{"id":116316,"date":"2021-08-11T11:06:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-11T15:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=116316"},"modified":"2021-08-11T11:06:00","modified_gmt":"2021-08-11T15:06:00","slug":"navy-hat-ladys-foia-results-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=116316","title":{"rendered":"Navy hat lady’s FOIA results in"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Trish Burnell and her “hat”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We talked about Trish Burnell last week<\/a> when she made national news after losing her USS Hunley ballcap on a river tubing excursion. To quickly recap her service claims, she claimed to be a US Navy veteran and to have served aboard submarine tender USS Hunley (AS-31). News articles have claimed she is a Desert Storm veteran, but there are no direct quotes from her on that.<\/p>\n

Burnell likes to wear the cap<\/del> hat as a sign to fellow veterans, saying “It also allows other veterans to recognize each other and give a hardy nod or talk about the \u2018good old days.\u2019” Well she may have had some good old days, but she didn’t have very many of them. Not even enough to finish a standard enlistment.<\/p>\n

Our preliminary investigation led us to believe that her service with the US Navy was quite short. DoD Manpower database checks showed she had just 62 days of active duty time between 1 August 1992 and 2 October 1992. As we reminded you, the DoD Manpower records are not exhaustive. While not accurate in this case, Burnell’s official records aren’t much more impressive. Here’s the the results of a Freedom of Information Act query;<\/p>\n

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The results show that Burnell entered the US Navy on active duty 7 May 1991. This was\u00a0 more than two months after the end of Operation Desert Storm, precluding her from being a veteran of the operation. At best she was a “Desert Storm-times veteran.” Her records show only award of the National Defense Service Medal. There are no awards that support any service in Desert Storm or follow-on operations related to the Gulf War. She also shows no awards for service at sea or overseas.<\/p>\n

On 29 July, 1991 Burnell was reassigned to US Navy Hospital Corps “A” School at Great Lakes. She was transferred from the school on 13 December 1991. Less than a year later (2 October 1992) she was being shown the door and sent home with only her hat. As an E-1 she didn’t even get a stripe for her sleeves.<\/p>\n

Burnell’s record does reflect that she was assigned aboard USS Hunley at the time of her discharge. As our contact at NPRC said, “Maybe she was on the ship but that’s about it.” No wonder the ballcap means so much to her, she was only aboard Hunley long enough to get a hat.<\/p>\n

We cannot refute any of the quoted claims directly from Burnell in the articles. She is a US Navy veteran and served aboard or was assigned to USS Hunley (however briefly). This could be a case of her embellishing her record or a case of the reporting being overzealous or misunderstanding her claims.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We talked about Trish Burnell last week when she made national news after losing her USS … Navy hat lady’s FOIA results in<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119,226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navy","category-veterans-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=116316"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":116319,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116316\/revisions\/116319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=116316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=116316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=116316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}