From the Soldiers (and Cop) side, but
mostly Soldier: If you are or were in
the military for any period of time, (and less often in cop work) you may have
run into or know a person like this guy.
When ever you started talking about stuff you did, he could always top
you. In some cases, you learned to tell
when that person was making stuff up. As
I got older and more experienced, I learned to try and laugh and some of these
knuckelheads…and in some cases, they never knew we were on to their Bull
Twinkies story.
I had one such goof in my team just before
we did our Bosnia deployment….he had been in the US Navy on active duty some
years before. He told us that he’d been
a corpsmen (in the Army, we called them Combat Medics) in the Navy. Well, I had a lot of respect for “Docs” as we
called all medics/corpsmen, for even in “normal” military training, they often
kept us going when we got hurt. In war,
they were even more important and a person we always tried to take care
of.
Anyway….they former Navy guy started to
tell me he’d been a Cropsmen in the Navy SEALS.
Opps…that set off the BS meter into the RED
zone. The reason I doubted him
was because I’d seen him during training….he couldn’t shoot very well, his PT
scores sucked and his first aid skills were lacking (I used to be an EMT many
years ago). So I asked him: “if you were a SEAL, how come you don’t wear
the SEAL Trident thingy on your BDUs?
(that was in the days we wore BDUs.)
He said: “Well, I lost the Trident” But his story kept changing. So, I finally told him to stop telling
stories about being a SEAL, unless he could prove it. He never could, so he changed National Guard units…
to avoid people like me I guess.
One of our soldiers who went with us to
Bosnia and Iraq came up with an expression for these folks….”I bet you were the
door gunner on the space shuttle to.”
In police work, there used to be a lot
more cops like this guy…but they seemed to have all retired or ….
5 comments:
Great post! I, too, have seen a lot of bullshit in this job. Those that talk about what they haven't done are very disrespectful to the true soldiers.
LOL, yep they exist in EVERY profession... sigh... Although I DID serve with a navy E-4 that had a DFC among other decorations from his time as an Army WO helo pilot in Nam... :-) He was RIFFED back in 72 or 73 when the Army did all their drawdowns, and I saw his DD-214 and made sure it was incorporated into his training jacket just to stop the BS...
MF, yep, and in police work, most of those types get promoted to Cpt or higher.
OLDNFO, I found that usually those who did really good things didn't talk about it much. For a very short time I had a team leader who was prior Army Special Forces. He'd done a lot of shit, but never talked about it...one day, while we were waiting on a training site, I asked him about stuff, and he still didn't say much.
I have met many people who do that. I like putting them in there place and asking questions they just can't answer. Thanks for the blog.
I've heard 'em too. "I was with the 153rd Marines in Damn Lie..."
Sad...
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