Thomas William Cole – US Army SGT, Two Purple Hearts, Operation Urgent Fury, Blog of Shame

militaryphonies

5 years ago

BACKGROUND

Thomas William Cole comes to us from Pendleton, Indiana. At the time of this writing, October 2021, Cole is 57 years old.

As you can see in the photo above, Cole wears a baseball cap with the designation “PURPLE HEART – COMBAT VETERAN.”

There is also a claim of combat wounded on his Facebook page.

There is also a claim on Cole’s Facebook page that he held the MOS of 98G2LAP in addition to serving from 1982 – 1996 with the 82nd Airborne.

A MOS 98G2LAP is listed as…

Also, there is a claim of being a SGT (E-5) while stationed with the 82nd Airborne.

Since there is a Facebook post claiming that Cole jumped into Grenada during Operation Urgent Fury in 1983, that would mean he saw action as a SGT.

Thomas Cole – Facebook post

There is an implication that Cole is the serviceman in the photo. This photo is used throughout his Facebook profile, even used as his profile picture.

Thomas Cole – Profile Picture

However, this photo is from the Department of the Navy, taken by PH2 David Wujcik, has a VIN number of ‘DN-ST-85-02006’ and can be easily searched on the internet. The official DoD caption for this photograph reads:

Here is the photo at high resolution and with the assessionist information intact.

DN-ST-85-02006 – A Marine, wearing camouflage and armed with an M16A1 rifle, participates in Operation URGENT FURY.

The caption and VIN appear to have been assigned in 1985, so there could be some assumptions made by the DoD assessionist assigning the VIN and caption. Since the US Army and US Marines wore the same cammies, there could be a chance this is a US Army soldier but the fact remains that it is captioned that he is a Marine.

In the post made to Facebook about jumping into Grenada, there is a claim that Cole was shot in the chest.

On Cole’s LinkedIn page, there is a claim of two Purple Hearts for being wounded in combat.

Thomas Cole – LinkedIn

Also on Cole’s LinkedIn page, there is a claim of a Bronze Star.

Thomas Cole – LinkedIn

Then, this photo shows Cole with a long tab tattoo, which is implying he was in Special Forces.

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ACTIONS CONDUCTED BY MILITARY PHONIES

Thomas Cole’s military records were ordered through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

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FOIA RESULTS

US ARMY HUMAN RESOURCES COMMAND (HRC)

FOIA Result – HRC – Thomas Cole – NGB FORM 22

The entire FOIA result will be provided below, but we extracted and consolidated all pertinent information such as rank and duty stations into a summary table. This table was not provided by the U.S. Army, but the information that they provided is summarized in the table.

US Army FOIA Complete Results

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DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE MANPOWER DATA CENTER (SCRA)

We searched the DoD Manpower Data Center database and found the following service listing for Thomas William Cole.

DoD Manpower Data Center (SCRA) – Thomas Cole

This database was searched as well for any other active duty to present day. It did not show anything but sometimes the database is not reliable for recall to active duty from reserve status. This appears to be consistent with Cole’s NGB 22, however.

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OTHER RESEARCH

A newspaper article listing the servicemen killed and wounded in Grenada does not list Thomas Cole.

A case could be made that the above list is early reporting and therefore not complete but the claim in Cole’s post is that he was shot in the chest on the day he jumped in, so it would represent an early casualty — if true. Although there were some early recon elements that went in early, the main invasion of Grenada was on October 25, 1983 vs. October 23, 1983.

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DISCUSSION and SUMMARY

LENGTH OF SERVICE

There are discrepancies between Cole’s claim of being in the Army and at 82nd Airborne for the length of time he claimed compared to the NGB 22 file.

NGB 22 – BLOCK 18: Prior Service Dates

RANK

Cole was discharged as a SPC (E-4) vs. the SGT (E-5) claimed. The summary of the FOIA results do not support a claim for the rank of SGT (E-5).

MOS

We couldn’t find that Cole was ever assigned the MOS of 98G2LAP but it could be the case.

SPECIAL FORCES

Although Cole was in the 82 Airborne, there was nothing in his records to support a claim of Special Forces as his tattoo implies.

COMBAT

His records do not support the claims that Cole served in combat.

AWARDS

Cole’s records show no award of the Purple Heart – not to mention the two (2) that were claimed. Even though the NGB 22, which parallels that of a DD-214, does not have a Purple Heart listed, it would include all prior medals to date.