Confirmation of an Award

[jryanjack]

Does anyone know of a way that I can find out if an individual's claim of an award, a DFC specifically, is valid? The award is from Vietnam - sometime between '69 and '71. I'm not sure of the unit, they say HMM 262 the Purple Foxes, however, the Purple Foxes are HMM 364? I found a website for HMM 364 and it lists all of the awards individuals won during Vietnam and his name is not listed?

Any help you can provide would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

[Super Dave]

Quick Guide to Obtaining Military Records

by Glenna Whitley and B.G. Burkett

In the early '90s, writers at the Boston Globe took up the cause of Joe Yandle, a Vietnam veteran sentenced to life in prison for his role in the murder of a liquor store proprietor in Boston. Yandle and his buddy, both heroin addicts, had killed Joseph Reppucci in 1973 during a robbery spree to obtain money to feed their habits. The Globe told how Yandle became addicted to heroin as a consequence of his two tours in Vietnam as a Marine, and the terrible ordeal he endured at the famous siege of Khe Sanh.

Yandle became a cause celebre of the Vietnam Veterans of America, then Mike Wallace did a story on Yandle for "60 Minutes." In 1995, then-Governor William Weld, responding to pressure from the media and veterans groups, commuted Yandle's sentence. Thanks to his story of war-induced trauma, Yandle walked out of prison a free man.

The Globe, Wallace, the governor – everyone involved had relied on military records submitted by Yandle to the parole board to verify his story of military service. No one independently requested his military record from the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri. But Yandle was a fraud. The documents submitted to the parole board were forged. Finding out the truth about Yandle took one Freedom of Information Act request by B.G. Burkett. The publicly-releasable portion of Yandle's real military record showed that he never served in Vietnam; he was a clerk in Okinawa.

Though the media victims of his fraud are high-profile, phonies like Yandle are not uncommon. Many go to incredible lengths to forge documents, altering them to support their pretensions to heroism. Some obtain license plates for their cars identifying them as former POWs or recipients of the Purple Heart or Medal of Honor. They frame and mount awards and decorations to impress those who don't realize such things can be purchased at almost any sizable flea market and through collectors catalogs, as can other military paraphernalia and "in-country" mementos. They cry on camera when talking about their dead buddies, about witnessing and committing atrocities. Some fool their wives, congressmen, psychiatrists, even military commanders who were in Vietnam.

But you don't have to be hood-winked. Verifying the truth about military service can be time consuming and frustrating, but sometimes all it takes is one simple request under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

For Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its Heroes and Its History, Burkett used FOIA requests to obtain more than 1,500 individual military records, as well as numerous other documents such as ship's logs, morning reports, and unit records. His research was greatly aided by the fact that he grew up in the military and served as an officer in Vietnam (and is also a military history buff), but Burkett learned a great deal about obtaining military records from various guides to using FOIA, including some published by Investigative Reporters and Editors, an organization of journalists (www.ire.org).

The first step in verifying Vietnam-era military service? Realize that the stereotypes about Vietnam veterans are not true. Individuals who become the elite of the military typically maintain that demeanor and pride throughout their lives. You should be on the alert if a slovenly, 300-pound, under-educated man claims he was a Green Beret who performed courageously in combat, was highly decorated, performed covert operations, and is now homeless. Could it happen? Yes. But the odds are greatly against it.

THE PROCESS - STEP ONE

Filing a FOIA request is not always necessary. To obtain your own service records, simply send a letter to the National Personnel Records Center, Army (Air Force or Navy) Records Center, 9700 Page Boulevard, St. Louis, MO, 63132. Give your full name, branch of service, social security number (or service number), and sign the letter.

To obtain the records of other veterans: If you have the veteran’s cooperation, ask him to sign a Form DA-180 (available through the National Archives and Records Administration), which is a proxy statement giving the National Personnel Records Center the authority to give the researcher all the data in the file releasable to the veteran, including the DD-214, which is not available under the Freedom of Information Act. Send that form to the National Personnel Records Center along with your letter, the veteran’s full name and social security number. (We have not used this method ourselves, so we cannot vouch for how quickly or easily a response will be received.)

If the veteran is not a cooperative subject, you must request the record under the federal Freedom of Information Act. Send a letter to the National Personnel Records Center, saying something like this: "Dear Sirs or Madams: I am requesting, under the federal Freedom of Information Act, the publicly-releasable form of the military record of John Jones Smith."

You MUST cite the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a military record that is not your own.

Be sure to use a full and correctly-spelled name. With more than 80 million individual personnel records in the system, going back to the Revolutionary War, it's difficult to get a military record unless you have a full name and service number (for service prior to 1969) or social security number (post-1969). It also helps to include date of birth, home town, and general time of service, if you know it.

While many phonies claim their records were destroyed in the fire at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis in 1973, very few Vietnam-era records were damaged. Those with the heaviest damage were Army records from 1912 to 1959; some 1947 to 1963 Air Force records in surnames I through Z were less seriously affected. Many of these records are duplicated at other locations such as the VA and the military finance office, and therefore can be reconstructed.

Phonies often claim they have no military record because they were involved in covert operations and the government has purged the documents from the system to disavow their illegal activities. Don’t accept that. If an Army or Marine recon specialist, for example, was assigned to a MACV-SOG or CIA operation (in Laos, perhaps), his chronological record might state: "Classified assignment," with the applicable dates. Awards and decorations are treated the same way. The geographic location may say nothing more than Southeast Asia. The operation may be given a code name. But the record exists. And covert operatives must go through extensive training -- which will be documented.

To verify POW status, you don’t even have to file a FOIA: a list of all Vietnam POWs returned alive is available from DOD, and also is printed in Stolen Valor as an appendix, as are lists of Vietnam era recipients of the Medal of Honor, Distinguished Service Cross, Air Force Cross, and Navy Cross.

If you are interested in specific awards and decorations, add a line to your FOIA request asking for the specific General Order awarding the medal in question. Sometimes these are not included with the summary; that doesn’t necessarily mean the veteran isn’t entitled to the decorations. It means that a more in-depth search through his personnel file is necessary.

Although we would like to help everyone who needs assistance, we have been overwhelmed with requests and are unable to help at this time.

To gain a more comprehensive understanding of how military records can be used to verify military service, we urge you to order a copy of Stolen Valor from this website.

http://www.stolenvalor.com/foia.HTM

[Sgt0811]

You might want to check out this site also:
http://www.pownetwork.org they have a section about phonies and lots more.:marine:

[enviro]

The Distinguished Flying Cross is a decoration given to a relative handful of military members since Charles Lindbergh won the first for his trans-Atlantic solo flight in 1927. Since then, through World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf and all the engagements in between, right through the Afghan campaign, only 3,300 DFC’s were awarded, according to the Distinguished Flying Cross Society, an organization of DFC recipients.

On a side note - since March 2002, the Air Force has awarded 463 of these coveted decorations.

Anyways, go to http://www.dfcsociety.org/ and click on Honor Roll to see if your individual is listed.

[jryanjack]

Thanks all! I'll let you know what I find out. I've already looked on the DFC Society Web Site and he's not listed - but I also saw that he would have to register with the society to be on the site, which is something that he may not have done. Reaching, I know, but I want to be sure.

[Sgt. Smitty]

Sounds like a guy I ran into a couple years ago here in Oregon that said he was in the Nam for two tours, got the silver star, bronze star, 2 purple hearts and various other medals. Of course it was all lies and when confronted with it he abruptly left town. I hate wannabes and those that take away from the real recipients by trying to act like they're somethin they're not. We had to put up with enough bull**** without having some phoney wannabe trying to act like a hero. I just wish there was some legal recourse against twits like this.