Major Fraud - king of all military impostors

Holy cow ... I had thought that I had seen some blatant cases of fiction by various individuals ... but ... this bigmouth has the entire encyclopedia of impostors beat hands down.
 
You can see these guys by the hundreds at The Wall in DC. They usually wear some sort of fatigues like a field jacket and a baseball cap with names of battles in Vietnam, almost never the name of a specific outfit that fought there. They are usually wearing a pair of sunglasses and sporting a scruffy beard and/or mustache and, with their head bowed and shaking it back and forth.
 
Missileer said:
You can see these guys by the hundreds at The Wall in DC. They usually wear some sort of fatigues like a field jacket and a baseball cap with names of battles in Vietnam, almost never the name of a specific outfit that fought there. They are usually wearing a pair of sunglasses and sporting a scruffy beard and/or mustache and, with their head bowed and shaking it back and forth.
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Thats actually funny...

I was at the wall just two weekends ago, and I saw the guys to whom you refer. I didn't know who they were until you mentioned it, (I must admit I assumed they were vets), but your description was dead-on.
 
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mmarsh said:
Thats actually funny...

I was at the wall just two weekends ago, and I saw the guys to whom you refer. I didn't know who they were until you mentioned it, (I must admit I assumed they were vets), but your description was dead-on.
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You'll know when someone is grieving deep down. There's a quiet, thoughtful stare at a particular name, pretty much the way people stand at a graveside. Some of the guys have been gone for 46 years. Girlfriends and fiances have different lives now. The Wives are in their 50's and 60's, the men and women who are in their 30's and 40's were babies and young kids when Dad went to war. Their kids can't grasp the fact that the etching is Grandpa. Even the buddies that are left don't go very often if at all any more. Mostly, it's tourists just visiting another monument. So the wannabes are easy to spot.
 
A quiet and not quite serene thoughtfulness ...

Missileer said:
You'll know when someone is grieving deep down. There's a quiet, thoughtful stare at a particular name, pretty much the way people stand at a graveside. Some of the guys have been gone for 46 years. Girlfriends and fiances have different lives now. The Wives are in their 50's and 60's, the men and women who are in their 30's and 40's were babies and young kids when Dad went to war. Their kids can't grasp the fact that the etching is Grandpa. Even the buddies that are left don't go very often if at all any more. Mostly, it's tourists just visiting another monument. So the wannabes are easy to spot.
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Another way to separate the wannabes from the real vets (along with a quiet and not quite serene thoughtfulness and the thousand mile stare), in many cases, are the tears that well up in their eyes as they contemplate their own survival when so many of their friends died ... it is a universal feeling that many many veterans suffer from ... I know that my nightmares had their roots in this guilty feeling. My visit to the wall was quite traumatic ... however ... it allowed me to bring these guilt feelings forward so that I could finally deal with them (when it is your time, it's your time ... it is beyond your control). My nightmares are a now thing of the past.

There was one thing that the wall DID NOT resolve ... it was my anger that a nation broke faith with all of the men and women that answered this nations call to fight and die for a cause that 80-85% of all Americans were opposed to and a cause that resulted in almost all of the politicians turning their backs on returning veterans (even today, politicians only pay lip service to programs that so many Vietnam veterans still need) .... the feelings when I returned from Vietnam piled one on top of another (the spitting at a soldier in uniform, the daily riots and news stories ... my 'supposed' friends that castigated me for serving ... President Ford's amnesty for draft dodgers), all of these things fueled my anger and the years (more than 30 of them), have NOT completely erased that anger from my soul ... I don't believe I will ever lose all of the anger. Hanoi Jane never better get withing reach of me ... she is just a manifestation of the anger that is still just below the surface awaiting an outlet.

I sometimes feel like I am an exception ... but ... I know that thousands of others have the same (or) worse feelings than I do ... Vietnam was a war that will be in our memories (and nightmares), as long as there is still just one Vietnam veteran living ... but isn't that true of ALL wars???
 
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Why do people do this? Are they looking to get money and favors? Are they so alone that they need to feel respected for things they did not do? I really don't understand why anyone would do this.
 
ghost457 said:
Why do people do this? Are they looking to get money and favors? Are they so alone that they need to feel respected for things they did not do? I really don't understand why anyone would do this.
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Shrinks have wondered the same thing for years. A lot of these people are popular Judges and Politicians who don't know why they do it themselves. Why not just show up with a support the troops pin or a flag pin? No, they wear medals that belong to the boys who died face down in the rice paddies. I think it's a sickness.
 
There was a big write-up in the Marine Times about some fraud cases. There is a department in the US Government that deals with such things. Unfortunately there are web sites out there that will help a person manufacture documents and send medals for a hefty fee.

I think the reason people do it is for the sense of immediate respect some people give them. Especially if they are not a "big" person in their own right.
 
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