Carl John Pequignot update

Your emails and Doug Sterner’s activism is apparently having some impact in the case of Carl John Pequignot who we discussed the other day. The News Sentinel is now questioning their own article from more than a year ago about him. Kevin Leininger writes;

When I wrote about Carl John Pequignot last April 23 in a front-page column headlined “The soldier the Japanese Couldn’t Kill,” the story generated a lot of interest – much of it from veterans and others across the country who doubted whether any of it was true. Although the 85-year-old Pequignot stands by his account, skepticism from credible individuals and groups, based on official military records indicating Pequignot didn’t even leave the United States until the fighting had ended, have now cast too much doubt to be ignored.

Pequignot, however, contends the record is wrong and insists his story would be corroborated by records that were thrown out or destroyed by his ex-wife.

“Many of the places on that summary, I’ve never been,” he said. “The service can be very wrong. I don’t know where they get this information. I don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing. How I got caught up in this mess I’ll never know.”

Ex-wives have destroyed more military records than all of the National Archives fires put together. It must be hard to let go of a story that he cultivated for decades. All of that forgery work tossed out the window.

The Military Order of the Purple Heart, an organization of people wounded in combat, is even more direct. On April 5, National Adjutant John Leonard III wrote to Pequignot in response to questions he had received about the validity of Pequignot’s story. Noting that Pequignot’s alleged unit was not on Okinawa at the time Pequignot cited, Leonard asked Pequignot to provide “sufficient evidence” of his Purple Heart in order to remain a member. Pequignot’s car also bears a Purple Heart license plate.

Yeah, if the unit wasn’t on Okinawa, neither was he, that’s the funny thing about publicly available historical records.

[P]ast Chairman [of the Allen County Council of Veterans Organizations] Craig Savage, a Navy veteran himself, is the most blunt of all.

“I know (Pequignot’s) been lying,” he said. “A lot of guys do it.”

Way too many guys do it. And as long as they think it’s their freedom of speech to do so (thanks Ninth Circuit), they’ll continue to do it. And the internet is our only defense against them.

Category: Phony soldiers