The case of the missing “Navy hat”

This was reported to us a few days ago and has since hit the national news wire. It was brought to our attention because there are some comments from her that have raised eyebrows among our readers. We’re awaiting a FOIA request for this person’s official military records, so this is all preliminary investigation.

Trish Burnell, pictured above, spoke to Fox News (after local media initially reported the story);

Veteran searches for Navy ship hat from Desert Storm that was lost in New Hampshire river

This isn’t just any normal hat.

A navy veteran is hoping to be reunited with her Navy ship hat, which she earned while serving in Desert Storm. The beloved clothing item was lost during a recent tubing trip when its owner nearly drowned after briefly getting stuck underwater.

Trish Burnell spoke with Fox News, explaining that she wore the hat “almost every single day.” She explained that aside from letting people know that she served on the USS Hunley, it also was a symbol of her pride for her service.

“It also allows other veterans to recognize each other and give a hardy nod or talk about the ‘good old days,’” she explained.

Burnell was wearing the hat during a recent tubing trip on the Saco River in New Hampshire. While she had grown up in the area, this was her first time tubing down the river (she wasn’t permitted to swim in it as a child because of the “curse of the Saco”).

During the trip, Burnell briefly went underwater and got her left leg caught. While she was eventually able to free herself, she explained, “Your life truly does pass before you when you think you’re about to die.”

Unfortunately, when she surfaced, she realized that her Navy ship hat had been lost.

“Pure sadness set in when I realized my hat was no longer on my head,” Burnell said.

She shared her story on Facebook, expecting only a few sarcastic comments from her friends. Instead, she was met with an outpouring of support. Burnell says she’s heard from people all over the country who wish her luck. She’s even been contacted by other former crewmembers of the USS Hunley.

“I shouldn’t really be surprised by that because that’s what military people do, we’re like a giant family,” she said.

A group of her friends are planning on returning to the river to search for the hat. While Burnell says she’s incredibly moved by the effort everyone is putting in, she’s still sad that her hat is still missing. As she explained, that was the hat she wore while serving on the ship and then when she traveled the country after being discharged.

“I felt like my best friend that I had most of my life had just disappeared and abandoned me without so much as a goodbye,” she explained.

I’ve never known someone to be so attached to a piece of headgear.

Now this initially raised eyebrows because Burnell continually refers to her ballcap as a “hat”, odd terminology when referring to a piece of military headwear, with the more common “cap”, “cover”, or “ballcap” being the usual parlance. The same eyebrows were once again raised for the claim of Desert Storm service aboard USS Hunley (AS-31).

Investigation so far

While we await the FOIA results, we have done some preliminary investigating and have our suspicions because of it.

USS Hunley shows no service during Desert Shield or Desert Storm in any of the open source databases. This one is quite exhaustive and shows no service in the Gulf. It looks like Hunley was part of the Atlantic Fleet during most of the 1980’s and until her decommissioning in 1994.

A check of the DoD Manpower database, which we’ll remind you is not exhaustive or definitive, tells a curious account of Burnell’s US Navy service;

 

If confirmed by the FOIA results, two months is barely enough time to attend and graduate boot camp let alone be assigned to a ship and deploy to the Persian Gulf. Her dates of service here would be outside the dates for Operation Desert Storm (17 Jan 1991 to 11 April 1991). She would have been in during the award criteria time frame for the Southwest Asia Service Medal. If that’s the case and she was awarded the SWASM, she has a claim to say she’s a Gulf War vet, but technically not a DS/DS vet.

She has a Myspace page with several photos on it. Interestingly, her most beloved hat, which has “become part of [her] identity” is nowhere to be found on Myspace.

I also posit that perhaps instead of losing the ballcap, the thing leapt from her head. I can only imagine how ripe a ballcap continuously worn for 30 years is.

This whole thing strikes us as quite silly. Those types of ballcaps can be found around any military base for less than $20. Certainly not something worth embellishing or lying about, if that is indeed the case here (we’re still investigating).

Category: Navy, Veterans in the news