Thanks.
In the service of accuracy, two things about the Chief’s video and my previous post should be noted:
1. The MCR infantry unit he was joined to temporarily after returning from initial active duty training was located in Topeka, KS, not Omaha, NE. All the comments apply, the actions just occurred in a different location.
2. The DD 214 shown on the video is not the original document. At the time of his discharge, the form would have been prepared on a typewriter. The document the Chief is showing us is a “machine generated” form containing the DD 214 information as entered into a Marine Corps database for such documents. This is an ongoing effort so that the documents could be digitized for preservation, research, and retrieval purposes. Due to the volume of data involved, the data was probably entered by a contractor and subject to whatever quality control processes were in place to ensure accuracy of entries. I write this because, on further consideration, the “Not on file” entry for courts martial transcripts may be a standardized contractor entry after a contractor quality assurance cross check with a separate courts martial database came up with no entries for the private. No entries does not mean no courts martial especially if there was/is a backlog of entering transcript data. All it means is, at the time the record was created, a check came up negative. Unless a scan of the original DD-214 is provided, what the discharging unit actually entered cannot be known with certainty.
I imagine dozens of copies have been FOIed by now.