Report Fake "War Heroes"

The one incident that sticks out in my mind happened in a club in Columbus, Georgia.

Columbus is located right down the road from Fort Benning, Georgia, home of the Infantry School. It's a beautiful city, but has one street called Victory-Something-or-Other that should be avoided at all costs.

Short story

• I was attending a training course at Benning with a guy from my unit (Vilseck, Germany, infantry battalion) and we were visiting the aforementioned club on a night off.
• We had arrived in Georgia following back-to-back maneuver and gunnery exercises in Hohenfels and Grafenwoehr, Germany, respectively - not sure how many weeks the two field problems lasted - but the course we were attending was another couple of months and our faces were still wind-burned from the gunnery ranges at Graf (just another day for military folk, aye).
• We were sitting in a booth in the club - and a guy with relatively short hair stopped to strike up a conversation. For reasons unknown, he stated he was a “Special Forces soldier,” and something else – the gist of which I forget.
• My buddy and I looked at each other and laughed. Loud. We couldn't help it. I've always had somewhat of a baby face, so the guy may have thought I was a gullible private (I was a senior noncom at the time).
• That was it. The guy walked away.

Later, I felt badly for the guy because he could have been for real and we may have hurt his feelings (not likely, but possible). I mean, we were just a couple of simple grunts.

More likely, though, he was yet another guy who knew some military lingo - and was trying to impress people with his fake military background (he was a poser). Why he would do that in a club a few miles away from the U.S. Army Infantry School, I have no idea (if you read the various phony military stories, stranger things have happened).

Since then, I’ve encountered other people whose military stories did not sound authentic. Unless someone appears in uniform - or some sort of documentation is presented - it's kind of hard to tell if someone is for real. Thus, I am never accusatory when discussing someone's military background.

On the other hand, if you have been there and done that - if you have served in a military service - it is a unique experience - and having a conversation with someone who served is usually a breeze. Not always, there are inter-service rivalries - but politics aside, I've had many service- / branch-irrelevant conversations with other military folk, firemen, and police officers. I once bonded quite well with a police officer in the Dominican Republic - a country that does not have an Army, per se - just a police force that doubles as a military force, for example.

It is your civic duty.

Pure civilians are often fooled by posers who fake a military background or combat experience from having read war stories in books, or from rubbing elbows with veterans.

If you run into someone who does not seem to be what he or she states - here’s how you file a report:

• The best site I've seen to date is Stolen Valor. The site centers on the book with the same name, and a forthcoming television show. Here’s the Report a Fake page from the site. Keep in mind that at present it is still a federal offense to fake military service (the American court system is doing battle over phonies and their right to free speech, of all things; which is why I wrote this Hub). Which means that you may have to provide documentation and you may have to take the witness stand. Review the Stolen Valor site to read stories about true military heroes, if you like, to assist you with your decision on whether something like this is important enough to raise your right hand and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
• Alternately, here’s another site - Report Stolen Valor - with a number of variations on reporting fakers to civilian and U.S. military law enforcement agencies (some of these guys and gals are serving on active duty when they present themselves as something they are not).
• And here’s the Military Times newspaper Hall of Valor site - where you can type in someone's name to check on a particular award - or even mail in your own documentation to be added to the site’s database (if you served honorably in a U.S. military service).

There is much information available in libraries and on the web concerning regular people who served in uniform or deployed into combat zones. Most people who receive the Medal of Honor receive it posthumously - so if someone states that they are a recipient of this particular medal - and they are relatively young - there are only three people alive today who are authorized to wear the medal: Their names are Salvatore Giunta, Sgt. 1st Class Leroy Arthur Petry, and Dakota L. Meyer (anyone else has a question mark stamped squarely on their forehead.)

Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith, for example.

Sgt. 1st Class Smith died in a hail of enemy gunfire in 2003 while manning a .50 caliber machine in the turret of an armored personnel carrier - and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

• He was also a dedicated professional who cared about the soldiers assigned to his unit - stating on a number of occasions that he felt it was his duty to bring home safely the people entrusted to his supervision.
• He spent countless hours on gunnery ranges learning to set the head-space and timing, maintain, and competently man-handle the .50 caliber heavy machine gun that, when fired, is similar to wrestling a jack hammer. This type of machine gun is a great example of why soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen spend a considerable amount of time working on upper body strength and jogging when they are in garrison - because it requires muscle, stamina, experience, and learned skill to press the butterfly trigger and keep it pointed down range - much less provide accurate suppressive fire in the direction of enemy soldiers who are also firing directly at you.

War stories.

The next time you run into someone in a bar telling war stories, by all means, listen to what they have to say - because they could be someone who served honorably.

The portion of their story that you should pay particular attention to is the age old question of: Who benefits?

If the person is just regaling people with wild and crazy things that happened way back when, they're probably on the up and up. All of my stories seem to bore people to tears: "Arabian stallions with golden blankets galloping out of sandstorms - just as the sandstorm abates - then disappearing again - just as the sandstorm picks up again. Camels kicking in anger at Bradley Fighting Vehicles. Ghostly figures in formation advancing toward a tri-column of armored vehicles that stretches a hundred or so miles through the Iraqi desert - observed through a thermal gun sight in the dead of night. Saint Elmo's Fire hovering from every piece of metal protruding from a Bradley Fighting Vehicle during a refueling operation in the middle of a sandstorm."

See. All boring.

If there is an angle to a person's story in which they are asking to receive something based on their war stories ...

• Education benefits.
• Veteran's Administration benefits.
• Teaching jobs.
• Speaking engagements (for money).
• Career advancement.
• Jobs in general.

... that's when bells and whistles should be going off in your head. If they are asking for something in return for their stories - and they are on the up-and-up - they will have proper documentation and will be using proper channels to make their request.

The great thing about these types of phonies is that when they finally get caught - they've usually documented evidence for their own trial with a trail of forged documents.