{"id":108036,"date":"2020-12-08T08:00:17","date_gmt":"2020-12-08T13:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=108036"},"modified":"2022-01-13T20:31:13","modified_gmt":"2022-01-14T01:31:13","slug":"buck-thrailkill-bronze-star-purple-heart-desert-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=108036","title":{"rendered":"“Buck” Thrailkill – Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Desert Storm"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a> The folks at Military Phony<\/a> send us their work on David Walkup Thrailkill<\/a>, or better known as “Buck” as he likes to be called.\u00a0 Buck comes to us from Fayetteville, North Carolina and is 57 years old at the time of this writing – December 2020.<\/p>\r\n

We actually had military records on ol’ Buck for quite a while.\u00a0 We were just waiting for him to provide a little bit more to send this case over the edge.\u00a0 He didn’t disappoint, or he did, depending on how you look at it. Buck wore his military finest to a wedding.\u00a0 On his uniform, he displayed a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, and the medals one would expect should someone have been in Operation Desert Shield\/Storm.

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a>
Buck also claims on his Rally Point profile that he was an “18E: Special Forces Communications Sergeant.”

\"\"<\/a>
Let’s see what his records say… \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> So, NO Bronze Star, NO Purple Heart, NO ODS medals, and NO 18E MOS supported in ol’ Bucky’s official military records.\u00a0 Someone has some ‘splainin’ to do.<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

DISCUSSION and SUMMARY<\/strong><\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n LENGTH OF SERVICE

<\/strong>Although Thrailkill’s military records support his claim of being retired, he served for 15 years and six months.\u00a0 It could have been a medical retirement.

MILITARY OCCUPATIONAL SPECIALTY (MOS) CODE

<\/strong>The 18E Special Forces MOS was not supported by Thrailkill’s military records.\u00a0 Although he appeared to be in a support role, he was not 18E as he claimed.

OPERATION DESERT SHIELD\/STORM (ODS\/S)

<\/strong>The awards in the photo not found in Thrailkill’s official military records are the ones at the very top – Bronze Star, Purple Heart and the Meritorious Service Medal – as well as the ones at the bottom – the Saudi Arabian Medal for the Liberation of Kuwait and the Kuwait Liberation of Kuwait Medal. The two awards for the liberation of Kuwait that Thrailkill is wearing in the photographs suggest he was in ODS\/S. He deployed to Panama in 1989 but had he also deployed to ODS\/S he would have a second award of the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal (AFEM).\u00a0 However, Thrailkill neither wears two AFEMs in the photo nor are two AFEMs supported in his records.

\"\"<\/a>
We also could not find the Multi-National Forces and Observers (MFO) medal listed in Thrailkill’s military records, which is also on the bottom row of ribbons that he wears. \"\"<\/a>

STOLEN VALOR

<\/strong>A claim of a Purple Heart medal is in direct violation of the federal Stolen Valor Act of 2013, especially if the claims were used for gain.\u00a0 State laws may also apply.

<\/span><\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The folks at Military Phony send us their work on David Walkup Thrailkill, or better known as “Buck” as he likes to be called.\u00a0 Buck comes to us from Fayetteville, North Carolina and is 57 years old at the time of this writing – December 2020. We actually had military records on ol’ Buck for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":667,"featured_media":108037,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[359,392,479,604,401,461,408,183,391],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-army","category-armyposer","category-bronze-star","category-gulf-war","category-kuwait","category-purple-heart","category-stolen-valor","category-stolen-valor-act","category-valorvultures"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/thrailkill-funny.jpg?fit=826%2C1071&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ozh1-s6w","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/667"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=108036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/108037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=108036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=108036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=108036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}