New Yorker story on "American Sniper" Chris Kyle

It goes both ways. Some are good with talking and some are reticent about it. It also depends on the story.

My father was an Army Infantry company commander who went into Normandy two weeks after D-Day. He fought in the hedgerow country for about three weeks before he was wounded and evacced. He wound up with a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, a Crois de Guerre, and a Purple Heart. He seldom talked about it. Oh, he'd tell stories about funny stuff that happened in the barracks or in training, about guys he'd known and their personalities and incidents he remembered. He very seldom talked about combat.

I remember him talking about fighting in the hedgerows, saying that you could be on one side of a hedge in a little field and the Germans on the other and if both kept quiet neither would know it. The recipe if they made some noise and you had a feel for where they were was to throw a white phosphorus grenade, wait two or three beats, then throw two frags. The WP would get them up and moving and then the frags would get them. That sort of thing he might talk about.

Back in the early Seventies we had gone to a family reunion in South Georgia, not far from where Dad was born. We were sitting in a booth in a little restaurant having dinner and he got to talking about a guy in his unit who was from the town we were in. The story ended when he talked about the soldier's death, which was a bad death. He got torn up by a mortar shell and they lost him pretty much right then and there. The area where he fell was under enemy fire, there was no way they could get to him and then he was gone. A lady sitting in a booth behind us turned around and said "Pardon me, I couldn't help overhearing what you were saying. Were you talking about Bob Smith from here in Lyons?". Turns out she was his daughter. My father repeated the story and told her basically everything he could remember about him and his life in the unit.

It bothered the hell out of him afterward. We left and he was talking to himself about it. "I never would have opened my damn mouth if I'd had any idea!". We told him that there was no way he could have expected someone who knew him to be there. We said that her knowing what had happened to her father was good, that she would know what had actually happened other than that he was killed, but he wasn't having any of that. That was a very unusual story for him to tell in the first place, he never did that, and he got bitten. It made him even more closed mouthed about that kind of thing.

 

I guess,
Stolen Valor and inflated stories thoroughly piss me off. Dislcosure: I was fooled - and later helped expose - by one of the biggest, longest-running Stolen Valor stories in the country. So I am a little biased.
My great uncle was part of Merrill's Marauders in WWII. Another great uncle died three days after the Battle of the Bulge.
My dad's brother was part of Vietnam sniper unit. Dad said he was one of fistful of soldiers to survive a tour in that unit. He spent the remainder of the war as a general's driver, came home from the war with PTSD and hid in the bottom of the beer can for the next 40 years. He has never talked about the things he did or saw.
Dad still recalls his brother's first trip home (opening day of deer season). He comes back from the woods to find his brother under the bed because of the rifle shots. They took off for Florida the next day and stayed for a few weeks.

I have never been a Kyle fan. I absolutely respect what he did, but I think he was asshole with issues. I'm in Fart's camp.

 

The whole stolen valor thing doesn't bother me in the least. If some lying sack of shit wants to inflate what he or she has done, I don't look at it in the light that it diminishes the service of the folks with whom I've served. I know what I've done and "earned," (what does that really mean, anyway?) and know the same of the folks who were with me. I understand it bothers some people, and I respect that. But most of the folks who "steal valor," (however valor is stolen) are just people who have some mental disorder that makes them need others to like them. They're habitual liars or their elevator doesn't go all the way up, you know? You see these fucking facebook videos of some internet tough guy going after some fat guy wearing a uniform in the mall, and it makes me sick. Maybe I'm just apathetic, but the neanderthals who do that and post them to facebook are really similar in that they do that shit for attention.

 

The only time it really bothers me is when some politician is trying to trade on it for votes.

 

People do ... what now?

 

My late grandfather was a medic at D-Day, and one time 20 years ago or so he opened up about some of the stuff he had seen and done. About six years ago as he was months away from dying, I tried to get him to talk about it again so it could become part of our family history. He didn't.

 

tbf, there is something about the uniform that attracts those missing something upstairs. We've all read the "stolen valor" examples, especially since most of them don't a very good job telling a lie.

Also noticed a few servicemen play up the uniform. What comes to mind are those dressing up in full dress uniform to "guard" schools after a shooting spree elsewhere, or even more recently, I've seen Facebook posts where uniformed members of the military are taking selfies of them "guarding" women's restrooms to prevent transgendered people from using them.

 

Thankfully, I haven't seen that.

 

You're friends with Rainman on facebook?

 

I think it must be one of my in-laws liking his posts, which shows up in my feed.

 

Can we get back to this thing about fat people posting video of themselves sucker punching servicemen at malls?

Is that, like, a thing?

 

Yeah, I've seen a few of these. No punching that I've seen. "Going after" in that they confront the guy wearing the uniform. They're skeptical that he's a real soldier. Guy in uni is maybe just walking around getting discounts at stores or Starbucks or maybe trying to raise money and someone -- often a real veteran in civvies or just a normal person -- confronts the person, demands to know where they served, etc. It's filmed, the fake guy in uni tries running out (and yes they're sometimes overweight so run slowly) or blabbers nonsensically and the person filming or the person chasing takes a stand for America.