DA Form 638, How come by the time the award is approved it has another persons information under the recommender (usually an officer's)

If it goes through with the content intact and the proposed acknowledgement of a Soldiers accomplishments relatively unchanged is there truly a problem? 

Out of curiosity, have you asked?

Sometimes the culture of a unit is that in order to be recognized, you have to be recommended by a more senior Soldier. It isn't right, but I've seen it often enough that I don't think that mindset is all that rare.

I think that the point is that the Soldier in question ultimately receives the intended recognition. Don't you SSG (Join to see)?

If a major rewrite is involved or the recommender is out of pocket when a correction is required I fully understand a recommenders name being changed. It wasn't that long ago when actually hand written signatures were required thus causing a delay or undo hardship. Every unit has some quirks. As long as the Soldier that earned the honor is recognized that's most important. I certainly can understand your frustration.

I realize this is an old thread, but it came up as current. I can tell you one answer from an Ops NCO perspective.....

If you sign and submit an award and I find a quick and easy correction - say you accidentally put two periods at the end of a sentence - that I can fix for you, I am going to do that. But in order for me to make that correction, I have to unsign your award. If you are around, or if we have lots of time to get it done, no worries, I unsign, make all the corrections, and send it back down to you for signature. But if it is time sensitive, I may well toss my name, or the 1SGs or the XOs on there, because I can get it signed on the spot.

Also, if the Commander has already signed it and sent it up, and it comes back down for minor formatting BS, we will usually fix it and get it back up to BN with less than a 24 hr turnaround, and you will never even know it got kicked back by BN (unless it starts becoming problematic, and your Soldier is being delayed in their recognition). We do this as a service to you, not as a way to take credit from you. My job as an OPs NCO was to handle all of that crap so my PSGs had time to plan and execute training, teach and mentor Soldiers, and maintain good order and discipline. They had enough on their plate without having to worry about the new AAM template that BN released YESTERDAY - despite the fact that they had just released the "final" template 10 days ago.

I am not saying this is always the case, but it often was for my OPs rooms.

And at the end of the day, the important thing is that the Soldier gets recognized. Mission Accomplished.

It sounds like that officer is trying to make it look like they are trying to make themself look like they do more work than they actually do by placing their name in there and taking credit for recomending the award.  I agree that it doesn't matter as long as the Soldier gets the award for a job well done, but I think they gave you a crap excuse.  Anyone can recommend and Soldier for an award and your unit should work as such because it goes through the chain and they would sign off on it somewhere down the line anyway.

Usually it is because a change had to be made either grammatical or some type of format issue.  Instead of sending the award back, usually they will just delete the recommender's name and add their name so the change can be made right then and there and then signed and then the award can continue up the chain.