nominating airmen for the country’s top individual and unit awards.

Air Mobility Command spokesperson Jessica Brown declined to answer Wednesday whether the command has submitted nominations for the Presidential Unit Citation.

“AMC is committed to pursuing proper recognition for all involved in this mission,” Brown said in an email.

Revamping myDecorations, or “myDecs,” is part of a broader effort to streamline the Air Force’s sprawling human resources enterprise. The project aims to ease the administrative burden of apps that troops depend on to document their professional lives and make that data accessible worldwide.

MyDecs aims to be a one-stop shop for nominating airmen for several Air Force awards, including the Air and Space Meritorious Service Medal, the Air and Space Commendation Medal, the Air and Space Achievement Medal, the Aerial Achievement Medal, the Military Volunteer Outstanding Service Medal and the Combat Readiness Medal.

The system also adds those awards into a service member’s formal military record.

But airmen say myDecs can be maddeningly confusing and glitchy.

The system can block nominators from correcting any errors once their draft is sent, and is tricky to navigate when the awardee and their nominator no longer work in the same unit. Airmen also have trouble getting the app to save changes in drafts and struggle to withdraw submitted requests, among other problems.

“I submitted a dec for my troop, and the flight kicked it back for corrections,” Reddit user mindyourownbusiness3 wrote in July. “The problem is, I can’t edit it. I make the corrections, click submit, and none of the corrections are saved. I tried to withdraw it to resubmit it with the corrections, but it’s been sitting in withdraw limbo for 2 weeks.”

“I’d call it a piece of s***, but manure has value,” they said of myDecs.

Air Force spokesperson Master Sgt. Deana Heitzman said relief is coming.

“We’ve identified how we can improve routing in the myDecs application to allow the user to select who they want to send the decoration to, from initiation to approval,” she said. “Users can expect the flexibility they have today in the myEval routing experience, including editability by any user in the nomination and approval process up until the point of the approval signature.”

The Air Force plans to offer a basic version of the software before gradually tacking on new features. The interface will be handled by Salesforce, the same business IT contractor that hosts the Air Force’s myEval performance review system.

Heitzman declined to say when airmen could expect to see the new app.

“MyDecs is a priority and will be rolled out as soon as comprehensive testing, the manual publishing and training efforts are complete,” Heitzman said. “We will use user feedback to explore and evaluate additional capabilities.”

Lt. Gen. Caroline Miller, the Air Force’s personnel chief, told Air Force Times in a recent interview that the service will use what it learned from myEval’s rocky rollout to make the myDecs overhaul faster and smoother.

Last year, the service halted its implementation of myEval for months as technical difficulties stymied airmen’s efforts to submit the annual job reviews that are a key factor in prospective promotions.

“We were doing it all from … the programmers’ perspective, which is not helpful,” Miller said of initial attempts to design myEval. “If we sequestered the right people, and got customer input … it was a huge success.”

So we compiled a list of the more non-traditional things that veterans carry for life.

1. An incessant need to roll socks

2. Bad knees

3. The misguided idea that ibuprofen and fresh socks will cure any ailment

4. Tinnitis. ZNNNNNNNNNG.

5. The ability to sleep anywhere

6. The plight of not being able to sleep at all

7. Old combat boots. They’re great for mowing the lawn or a trip to Home Depot.

8. Fear of tape tests

9. Issues with authority figures

10. Back pain

11. T-shirts from strange events and places they don’t remember going

12. A woobie that has seen better days.

13. A swearing problem that is FUBAR

14. A love/hate relationship with acronyms

15. Total disdain for PowerPoint

16. Scars from barracks shenanigans gone awry

17, A few ugly divorces

18. A truck they bought after gaining some sense and selling that Camaro they financed at 27% APR

19. Some weird strip club stories

20. Sleep apnea

21. Bad tattoos that seemed like a really good idea at the time

22. Boxy brown t-shirts that somehow have sweat stains in a different, more gross shade of brown

23. A deeply stained, never-before-washed coffee mug that they tell everyone is “seasoned”