Jim,

I'm a reporter writing an article on a VN vet who claims multiple tours and multiple valor medals. Records from NARA obtained via FOIA indicate no VN service.  As well, his DD 214 is suspect. It would be very helpful to authenticate or disauthenticate it.  What agency, organization or person can you recommend?

Reply:

Other than NPRC I don't know of anything I'd trust.

https://www.archives.gov/st-louis/military-personnel/about-ompfs.html

These sorts of stories are so common and so emotional that any other Internet sites are usually all about the controversy, not the facts.

For what it's worth, I've run into a lot of guys who made a lot of claims that weren't true. Interestingly, they didn't do that to defraud VA for benefits, they did it for the self-aggrandizement of it all. They were heroes to family and friends unless and until they got caught. I found it all to be kind of sad.

I did a lot of interviews for The Veterans History Project and maybe 1 in 30 or so sat in front of me with a camera rolling and told me things I knew weren't true.

Just a week ago a Vietnam veteran told me the harrowing tale of how he had to get transfusions of blood while he laid on a rice paddy in the RVN during a prolonged firefight. He blames his current Hep-C on the transfusion. Of course there's no record of it but he swears it's true.

The fact is that blood transfusions weren't done like that in Vietnam.

Blood transfusions were hospital procedures. A blood transfusion system wasn't routinely available for the field until many years later and that's still fraught with problems. The vet didn't know I was an Army medic.

He never got back to me when I pointed out the discrepancy.

Good luck.