The SysAdmin suffers no POWs, just hostages
■"U.S. Forces Free American Hostage in Iraq: Tip Leads Troops to Military Catering Contractor Abducted in November," by Ellen Knickmeyer, Washington Post, 8 September 2005, p. A25.
One of the few outstanding Western hostages in Iraq was freed by American forces yesterday. He had been abducted while working for a Saudi catering company serving the Iraqi army.
If this guy is peeling potatoes while in uniform and he's taken by a conventional enemy, he's a prisoner of war. But the SysAdmin force doesn't fight conventional foes, and many of the SysAdmin's personnel are civilian government or civilian contractors, and when they're "captured," it's called hostage-taking.
When these people are freed, if they're lucky, they don't get heroes's welcomes typically, nor any special government status for having gone over and performed jobs that, in other situations in other times, might have earned them a chest-full of medals for their trouble.
One of my "Heroes Yet Discovered" at the end of Blueprint for Action is the first SysAdmin civilian personnel to be captured by an enemy and recognized as a real POW and not just a hostage.
You know that old saying, "There outta be a law!"
Well, someday, there outta be a civilian SysAdmin medal.