How do you find out if someone served in Special Forces (US Army Green Beret's?)

Question

The reason I'm asking is we have a guy at work who claims her was in Army Special Forces for like 10 years , Now I"m not up on everything related to Special Forces as far as where they train serve etc but some of what he says sounds like BS to me. So I'm wondering if there isn't an easy way to check to see if he's for real or not. I beleive he says he served mostly with 10th SFG in Bad Tolz Germany if there is such a place. Any help would be appreciated a case of beer is riding on it.

Answer 1

If that person has  retired from the US army or left the service deliberately, then you can seek aid of National Archives to get his military record which will have if he ever was in the Special Forces. If the information reveals that he was not, what he claims to be, do not let him give you any misleading information like he was a secret soldier. There are no such things. Missions can be  secret, people are not. Just the fact that he seems to be so open about so much is a big clue there that his story may be false.

Answer 2

Ask him to show you his SF coin.  I'm pretty sure they don't have dog tags - for obvious reasons.  If he's a flake he's probably a phoney.

Answer 3

I'm retired from reserves with substantial active duty time both as enlisted and an officer. My records came back from archives as I'm being reactivated to reserves to be assigned to a unit for deployment and my mandatory retirement date is being chnaged to 2019. So I requested by records. What a joke and what a mess. I served in the original 2nd 75th before it became part of the regiment and went to Sf school, recondo, jump, pathfinders on and on over my career. most of my schooling was missing and the only DD214 was from 1981 in my jacket. That was it. Awards, decorations, schools etc were mostly missing. Just abysmal. SO the idea you can rely on national archives does not exist at least in my case