In September 2021, I wrote about the liars, the guys who exaggerate or completely fabricate the story of their military service. Last week, I encountered a liar who might not have broken stolen valor laws but whose pathetic lies were no less annoying.
After receiving great news about my Afghan friend and Enduring Freedom co-author Jawad Arash (about which, more, in a future column), I decided to celebrate with a couple of rounds at my local bar, where the owner, Mike, keeps my favorite beer, the British import Boddingtons, waiting for me.
“That’s amazing,” Mike said, hearing about my friend and bringing the beer.
“What war did you serve in?” asked Ricky, an out-of-towner sitting at the other end of the bar.
“Afghanistan.”
“I was a Marine in Afghanistan,” Ricky said.
I’m a trusting man. I was excited to meet a fellow veteran. “Where were you in Afghanistan?”
Fear clouded Ricky’s expression. “Um, I don’t…I can’t pronounce the name.”
If I’d been as miserable that day as I’ve so often been since President Joe Biden’s botched, rushed, and unnecessary pullout from Afghanistan unleashed so much suffering, betraying the mission of hundreds of thousands of good soldiers and Afghan allies, I would have called him a liar right then. The names of Afghan cities are not hard to pronounce, and someone serving there learns the pronunciations for his own area of operations immediately. But, it was a good day.
Still, real soldiers hate fake ones. I texted my Army team leader and best friend from my time in Afghanistan, Sgt. Mark Perkins.
“HA! Remember how after a year serving in Afghanistan, we still couldn’t pronounce the name of our city?” Perkins texted. “Ask his MOS.”
“Infantry,” Ricky said.
Perkins served four years in the Marines in the ’90s. “BAW HA HA! Marine infantry is divided into sections. 0311 Rifleman. I think 0331 is Machine Gunner. Ask this clown, ’03 what?’ He won’t know.”
I feigned respect for Ricky. “Infantry, huh? So like oh three…”
“What?” Ricky was clueless.
“What part of the infantry? Oh three…”
“We were supporting the snipers,” Ricky said.
There it was. I’ve encountered far too many men who claim to have served with Marine Corps snipers or recon or sniper recon, the latter of which doesn’t exist. The real Marine snipers and recon guys must be all-American badasses. Theirs is the liar’s MOS of choice. Ricky wouldn’t let it drop. He claimed to have had his back broken by an improvised explosive device and to have been deployed in ’04, ’06, ’08, and ’10, an unbelievably fast deployment turnaround. “I was a gunner on the Humvee with the 30 cal machine gun.”
Our military uses .30-caliber machine guns. The NATO nomenclature is 7.62 mm, and the gun firing those rounds is the M240, which is what a Marine would call this weapon. Nobody in the service would call it the “30 cal” machine gun.
Mike brought me another Boddingtons.
“You know Ricky never served a day in his life, right?” I told Mike quietly.
“Sounds like it.” Mike shook his head in disgust.
“Hey, Ricky. You’ll appreciate this. About a year ago, this guy was in here, lying about having been a Marine sniper, first into Iraq in 2003, said he’d had to extinguish oil well fires. Can you believe a guy would lie like that?”
“That’s terrible,” Ricky said quietly.
He knew that I knew he was lying. Maybe I should have confronted him and let the others in the bar know this liar probably couldn’t even find Afghanistan on a map. But I was in a great mood, and I didn’t want him to leave in humiliation, depriving Mike of a customer. I don’t know why Ricky lied about having served. There were no women to impress. Nobody was going to buy him a thanks-for-your-service beer. What do you think? Did I do the right thing by letting Ricky keep his lie intact? I try to be decent. How to do that is a tough call, day to day, situation to situation. Connect with me on social media and let me know. In the meantime, reader, remember the motto of the Marine Corps: Semper fidelis. Always faithful.
Trent Reedy, the author of several books, including Enduring Freedom, served as a combat engineer in the Iowa National Guard from 1999 to 2005, including a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
*Some names and call signs in this story may have been changed due to operational security or privacy concerns.
