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They are physical memories that mean something only to the individual soldier, something to point out to his grandchildren as a symbol of what he was in youth and what he went through for his country.

So when a 22-year-old specialist is thrown forward by a sniper’s bullet while standing in a tank turret in Iraq, he marvels at how the bullet pierced all the way through his SAPI plate and clothing, but caused him no more than a bruised kidney.

That bullet was meant for him and he knows it.

A few weeks later, the soldier sees his lifesaving armor again — now made into a plaque — as he’s giving it away to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, “for all the things you do for our soldiers,” the general said in the ceremony.

Whose idea was that? We may never know, but it’s a bad one.

It most likely wasn’t Rumsfeld’s idea. And it certainly wasn’t thought up by anyone in Spc. Anthony Dowden’s battalion.

If the pierced armor plate is worthy of hanging up, it belongs on the kid’s wall, or his family’s wall back in South Carolina, until the specialist comes home.

It’s certainly not Rumsfeld’s souvenir, and it won’t mean anything to anyone if it’s stowed in a warehouse at the Pentagon or hung there in some hallway.

And it certainly can’t be used again by another soldier in combat. If the bullet hole didn’t render it unserviceable, turning it into a plaque certainly did.