More Wearing Unearned Medals

[Greybriar]

I understand that someone can record a copy of their DD 214 with their county clerk; I have done so myself. However, if someone's DD 214 is not a public record, it is confidential information and the VA--or any other government agency AFAIK--will not release the information on someone's DD 214, unless the veteran is deceased and then the information on his / her DD 214 is provided to the next of kin.

Gotcha.  Sorry if I sounded unintentionally glib with my answer on my end.

Not at all. Thanks for your sincerity.

[Jarhead0331]

This actually seems to be a very common occurrence. In most cases involving service members on active duty or reserve status, I find it mystifying. Many of them have quite distinguished careers so the wearing of unauthorized badges, devices, ribbons or medals makes no sense. I can only assume it stems from either a sense of entitlement, laziness, or simple mistake.

I'm currently defending a Navy Corpsman with 16 years of meritorious service in an Article 134 proceeding. He was caught wearing unearned rank and a dive badge in photographs taken at a wedding that were posted on facebook.  His explanation for wearing the rank is plausible, but the wearing of the dive badge was just a stupid error in judgment. Now the future of his career is on the line.  Totally not worth it.

[Airborne Rifles]

One detail of the article strikes me as odd; the bit about the wearing the Combat Infantryman's Badge incorrectly. Given what the article claims about his service in WWII, he clearly earned the decoration, so he couldn't have worn it incorrectly. Prior to the Iraq war, the award was given out on a blanket unit basis, i.e., if you were an infantryman in an infantry unit that saw combat, then you got the award. Early on in the Iraq war the rules were tightened so that you had to provide evidence that you individually were under fire and did your job. All that to say that the bit about the CIB cast some doubt on the whole accusation for me.

Speaking of which, the new rules for CIBs actually got relatively asinine. I earned mine in a pretty serious close ambush in which one of my soldiers was badly wounded by an RPG, but when we sent up the sworn statements they came back with questions like "how close were the rounds striking to 2LT R." After about the third submission we sent up something to the effect of "everyone on the battlefield was shooting at 2LT R." That seemed to do the trick.

[Greybriar]

One detail of the article strikes me as odd; the bit about the wearing the Combat Infantryman's Badge incorrectly. Given what the article claims about his service in WWII, he clearly earned the decoration, so he couldn't have worn it incorrectly. Prior to the Iraq war, the award was given out on a blanket unit basis, i.e., if you were an infantryman in an infantry unit that saw combat, then you got the award....

I don't know how far back the practice of awarding the Combat Infantryman's Badge on a blanket unit basis goes, but that was not how it was awarded when I was in the Army in 1967-1969. During my term of service the Combat Infantryman's Badge was given on an individual basis. I especially remember this because I failed to receive my orders for a Combat Infantryman's Badge and my company commander in my stateside duty station had to send a letter to my old unit in Vietnam to get my orders for one. That was in 1969.

More recently a guy in my unit asked me to submit a statement to the VA to help him substantiate a claim because he had not received orders for his Combat Infantryman's Badge. Such cases may have been why they are now awarded on a blanket unit basis. But I just wanted to point out that it wasn't always that way.

[Airborne Rifles]

Thanks Greybriar, I was going off of what Gulf War vets and people who served during the early months of OEF/OIF had told me about how it was. Seems there was at least a period between your service in Vietnam and mine in Iraq where it was easier to come by.