Robert Brooks; nothing but questions

Photo credit: thanks to Quad-City Times

A few weeks ago, I got a ream of documentation from somewhere in regards to this fellow, Robert Brooks. Soon after that, I talked to Ms. Barb Ickes of the Quad-City Times. She and I compared notes on this Brooks fellow who claims to be one of the great heroes of the Vietnam War. His FOIA certainly bears that out;

Pretty amazing collection of awards, isn’t it? He claims that he served in all of the branches of the services, but the Marines and the Air Force deny that claim.

A closer examination of the awards also raise questions. For example, the records report that he earned the Combat Infantry Badge, but he never served in an infantry or special forces unit. The records also indicate that he earned a Parachutist Badge and a Pathfinder Badge. There is nothing in his records which supports that he attended the schools for either. His records say that he earned the Army Overseas Ribbon, the Army Service Ribbon and the the NCO Professional Development Ribbon (in the FOIA it mistakenly calls it the NCO Proficiency Ribbon) – none of those ribbons were in existence until 1981 – eleven years after Brooks left the Army.

According to the Quad-City Times story, Brooks can provide no documentation for any of his Silver Stars (he claims 3) or his four Distinguished Flying Crosses, or even his 3 Bronze Star Medals. He claims the Navy Fleet Marine Force Ribbon, but aside from the fact that he never served in the Marine Corps, the ribbon wasn’t in existence until 1984. I’m also not aware of any “Republic of Vietnam Combat Action Ribbon”. The Vietnam Air Cross of Gallantry had no “wings” – it had stars and palm leaves accouterments.

Ms. Ickes writes;

None of the Purple Hearts could be verified, and Brooks offered few details about his injuries, except to say, “I know I was wounded five times. I know all my medical records over there were lost. When the VA was looking over my case, they just couldn’t find anything.

“In Cu Chi (Vietnam), I got ripped up pretty bad. I don’t know if those records got back.”

In an interview Monday at his home, he offered a similar explanation for other missing documents: “I was in Special Ops (Operations), and they destroyed all their records.”

For Col. James Patterson, a Green Beret and Army legal adviser, Brooks’ explanations only add to his skepticism.

“The Army doesn’t destroy anything,” he said. “There’s nothing from Vietnam that’s still classified.”

Mary Schantag, chairwoman of the Missouri-based POWnetwork, said she also was asked to look into Brooks’ records after his story appeared in the Times. Her focus was on his account of being captured, tortured, then rescued in Vietnam.

“The escapees are the most well-known POWs of Vietnam,” she said. “They were debriefed heavily. Brooks did not escape. There is no way this stuff is missed.

“There are 20-plus steps that are required to be taken when a soldier is separated from his unit. The many mandatory methods include notification of family within 48 hours. There are no records of this nature whatsoever for Mr. Brooks.”

Asked why he is not listed in any missing or POW records, Brooks replied: “Probably because they don’t want people to know we existed.”

Well, he wasn’t assigned to special forces according to his 2-1;

There doesn’t seem to be any hospital time in his 2-1, either. From Quad-City times;

He said he could not explain why his Silver Star had one oak leaf cluster, which represents a second Silver Star, given that his DD-214 shows he should have a total of three.

“They only have one on there, so maybe I only have two Silver Stars,” he said. “That’s what I want to know: How many do I have? I’m not the only one this happened to. It was some bad accounting in those days.”

He said he never has seen any of his own Citations for the Silver Stars, which are the third-highest military decoration for valor.

Another local Vietnam veteran, Bill Albracht of Moline, said he recalls every detail of the events that led to his three verifiable Silver Stars.

“The actions surrounding the awards I received are burned into my very soul,” he said Thursday. “It is inconceivable to me that a combat veteran would forget the circumstances surrounding the award of his Silver Star medal.”

There is evidence that his records at NPRC were recently altered, after the controversy began back in January. But, I’m not ready to put Ol’ Bob in the Stolen Valor category quite yet, just the big question mark category until we can get definitive answers from the National Personnel Records Center as to how these records were altered.

Category: Who knows