How do you recover awards you lost?

You are talking about those who got out and came back in. The DD214 will have all the awards for when they got out and when they come back in the DD214 will be what they use for their awards.

If they actually were awarded it, the unit and the BN S-1 is a good place to start, but it maybe a lost cause.

unfortunately you might be out of luck in that case. Im not aware of any way of recovering these documents unless you hunt the person that approved it and see if they be willing to sing of on it again.

I know that units get a copy of orders and so does the Admin entity that serves that unit but I have never seen anyone ever attempt to reach out to them. I don't know if really anyone keeps the DA Form 368. Iperms is the best hope you have but I doubt that if I didn't have my copy of my early awards I wouldn't be able to get a copy of them.

I'm having issues with my s1 right now, they state my dd214 is not enough proof for my awards as a prior service soldier. They refuse to add any award or campaign ribbons to my erb because of this. So my awards sections right now is blank. Contacted my old unit and they said they couldn't find any records of my awards being processed, the national archives just gave me stuff I already had. So I don't know what else to do or what to tell them in order for them to add those awards to my erb.