How do you recover awards you lost?

Personnel records can provide your DD214 and all your relevant records.

Do you have them listed on your old DD 214? IF it wasn't permed you may have to write back to the organization where You received the award so they can go to the Records Holding Area to get a copy of your award. They are held for 25 years at Records Holding Area and then sent to HRC.

HI, the awards should be listed on your DD 214 when you were discharged. Hope this helps.

When I was in the Air Force they would pin the medals on me and then take them back and put them in the drawer for the next time someone needed it in the presentation. But we never received our personal one. I ended up going to Archives.gov and ordering mine. In my case though I had asked for my DD-214 the year before and when I did instead of making a copy for me someone sent me the original instead so I had to have one of my U.S. Senators help me work with the Archives but normally you wouldn't have to.

The process is easier than you think. Go online to "eVetRecs" or call them at [login to see] . You can check them out at: " https://www.archives.gov/veterans/military-service-records/index.html "
Or, go straight to: " https://vetrecs.archives.gov/VeteranRequest/home.html " The process is pretty intuitive and straightforward. ALL of your military records should be there, unless your Unit Clerk slept on the job every day. Any award you have earned or been awarded should be there, and you can print out the award order. Don't know if that includes the citation but you can ask them. Hope this helps.

I know this is not right, but I went on an Intrinsic Action tour. I lost the award but I had certificate, so I wore the medal.

All of those records are in the archives in ST. Louis MO all you have to do is go to their website and fill out the request.

I found out at my last command that I was supposed to have gotten a couple of unit awards from both my previous commands. 1st I caught grief for not wearing them. Then I got more for trying to verify and get them. It turned out they never bothered to forward them. Some how it was my fault! Good thing my CMC had a good no BS policy! POed the new LTjg off tho.

Back in the 50s we didn't have all this fine electronic storage. And yes, paperwork can get lost or destroyed or just not completed by a lazy YN. I have two awards that were presented to me and about 150 other members of the can I was on and have no documentation at all. I've talked to a few other shipmates from the same can and they're in the same boat. Hard to go back and correct something from sixty years ago.

I can't ever imagine losing an award for several reasons, and they're all due to personal responsibility from the Soldier that received it. Allow me to explain.

1. The Soldier should never allow their official record to get out of whack. If you get an award, the first thing you should do is make a copy and write the SSN or whatever in the upper right corner and give it to S1. Technically they should do this on their own but they never do in my experience. If it doesn't hit in 2-4 weeks, upload again or contact the S1. Just having an iPERMS that is hot garbage and missing files is unfathomable to me.

2. I scan all aspects of every award the night I get it, and post it in my Google Drive cloud (or respective service). No excuse to not have cloud storage for important things like this, especially since you can get GB upon GB for free. If we are talking WWII that is obviously a different circumstance. Houses burn down, documents get lost, hard drives crash, but the likelihood of your cloud storage disappearing AND your hard drive crashing AND your house burning down in the same event are probably on odds with the Powerball.