Stolen valor. Annoying, but also amusing.

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  • Sigblaster

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    From time time to time, I like like to check in on the sites that bust the posers. As much as these dirtbags **** me off, it's so gratifying to see them get called out and exposed. I've been browsing through some stuff for the past couple evenings, and I'm just amazed by the lies people tell. Just incredible fabrications that I can't understand how people believe, even without having served. And the way their friends and families buy into their BS. It's crazy.

    Some of them have actually served in ways that they should be proud of, but they end up embellishing their careers in ways that are easily disputed, and with claims that are so outrageous that it stuns me to think that people believe their tales.

    I was Army for 22 years, and it was a pretty vanilla career. GI, 1 each, OD green. Interchangeable with so many others. But I still have some great stories to tell, that don't involve heroic acts of valor. I also have some great stories to tell about my life before and after the Army, and they're just as entertaining. Everyone I know has great life stories they tell that don't involve the military.

    I guess the thing that I really can't relate to is that they don't just tell lies, they tell lies that are so egregious, that it defies common sense that anyone would believe them. I know that it's probably a mental illness that causes this, but it doesn't help me understand it any better.

    It's like the TV show Hoarders. Your property is nasty, clean it up! Can't you see that? Then my wife tries to explain that it's a mental dysfunction, not a logical one, but it doesn't irritate me any less knowing that.
     

    BigRed

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    So here is an item I have wondered about from time to time......

    I have from time to time purchased milsurp BDU clothing. Price is good. Great for hunting. Durable for work tasks too.

    Is this construed as "stolen valor"?
     

    jsx1043

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    So here is an item I have wondered about from time to time......

    I have from time to time purchased milsurp BDU clothing. Price is good. Great for hunting. Durable for work tasks too.

    Is this construed as "stolen valor"?
    Not having served myself, I would say “no,” with the caveat being that you don’t buy a whole uniform and purport yourself to be that person with that rank or similar. Most surplus shops sell the BDU clothing without insignia or nametapes anymore anyway.

    Besides, wearing an old God’s plaid (M81 woodland) top with jeans or carhartt’s is just a level of pimptasticness that’s hard to beat.
     

    Expat

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    I watched a few videos where you could tell the guy had a serious mental illness. Sort of took the fun out of it.
     

    Nazgul

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    Near the big river.
    It's the quiet ones who have been there and done that.

    No valor-stealer ever started a story, "I was on an open fork lift when a thunder storm came rolling in..."
    One of my favorite memories while in the Marines was my Mom's neighbor. Small slight old man, very pleasant demeanor. Was home on leave and Mom backed into his car and broke the taillight lense. I picked one up and changed it while talking to the neighbor. Six months later I get a letter from home and it has his obituary in it. Whole page about his service in WW2. Several medals, and purple hearts. He was a real bad dude. Quiet and humble in his life.

    I cruise the stolen valor sights as well. Some are funny, others disturbing.

    Don
     

    KellyinAvon

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    One of my favorite memories while in the Marines was my Mom's neighbor. Small slight old man, very pleasant demeanor. Was home on leave and Mom backed into his car and broke the taillight lense. I picked one up and changed it while talking to the neighbor. Six months later I get a letter from home and it has his obituary in it. Whole page about his service in WW2. Several medals, and purple hearts. He was a real bad dude. Quiet and humble in his life.

    I cruise the stolen valor sights as well. Some are funny, others disturbing.

    Don
    The obituary is often where you find out about some real warriors from back in the day. A few miles down the road from where I grew up lived a retired Army Colonel. His obituary had the rest of the story. He joined the Army in 1943, received a battlefield commission from General Patton after the Battle of the Bulge. He was a Ranger and one of his last assignments was as a Battalion Commander in Vietnam.
     

    funeralweb

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    The obituary is often where you find out about some real warriors from back in the day. A few miles down the road from where I grew up lived a retired Army Colonel. His obituary had the rest of the story. He joined the Army in 1943, received a battlefield commission from General Patton after the Battle of the Bulge. He was a Ranger and one of his last assignments was as a Battalion Commander in Vietnam.
    I've been reading DD-214s and writing obits about their owners since the 1980s.

    Most recently, I handled a 95-year-old (gentle)man (lived a block away from my biz) who I only ever knew as the nice, quiet guy who once owned filling $tation$ and kept a 1960s Jag that needed restoration hidden inn his garage. Turns out he fought his way through the European Theatre from post-Normandy (Rhineland/Ardennes/Central Europe) until the end of the war. His end of the war included liberating a concentration camp in Austria. His kids discovered some mementos of his that detailed a part of his life he never spoke about to them while he was alive, including HIS Dad's discharge that documented his being wounded at Meuse-Argonne in WWI.
    Another old friend lived 62 quiet years in peace after serving as a crew chief aboard a B-26 Marauder, which was called the "Widow Maker" as much for its crappy landing characteristics post-mission if the crew was lucky enough to survive the low-level bombing missions it was used for. He was documented with the "Air Medal w/12 OLC", meaning he had 13 Air Medals. I would have loved to have asked Bob if having 13 Air Medals made his fellow aviators feel safer having him on board or did they feel like his luck was about to run out?
    The WWII veteran who died last year who served in both the European and Pacific Theatres during WWII was the first and probably person I knew (or ever heard of for that matter) to have fought on both ends of the war.
    The retired decorated Sergeant Major a couple of miles north of town who served in WWII, Korea AND Vietnam.
    The quiet decorated Korean War Marine (whose unassuming children I grew up with) who landed at Inchon and went on to survive the Chosin Reservoir.
    The decorated Vietnam War Marine who survived 2 combat tours in Vietnam that I buried next to his brother, who came home from there under our flag in 1968.
    I could go on....

    I was a REMF.
     

    Colt556

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    Nope. Military has no "culture" unless you count the STD'S.
    I think there is a definite and distinct military culture, maybe not for the people that join and do their 4 years but the people that make a career out of it have a cultural of their own. The Enlisted vs the Officers, the wives and kids and the civilians that support the bases all play their roles. I did my time back in the 70’s but my nephew did 20 years and retired as an E8 and it is a completely different world. He’s been out several years now and his troops still keep in touch. I wish I would’ve stayed in but in the Mid 70’s the military was looked at in a completely different light and I wanted out! I will always respect and support our military, that is as long as they follow the Constitution and not become an enforcement arm of the Left. Not arguing, just voicing my opinion.
     

    1nderbeard

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    I have a buddy who was/is in the reserves and/or guard service. I have no doubt he's been overseas several times, and may have even seen some action. But he obviously has serious problems with the truth. At first I believed the incredible (an amalgamation of all the modern war movies since 2000) stories. But at one point he went so far as to show me the video released of the rescue of Jessica Lynch and told me one of the guys was him. I didn't want to be rude and laugh at him, but it clearly wasn't him. After that incident, I had a hard time believing anything he told me.

    The really sad part is, I think he actually believes it. I don't know if I'd call it stolen valor; he's been in the military since prior to 9/11. He's never tried to embellish his ranking, but he's definitely played himself up to be a Rambo-esque solider.
     
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