Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) has drawn the ire of the U.S. military this year by consistently blocking routine military appointments requiring Senate approval in a relentless protest against Defense Department policies on abortion. He’s also been criticized for seemingly being confused about whether white nationalists in the armed forces are racist.
Now it seems Tuberville may have been in a muddle about his own father’s service during World War II. On Tuesday, a Washington Post analysis of claims the senator made about his dad, Charles R. Tuberville Jr., found that some of his assertions don’t quite add up.
Broadly speaking, Tuberville has repeatedly characterized his father as someone who lied about his age to join the U.S. Army and then went on to become a tank commander on D-Day, earning an incredible five Bronze Stars throughout the course of his service during the war.
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While there’s no question that Tuberville’s father really did take part in combat during the conflict, including at the Battle of the Bulge, some specifics that Tuberville has mentioned about his father are in some cases doubtful and in others outright false, according to the Post.
The clearest example appears to be the assertion that Charles Tuberville signed up at the age of 16. In fact, he turned 16 months before the U.S. entered the war in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and his draft card shows that it was actually submitted on his 18th birthday on July 16, 1943, the Post reports. Steven Stafford, Sen. Tuberville’s communications director, did not respond to the newspaper’s questions about the claim.
The newspaper also deemed Tuberville’s assertion that his father was a “tank commander” “dubious.” Charles Tuberville’s tombstone lists his highest rank as a technician fifth grade or “TEC 5,” an Army rank that signified technical skills but not combat leadership. It could be the case that he may have been given the command of a tank at some point during the war, according to the Post, but it seems unlikely that would have been the case on D-Day, as a Feb. 7, 1945, news report—the year after the landings at Normandy—said he had been promoted to corporal.
It is certainly feasible that Charles Tuberville did take part in D-Day as a member of 746th Tank Battalion (A Company). But the company connected with the 101st Airborne Division in the days after the landing, making Sen. Tuberville’s claim he was a commander “with the 101st Infantry” incorrect.
That Charles Tuberville was awarded a Purple Heart is also definitely true. The further claim that he was awarded a whopping five Bronze Stars, however, is not. The award is given to a soldier who has “distinguished himself or herself by heroic or meritorious achievement or service” in combat. Stafford showed the Post a photo of a snippet of Charles Tuberville’s “report of separation” from the Army which makes reference to him being “awarded 5 Bronze stars.” But the Post says the record indicates he received Bronze service stars, which simply mean that a soldier was present during a particular military engagement or campaign and are not awarded for valor in combat.
The paper also found that Sen. Tuberville’s claim that his father “drove a tank through the streets of Paris when the U.S. forces liberated the city” could not have happened, as the 746th Tank Battalion was about 90 miles northeast of Paris on Aug. 29, 1944, when the Army’s 28th Infantry Division marched down the Champs-Elysées.
