COLUMN ONE : A Proper Gleam on Valor : Aging World War II veterans are rushing to collect some long overdue medals. Those combat stories were true, after all.

After hearing the same story for 37 years, Jean Hemenway knew it by heart. Her husband was a World War II hero who had dashed through machine gun and mortar fire during a 1945 battle in the Philippines to save a wounded buddy’s life.

Trouble was, Clyde Hemenway didn’t have any Army medals to prove his mettle. If he really had done what he said, where was his Purple Heart? Where were the combat ribbons? And where was the medal for battlefield valor?

“I did believe him,” Jean Hemenway said. “He’d told people about it all these years. Not that they didn’t believe him--but there wasn’t any proof.”

There is now. Two months ago, the Army awarded the 78-year-old retired Norwalk mailman six medals that it failed to present him 44 years ago. And officials say a seventh battle ribbon is on the way.

Hemenway is among thousands of World War II veterans who are rushing to get the military to present them with wartime commendations they earned but never received. Former soldiers applied for 400,000 forgotten World War II ribbons last year, according to Army officials. That was 60% more than the number of requests received just four years ago.

Army officials say they ran out of medals when the war ended and they were caught in a crush of GIs being discharged. Soldiers hurrying home from battlefields in Europe and the South Pacific were told they could pick up their medals later.

After the war, many of the servicemen were too busy establishing families and civilian careers to bother.

But these days, ex-GIs who have reached retirement age have the time--and the inclination--to track down their awards. And military officials are hurrying to catch up with the crush of requests.

The medals are shipped from an Army warehouse in Philadelphia, not far from the Liberty Bell. Officials at times have worked around the clock to fill the requests. There is a four-month backlog now, said Larry Smith, acting chief of the medals distribution office.

“I think a lot guys now want their medals as a legacy for their children or grandchildren,” Smith said. “Some of the requests are from elderly people who are ill. We try to expedite them.”

An Army records office in St. Louis that checks out each request for a medal is six to nine months behind in its work, said Gladys Maeser, an Army spokeswoman. The verification job has been complicated by a 1973 fire that damaged or destroyed 80% of all World War II records.

Military officials predict that they will see new surges in medal requests as servicemen who fought in Korea and Vietnam grow older. But they point out that fewer Americans were called to duty in those conflicts than in World War II.

The Army has already shipped out thousands of Vietnam War medals. “Most of them are first-time issue” and not replacements, Smith said.

“Some of the guys have told me they didn’t want them back then, when they got out. But later on, they’ve thought about what they went through, or now their kids want to see their medals,” he said.

Military officials say their policy is to try to quickly and ceremoniously award commendations to servicemen involved in the infrequent combat operations of today.

The Army temporarily ran out of Combat Infantryman Badges when it started awarding them to soldiers involved in battles during December’s invasion of Panama, said Kathleen Ross, an Army spokeswoman in Los Angeles.

To the dismay of some veterans of World War II, however, the only uniform they see when they finally do receive their medals is that of the U.S. Postal Service. The awards are simply mailed, as in Hemenway’s case, unless advance arrangements have been made with the Army or a congressional office.

In Los Angeles, the Army will arrange for an Army Reserve officer to present the medals if requested. “If they ask, we try to accommodate them. It’s an honor they deserve,” Ross said.

“More children now are getting involved. Their parents are getting older and they want to make sure they get tributes and honors and feel special,” she said.

Gunnery Sgt. Douglas Pence, a Marine Corps spokesman in Los Angeles, said former Marines are referred to a “decorations and awards” office in Washington.

“People lose track of time,” said Christina Johnson, a Navy chief journalist whose Los Angeles public affairs office refers ex-sailors’ medal inquiries to Washington. “Older guys are trying to tie up loose ends.”

Former Army airborne trooper Tony Marincola, 72, of Canyon Country, received eight overdue medals three months ago. He said he was not told of the awards he had earned when he left the service in 1946.

“When you’re first discharged, you’re young and you don’t care what happened,” said the retired tool supervisor. “But as you get older, your children ask about the war and whether you got any medals.”

Marincola has placed his awards in a display cabinet, including a Purple Heart belatedly received for a wound suffered in the Battle of the Bulge. “My two daughters are real proud of me,” he said.

Former Army Ranger Frank Romero, 71, of Canoga Park, also received eight medals after sending copies of his military records to the Army last year. The retired truck driver said awards were not discussed when he was liberated after spending 16 months as a German prisoner of war.

He had told his three children about his wartime experiences. “Now they know,” Romero said.

Along with seven World War II medals, Bill Buckman, 67, of Chatsworth, was surprised when he received four others for duty in Korea after asking Army officials to check his records.

“Part of it was the way you were interviewed at the time of your discharge. They didn’t have access to my records at the time. And part of it was just my memory,” said Buckman, a retired electrical engineer now involved with American Legion work.

Sigurd Carlson, a 62-year-old retired high school teacher from Studio City, said that several of the five medals he recently received from the Marine Corps “weren’t made yet” when he was discharged in 1946 after fighting in four major South Pacific battles.

“It makes my family feel good. It’s something you can leave them,” said Carlson, who now works with veterans at the VA Hospital in Sepulveda through a service organization called AMVETS.

Carlson has helped other veterans with the paper work required to collect their medals. One of them, former Marine George Hatzadakis, received seven awards.

“There was awe in my two daughters’ faces when they saw them,” said Hatzadakis, a former county auditor’s investigator who has retired to the Greek island of Crete but is currently visiting Los Angeles. “I’m going to fix them up in a display and let them fight it out over who gets them.”

Clyde Hemenway said he started writing letters to officials about his missing medals two years ago. “I decided my grandchildren might like to see them,” he said.

“I’m glad to finally get them. Of course, it would have been better if I’d had them when I came home from overseas. Back then, everybody was talking about the war being over. Everybody was interested in what you’d done.”

His awards include a Purple Heart, Bronze Star and Good Conduct Medal and American Campaign, American Defense, Asiatic Pacific Campaign and Victory battle ribbons.

The Purple Heart and Bronze Star were awarded because of his actions as a 33-year-old Army medic on May 12, 1945. His rifle company was involved in a five-hour battle in Manigima Canyon, on the Philippine island of Mindanao.

“I went after a wounded rifleman. He was bleeding very badly and I knew he didn’t have all day,” Hemenway recalled. “Machine-gun bullets were hitting the ground on both sides of me when I ran about 25 yards to him. I got hit in the back by a mortar fragment. I dragged him behind some grass to patch him up. He had seven or eight machine-gun holes in him.”

The soldier, named Snyder, survived his wounds. So did Hemenway--who remembers being grateful just to be alive when he shipped home five months later.

“I’d spent the last eight months in a rifle company and not once had I gone after a wounded man and not drawn fire,” he said. “As a kid, I had never been the hero kind. I would never climb as high in the tree as the other boys. But here I was, doing it.”

He plans to proudly show his medals to his 10 grandchildren at a family reunion on Sunday. He expects to have to explain to the youngest of them what World War II was.

“My grandfather used to talk about the Civil War when I was a boy and I thought that was ancient history,” Hemenway said with a grin. “So many people today didn’t live through World War II. To them, that’s ancient history.”