"Stolen valor" Topic

My web surfing brought me to several videos of people getting caught pretending to be veterans. Just curious if others have ever caught anyone? How could you tell?

I caught one a couple of years ago (I work in law enforcement). Dude was probably mentally ill – as he was falsely claiming to have gotten a dishonorable discharge.

He claimed to be a Marine "special forces" sniper.
Besides that obvious mistake, he couldn't:
name his first drill sergeant
Marine Corps birthday
what country he was in (he said sandbox)
his unit (only said Bravo Company)
What "Pig" & "Hog" meant

Anybody else?

I have come upon people making questionable claims, but nothing outlandish. Just people who say they served, but then what they follow up with doesn't add up. They weren't making crazy claims of being SEALS, SF, Recon, or anything like that. I can tell because I've got 14 years in the National Guard and have many, many friends who were/are active duty – SEALS, SF, Rangers, you name it, I know legitimate members of those groups. The biggest giveaway with a lot of the stolen valor issues are people wearing uniforms incorrectly, or wearing awards they couldn't possibly have gotten based on what they claim. Some of those stolen valor videos/pics are downright hilarious in terms of uniform. Oh, and anyone who says, "I could tell you what I did, but then I'd have to kill you," is most definitely full of crap. If you know what someone does, and you know they can't talk about it, you simply don't ask them. If you don't know, and they can't tell you, they simply say, I can't talk about it. A friend of mine was recruited by a suit ninja unit. We knew we couldn't ask him who he worked for, and we knew he couldn't tell us so it wasn't an issue. We simply didn't talk about it.

If they say they are a Vietnam veteran I will ask them – do you remember the local beer name during the conversation?. If they don't say "33 beer" real fast they have not been there in my book. This beer was just about the only local beer made in Vietnam and it was called Ba mui ba or 33 beer. Note: it was rumored to have been brewed using formaldehyde.

The balcony was very crowded, that is all.

Tally Ho!

It was getting that packed I had to burst through the window to get some room, 1st in the building and I was only 10!

I wish I was there time: A friend who is very knowledgeable on obscure militaria spotted a couple of definite frauds. On ANZAC Day (Oz equivalent of Veteran's Day – ish) veterans get free travel on public transport, discounted/free food and drink at a lot of places if they are wearing their decorations (medals not uniform).

One character was wearing a bunch of Franco-Prussian War medals and another (male) had a WW2 era German Motherhood medal for having children in his cluster.

Well,how old was the first guy?

This is not new. Anyone read Margery Allingham's Tiger in the Smoke? Post-WWII London. The boss of a gang of beggars and/or thieves is described as wearing a Crimean War medal.

That said, did once stop a game of one-upmanship by remarking (truthfully) that my first outfit had been flying F-86's. "What war was that, Sarge?"

Beer and formaldehyde. Can't speak for Vietnam, but Korean beer contained formaldehyde at least as late as the 1980's as a preservative. Let your beer alone for a moment, and you'd get a layer of it on top. There were three approaches: shake the beer to mix the formaldehyde back in, siphon it off with a straw and drink, or use the straw to drink the formaldehyde before proceeding to the beer proper.

There is a troll on another forum I frequent that claimed he was a 'Navy Seal' (sic). We finally broke him when we offered to invite some authentic Navy SEALs to the forum. He's since moved on to his (about now) 18th screen name (we figure he has even more 'sleeper' accounts on the site.)

How to identify a real Navy seal …

… it wasn't too long ago that the Navy still had seals in the Marine Mammal program (just sea lions and dolphins now).

link

377CSG,
stars and stripes did an analysis of the beers available and Phillipine San Miguel came out worst. Most formaldehyde and strong presence of rat feces! Ba Mui Ba did indeed have formaldehyde. Remember finding a bottle of 33export at a wine shop back around 80 or so. This one was made in France, but just as nasty as the original, which is now readily available at your local big box wine store. Your post made me still feel that ungodly aftertaste. But at the time, it didnt matter..it was wet, beer and could still get you drunk.
thanks for the post and bringing back some good memories.

Sam