Robert D. Pickrel; Taking Stolen Valor to the grave
Mary sends us her research on Robert Pickrel who departed this life early last month, but he took his Stolen Valor with him. According to his obituary;
Served during the Vietnam War as a Navy S.E.A.L. from 1969 to 1976. He received the Silver and Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart.
Well, not according to his DD214;
You bubbleheads will be happy to know that he wasn’t happy earning two Battle ‘E’s on his intentionally sinking boat, he had to make himself a SEAL.
Category: Phony soldiers
Well, if you click on the obituary link, you find another for a recently-deceased Korean War vet, Spilker, whose time in service was NOT embellished.
Ex-PH2, nice catch, but from Spilker’s obit he only claims to have served in the Army “during the Korean conflict” and not necessarily in Korea (which is perfectly honorable in and of itself and something that his family should be justly proud of).
Let’s see…no EN “A” school. Probably a striker for that. Looks like he went UA for a couple of days, which would explain the lack of a Good Conduct Medal.
Nothing wrong with being a snipe on a smoke boat. Why, for the love of God, why?
Face palm.
I agree with Sparky, if you’re a DBFer you have no reason to make shit up. You’ve BTDT and are a pretty rare bird already.
I’m wondering if it was his family or himself that came up with this story. I know it’s pretty much a wide spread policy for obits to not be questioned and published as submitted,
@5–doubt it. Nobody in my family knows what I did unless I told them.
So far as they know, I was a nuke on two SSN’s with a radcon tour on a tender in between.
Kinda hard how anyone would go from diesel boat sailor to SEAL with a Silver Star, etc.
‘He was a good soldier, a good husband, a good Dad, and a good man. And he tried really hard to be a good Christian but sometimes failed.’
IF that’s the way my obit reads, they’ll hear me shouting with glee from beyond.
@5 – we have a recently deceased cousin whose obit claimed he was a Vietnam POW – the asshole was national Guard and never left his home state. He met his latest wife well after the war, so she has no idea. No one will print a retraction – they don’t care. Obits are paid ads, and papers don’t want to be put in the position of possibly having to pay anything back – so whatever crap someone tells ’em, they print unquestioningly. More words the better.