Gov. Tim Walz' military record has always been at the center of his political career. The presumptive Democratic vice presidential nominee enlisted in the National Guard at age 17 and retired honorably 24 years later.

But former President Donald Trump's campaign has launched a series of attacks aimed at discrediting Walz' service just as the Democratic presidential ticket, headed by Vice President Kamala Harris, has surged in the polls. The attacks, spearheaded by Trump's VP pick Sen. JD Vance, claim Walz ducked a Guard deployment to Iraq and lied about his military record.

Walz, who has denied the allegations, has been dogged by such claims since he first ran for Congress and then governor of Minnesota. Despite the renewed attacks by Vance, himself a Marine Corps veteran, the facts around Walz' retirement before his unit deployed, the references to his Guard rank and his own description of his wartime service appear much less cut and dry.

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After serving in the National Guard for 24 years, Walz retired two months before his unit received official orders for a deployment to Iraq in 2005, though it's possible Walz could have known a deployment order was imminent because he was in a senior enlisted position.

At the time he retired, he was the command sergeant major of the Minnesota National Guard's 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery, the top enlisted rank for the formation.

It's unclear when Walz made the decision to retire, and the paperwork process for retiring often starts months beforehand. Guardsmen can retire after 20 years of service, but Walz has said he decided to reenlist rather than retire after 20 years because of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Guardsmen have to juggle civilian careers and, at the time of his retirement, Walz, who was a teacher before entering politics, was pursuing a run for Congress. Deployment rumors are frequently rampant, and were especially so during the peak of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Missions are also routinely canceled or rescheduled.

Guardsmen serve roughly 50 days per year on average, and that does not include missions or prolonged training events. Troops in senior roles, such as Walz, would be expected to put in much more time planning for training or operations.

Walz first filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission and announced that he was considering running for Congress in February 2005, according to the paperwork available on the commission's website and an archived statement from his campaign.

About a month later, in March 2005, Walz put out a statement saying the National Guard informed his unit that it could deploy to Iraq "within the next two years." Walz said in the statement that he still intended to run for Congress but that he also understood his "responsibility not only to ready my battalion for Iraq, but also to serve if called on."

In May 2005, at that time 41 years old, he officially retired from the National Guard, according to his military service records. His unit received official deployment orders in July 2005.

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In various biographies on campaign and government websites over the years, Walz has described himself as having deployed "in support of" Operation Enduring Freedom, the official name for the U.S. mission in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014. While the mission encompassed operations outside of Afghanistan, most of which did not put troops in harm's way, most of the public understands it as just Afghanistan operations.

Walz was part of a 2003 deployment to Italy, where his unit provided security at Air Force bases under the Operation Enduring Freedom banner. But Republicans charge that, by linking himself to Operation Enduring Freedom, he is implying he deployed to Afghanistan.

Walz himself took offense to that type of criticism when it was first leveled during his 2006 campaign for Congress. After a letter to the editor in a local paper criticized Walz for "strongly suggest[ing] that he fought in Iraq or Afghanistan," Walz wrote his own letter hitting back at the "ridiculous claim that I am misleading voters."

"If you were confused about my service, you could have checked my website, or simply had the decency to call and ask me," Walz wrote in the letter published in the Winona Daily News, a newspaper in his congressional district. "When you dishonor a veteran, you dishonor all soldiers and veterans. You owe an apology to all those who serve honorably."

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Walz enlisted into the Nebraska Army National Guard in 1981, at the height of the Cold War, as an infantryman, but later went into field artillery. At the time of his retirement, he was a command sergeant major, but because he did not complete the Sergeants Major Academy -- required schooling to hold onto the rank -- he was reverted to the rank of master sergeant when he retired.

References to Walz being a sergeant major have also generated criticism and political attacks.

The Harris campaign last week updated its online biography for Walz, which previously referred to him as a "retired command sergeant major." It now says he once served at that rank.

At a campaign rally last week, which served as Walz' coronation as her running mate, Harris referred to him as "sergeant major." Walz was also criticized for misrepresenting his rank during the 2018 Minnesota gubernatorial race, and was commonly referred to as "sergeant major" during his time in Congress.

JD Vance served in the U.S. Marine Corps as a combat correspondent

Ohio Sen. JD Vance served in the U.S. Marine Corps as a combat correspondent for nearly four years, according to a spokesperson for the Marines.

The Marine Corps spokesperson confirmed Vance’s dates of service as Sept. 22, 2003, to Sept. 21, 2007. Vance rose to the rank of corporal in September 2005, she said.

Vance enlisted in the Marine Corps after graduating from Middletown High School in Ohio in 2003, he said during a speech at a Heritage Foundation event in April 2023.

In an excerpt from his 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” that was published by Military.com, Vance identified himself as a “public affairs marine,” or a military journalist.

VERIFY found two military news articles published in 2005 and 2006 that were written by Cpl. James D. Hamel, the name he used to serve in the Marines.

When Vance was about 6, his mother, Beverly, married for the third time. He was adopted by his new stepfather, Robert Hamel, and his mother renamed him James David Hamel.

Vance spent more than two decades as James David “J.D.” Hamel, the Associated Press reported. In April 2013, as he was about to graduate from Yale, he opted to change his last name to that of his grandmother who raised him – Vance.

Vance was deployed to Iraq but didn’t experience combat

Vance spent six months in Iraq during his time with the Marines. His deployment began in August 2005 and ended in February 2006, the Marines spokesperson confirmed.

But Vance did not experience combat in Iraq, which he has emphasized on several occasions.

“I served in a combat zone. I never said that I saw a firefight myself, but I’ve always told the truth about my Marine Corps service,” Vance told reporters on Aug. 7, 2024, while defending his recent criticisms of Walz’s military record.

Though Vance didn’t see combat as a military journalist, he was “in a war zone in a particularly bad year in Iraq,” Quil Lawrence, a veterans correspondent for NPR, said in early August 2024.

Vance also wrote about his time in Iraq in “Hillbilly Elegy,” saying in part that he was “lucky to escape any real fighting.”

“As a public affairs marine, I would attach to different units to get a sense of their daily routine. Sometimes I’d escort civilian press, but generally I’d take photos or write short stories about individual marines or their work,” Vance wrote in his memoir. “Early in my deployment, I attached to a civil affairs unit to do community outreach. Civil affairs missions were typically considered more dangerous, as a small number of marines would venture into unprotected Iraqi territory to meet with locals.”

Cullen Tiernan, who served alongside Vance in Iraq as a fellow combat correspondent, also told The Independent that the role was not without danger.

“When we first landed, we got mortar and rockets from Baghdadi, the neighboring town. That was definitely a shock,” Tiernan told The Independent. “It’s odd to me that people would try to negate or put down what combat correspondents do. When you’re walking in patrol, or when you’re flying in a helicopter that goes into the sandstorm, or when you come upon an IED, and see people who have been blown up, you’re having the same exact experience. You just also have a camera and an obligation to document it.”