Troops who refused COVID shot to receive retroactive honor to 'right the wrongs of the past': Hegseth

President Trump's secretary of war is making it a point to set the record straight for those servicemen and -women who adhered to their convictions and refused the Biden COVID shots.

In a memorandum dated December 6, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth ordered Pentagon leadership to identify service members wrongfully discharged because of their refusal to take the jab and give them their due.

Sean Parnell said that nearly 8,700 service members were 'involuntarily separated' from the military because of their refusal to take the jab.

Specifically, many service members were given a general discharge rather than a fully honorable discharge.

"It is unconscionable that thousands of former Service members who held true to their personal and religious convictions were not just separated, but separated with General (Under Honorable Conditions), rather than Honorable, discharge characterizations," Hegseth wrote.

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Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images

Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said that nearly 8,700 service members were "involuntarily separated" from the military because of their refusal to take the jab.

Of those, Parnell continued, "more than 3,000 received less than honorable discharge characterizations."

"The department is committed to ensuring that everyone who should have received a fully honorable discharge receives one and continues to right wrongs and restore confidence in and honor to our fighting force,” Parnell said.

In his first week back in office, Trump signed an executive order to reinstate service members who left or were removed from duty on account of the "unfair, overbroad, and unnecessary" COVID vaccine mandates. Hegseth then began implementing that directive in February.

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