does not seem to be accurate and my review of the census doesnt bear this out. That came from everybody. REALITY: He was a Marine football player in Okinawa. Burkett candidly admits he's not a writer. He apparently fabricated documents claiming hed been awarded the Medal of Honor during his Vietnam War service. 04 Both South Vietnam and the United States of America committed nearly 5 million troops into war. But mistakes have been made. He had seen the occasional stories about Yandle and, unlike others looking into the saga, he had obtained copies of Yandle's military records from the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. I know that there are many Last year, he said, 12 Princeton seniors went into the service. Members of chapter 239 of the Vietnam Veterans of America rushed to his aid. Marshal Hanson (and apparently quoted by every vet site as complete gospel), he provides the U.S. Census as the source, just like everybody else:www.veteranstoday.com/2009/02/26/vietnam-facts-vs-fiction/ Interesting CENSUS STATS and Been There Wanabees: a. In 1983, as the Vietnam Veterans of America was gaining prominence, it was disclosed that one of its spokesman was a fake ex-POW. Slessler said many of the imposters he sees suffer from 'survivor guilt.' And there he was, my false ranger, holding his shadow box of medals as he repeated his fake story. REALITY: Yandle did serve in the Marine Corps but never received combat medals and was never in Vietnam. A long time ago, I had at least one case of a World War I guy, claiming a Medal of Honor that hed received.. "I'd say, 'Well, I'm a Vietnam veteran,' and they'd say, 'but you seem so normal.' Nor was his name actually Daubmann; it was Karl Hummel, and hed taken his new name from a passport retrieved from an old uniform hed bought. On the US Census web site www.census.gov/prod/cen1990/cp2/cp-2-1.pdf on page 45 there is a chart that lists veterans and which era they served in. what was claimed in that article is false but there was no warning about the By this census, FOUR On this Memorial Day 2021, VA honors their service and recommits itself to . REAL Vietnam War veterans are all those who are officially authorized the Vietnam Service medal and possess official military-issued documentation to confirm their medal authorization. He deployed to Iraq, near Fallujah, in 2009. I would expect that number to apply to everything, including number of claimed Vietnam vets or Roswell witnesses. Poor or nonexistent record keeping makes such fakery difficult to track much further back in history. I wondered if some of this didnt come from the Department of I said that this provided an insight into those who claimed inside knowledge of Roswell. this seems to be correct, I cant find anything in the census figures to He said that 90% of the Vietnam Veterans never saw combat but that is probably based on the idea that for every service member in combat there were nine supporting him. The second you tell people that you are a veteran, they look at you differently. But since you want to continue, here we goYou wrote, Further, if you bothered to read Beatons statistics, as at this webite below, said to be written by Beaton and Cpt. Yandle apologized publicly and was returned to prison. He was driven out of the group. State Vietnam Veterans Vietnam Veterans (per 100k) Utah 42,774 1,272 How [] I then told him what Id learned and asked, Did you lie to me?, In a voice that suddenly sounded creaky and 10 years older yet sort of childlike, as though fearing a reprimand he replied, slowly, Yes.. According to research by historian William Marvel, published in a 1991 issue of Blue and Gray, Williams would have been too young to have served in the war. Thats eight individuals in the Seattle area, in one bust, said Doug Sterner, a longtime private watchdog who now maintains the Military Times newspapers Hall of Valor database. Now, with this book, we have the evidence.". claiming Vietnam service who were not there and that there are many claiming According to federal law, the United States' military involvement in the Vietnam War began in February 1961 and lasted until May 1975. I was a Army platoon leader. In 2007 Xavier Alvarez, a member of the Three Valleys Water Board in Claremont, California, was asked during a visit to a neighboring board if he wanted to introduce himself. In 2007 the project listed 49 Medal of Honor recipients on its Web site. awards and decorations they did not earn. After the show aired, several Iraq veterans wrote to the Guardian of Valor. He eventually amended his senate claiming Vietnam service and have been exposed as frauds. The figures for those who served in the Vietnam era were During the war, more than 58,000 servicemen and women lost their lives. I myself have met over a hundred "Navy Seals". How many fake Vietnam veterans are there? Robert Bateman, who teaches military history at West Point. This is described as , Statistical Abstract of the United States. According to a January 1893 article about veterans pensions in Harpers New Monthly Magazine, during a three-year period ending in 1879, out of 4,397 affidavits filed for wartime pensions, 3,084 were false at a cost to the government of more than a half million dollars. $174k/yr for a new Daytona in a month. And 97 percent of Vietnam veterans received honorable discharges, exactly the same rate for the military in the peaceful 10 years prior to the war. As were 45 claiming to have been prisoners of war. Without and reports. I am an in-country Vietnam vet. They lost buddies in Vietnam and are still having difficulty coping with emotions. I don't need to pretend to be some super secret squirrel sniper badass force recon dude. aircraft into Vietnam had a financial incentive.) Vets, which claimed that 90% never saw combat and most were anti-war. For the past three years, Burkett has worked behind the scenes with the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of the Inspector General on Operation Stolen Valor, aimed at uncovering people in the Pacific Northwest whove fabricated military service in order to obtain VA benefits. When I started noticing all the Vietnam Veteran hats I was perplexed. 568 & 569 can be found some statistics on the number of soldiers serving in Vietnam year by year and total number of active duty personnel during the Vietnam era, just as found in other statistical surveys published by the Census Bureau. Starting on page 12 of this pdf in parts No. And you think, Oh, no ones ever going to catch me. The point is the magazine has a political agenda. count, the number of Americans falsely claiming to have served in-country was: I did not look at those sites that required registration, a fee or So he found, in his own backyard, Glenna Whitley, a veteran journalist and senior editor at D, a monthly magazine about Dallas and Fort Worth. By Elizabeth Becker . How many times do these real FACTS have to be repeated?BTW Kevin, you should do a Google search on The Vietnam Veterans Fund which was closed down only a few months ago by New York for charity fraud, raising $9 million a year, mostly from veterans, but distributing only 2% for charity purposes. Im a retired Marine of 25 years, Alvarez told the attendees. Farmer, 26, appeared on Fox's "American Idol" in 2013, claiming he was severely injured by an IED explosion in Iraq. So now I had a purpose and a system and I decided I was going to create a book, so I started researching the gaps.". They are NOT to be used for official government findings (I will note that this is also a politically driven Still, Yandle and veterans groups convinced the Globe and, later, Mike Wallace of the CBS News program "60 Minutes" and then-Massachusetts Gov. I did (it) when I was young and stupid - to impress people.". In truth, though, he only was a tail gunner in training. How Many Vietnam War Veterans Are Still Alive? Maybe creating phony statistics on nonexistent vet imposters was designed to get vets understandably angry so they would send their hard-earned money to scam vet charities like the VVF. But the real truth is that nearly everyone was exposed to indirect fire, ground attacks at base camps, and other elements of combat based on the nature of the war. 'I have always attempted to be the best at whatever I undertook, but in this instance, I guess I felt what I actually did was not enough, so I pretended to be something I wasn't,' Switzler said. One said he was a doorgunner on a helicopter but didn't know the basic nomenclature, didn't seem to understand the tactics and was a little vague on the units to which he had been assigned. In short order, photographer Ken Lyons and I were sitting in the fellows sun-splashed back yard. The efforts of latter-day watch-dogs such as Sterner, Burkett, the Schantags, fake Navy SEALcatcher Steve Robinson and others have given military fakery the appearance of being a modern phenomenon, particularly during the Vietnam era. what I think happened. The universal attitude was, 'Why should we give money for these bums?' The work led to 48. 02 Up to 2 million civilians died in the war. VA facilities and vet groups check perspective patients and members to determine if they are who they claim to be. Researching the book made her spend time, she said, "with the real citations -- learning about a man who received the Distinguished Service Cross at the cost of his life, and finding out that some phony had modeled his citation on that one. The share of veterans ages 50 to 69 is expected to shrink from 36% to 33%, while the share of those 70 and older is predicted to . 'It's some sort of marginal, internal footnote to the Vietnam experience,' said Dr. Arthur Blank, director of the VA's Vietnam Vet Center program, which operates 188 counseling clinics nationwide. Projections also indicate that the veteran population will become slightly younger, with 33% of veterans being younger than 50 in 2046 compared with 27% in 2021, even as the overall U.S. population continues to age. They shouldn't bother. I never saw it, but returning friends told me about it.All this to say, for me, its weird. Defense, but havent verified it there either. Very rare and usually done by people looking for high profile jobs. The Blue Jays fired him in March. In 1997 Wes S. Cooley, a sitting first-term eastern Oregon congressman, was convicted on charges hed lied about his military service in official state voter guides. I think you can find fakers very far back, said Bella DePaulo, a visiting professor of social psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who studies the communication of deception. More than a few 20th century men tried to pass themselves off as the last surviving veterans of the Civil War. The Times Herald reported that Williams was a Vietnam veteran; one of the paper's columnists wondered whether "Vietnam did that to him." On a whim, Burkett filed a Freedom of Information Act. Im not sure why this has become such an issue here but I 'I owe an apology to those who served in Vietnam,' he said. Smith calls the phenomenon the 'Tail-Gunner Joe Syndrome,' named for Joe McCarthy, the former flag-waving senator from Wisconsin who tried to rid America of communists in the 1950s. 'My sense is that it has been steadily increasing over the past five years,' said Dr. Greg Andersen, assistant director of the VA hospital in Menlo, Park, Calif. 'They generally fall into two categories: Those who want to enhance the image of themselves, and those trying to prey off the public.'. The census figures do confirm the 8.5 million number. identified about 1.7 million Vietnam Veterans still alive at the time of the 'It was out of the high esteem that I hold for you that I took your honor as my own and in doing so did you a grave injustice.'. U.S. Vietnam veterans have a lower unemployment rate than the same non-vet age groups. In 1995, Burkett helped an Oregon newspaper uncover Republican U.S. Rep. Wes Cooley's false claims of Army service in the Korean War. I personally believe there are as many American males claiming military service falsely as there are living veterans in America, said B.G. But at the dedication ceremony, despite the hundreds of "normal-looking" vets in the audience -- suits, jackets, neckties on some -- the television news teams immediately gravitated toward "the guys in fatigues and boony hats, the bearded bums. Approximately 2.7 million American men and women served in Vietnam. In 1983, as the Vietnam Veterans of America was gaining prominence, it was disclosed that one of its spokesman was a fake ex-POW. The result is that for more than 25 years, many Americans have thought of Viet vets as jobless, homeless, addicted, suicidal or deranged "victim-heroes.". actually in Vietnam and that about 8.5 million served during the Vietnam era. Probably wouldn't sell more than 2,000.". (The ONLY question EVER asked by the Census, NOT if they were actually serving in Vietnam.) The United States Vietnam War Commemoration is hosting a "welcome home" event in Washington DC. 'You can normally tell who is a phony. That launched the financial planner into a new career. Now, extrapolate that across the nation, and imagine the millions of dollars that this runs into.. Retired Thats not true. We don't have ads, so we depend on our members 35,000 and counting to help us hold the powerful to account. I 'Some claim to be vets just out of a need to be macho.'. Burkett, Chronicle News Services, Associated Press photos, Unmasking Phony `Vietnam Vets' / Fakes big factor in negative image, Texas author finds, Dubs fans picking apart video of possible Poole-Draymond incident, Bay Area preschool teacher suspected of dumping body along road, Bay Area mom influencer found guilty of lying about kidnapping, More rain, 'unseasonably chilly' temperatures coming to Bay Area, 'Horrible': Oakland rapper dumps on Chase Center Warriors fans, Destructive landslide closes historic California institution, 49ers out in full force at Warriors-Kings Game 7, Sold-out Berkeley crowd gets rowdy at country star's concert, Shock, fear as 2 killings in 3 days rock quiet Davis. "It all started when I was shooting my mouth off in bars 35 years ago . Burkett verified that the movie tough guy was indeed a former Marine but had been discharged in 1963, before any Marines were sent to Vietnam. Aren't those the guys who lost the war?' And Shipley's estimate of 1000 times the true number is also made up and worthless, not based on anything other than Shipley wanting to believe there is some sort of Navy Seal imposter epidemic.Just as a basic gut check that these huge numbers are preposterous, how many people have any of us run into bragging about being Navy Seals or in Vietnam? His was the classic story, embraced and portrayed by the media in endless permutations until it became the stuff of legend. They werent. 1991: Established that, in Vietnam Veterans, there does not appear to be a causal relation between homelessness and military service, including exposure to combat; . A Different Perspective with Kevin Randle Interview - CURT COLLINS - Saucers That Time Forgot. Strewn about the floor, piled crazily on a chair, slopping over the edge of a credenza, teetering on top of his desk are stacks and stacks of file folders containing Xeroxed personnel records from the Vietnam War and tattered news clippings. however, that the information is not drawn from the 1990 census and might be related to one that Robert Sorensen ended his re-election campaign as a state representative in Connecticut in 1982 when it was disclosed that he lied in a floor debate when he said he was a Vietnam vet.
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