Glen Mason; Ricky Recon, phony Navy SEAL

| April 17, 2013

Recon Ricky

Recon Ricky1

Someone sent us these pictures last night of Glen Mason, a contractor with ITT Excellis who has been strutting around among the troops in Afghanistan bragging about his exploits as a Navy SEAL. The photos were made by those same troops who smelled a rat. Last night, we sent a request to Don Shipley to check out Glen’s claims. Don writes back;

Perhaps Mr. [our tipster], with his busy schedule, might dedicate some spare time to setting Glen on fire or pushing him off a cliff…

Thanks in advance, […]… Don

The fellow who sent this to us wrote;

[W]e recently found a copy of his resume, on it he list his rate, we looked it up and found it to be a welder.

So, a welder is just like a SEAL, right? Only completely different.

Category: Phony soldiers

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teddy996

Back before SEALs were funneled into a separate rating, the SEAL was just a qualification on your sheet. Like surface warfare, air warfare, or dolphins. But they did draw from only a few ratings, and people who passed BUD/S would re-class to an approved rating. For instance, when AW ceased to be a rate, my uncle had to pick from a few rates to remain in the teams. He chose EN.

It was just the navy being lazy. SEALs would continue to use their base rating’s advancement exams, much like nukes used to use their base rating’s exams even though they had fuck all to do with your actual job. They fixed it for nukes around 2000, and SEALs became their own rate later.

Not defending this guy. Just clearing it up.

Twist

This dude is so worthless that his birth certificate is an apology letter from the condom company.

Combat Historian

Welder, schmelder, smelder, selder, sealder, SEAL…Guess Glen just had trouble enunciating properly, that’s all…the assfart!

NHSparky

They fixed it for nukes around 2000

Not without some SERIOUS fuckups along the way. Imagine taking QM rating exams so you can go in front of the CPO selection board. That’s what they did to us in the mid- to late-90’s. Piled on all the forward rates which had just ALL become ET’s, give us THEIR in-rate knowledge, make us do our PARS all over again, and then take the CPO exam on it.

Oh, and this guy is still a shitbag.

Scubasteve

Welder is just drawl. Example of usage in this guy’s case: ‘Welder I wuz, neehigh ina pile of brass and grE-Nade pins, wit mah feller seels injer’d from the hell-o coptre crash. I sheit ya not!’

teddy996

@4- I made E5 the hard way, off of my supreme guesswork about film splicing and dishwasher repair. By the time I was taking E6 exams, they had un-fucked it.

But for the chief exam? You’d think that they would have paid a bit more attention to that. Maybe there weren’t any nukes involved in BUPERS until the early ’00s?

DaveO

Two questions:

1. Do sailors with dyslexia receive assistance for the promotion tests? I ask because George Patton was an O-1 for many years because he could not pass the written exams for promotion to O-2. It took war for him to rise up the ranks.

2. With American education nose-diving in terms of reading, comprehension, and math – is the Navy having to dumb down its tests?

Combat Historian

Damn, I enjoy all this Navyspeak! Being a retired Army type, I don’t have a clue what you guys are talking about, but I enjoy the navyacronymese anyway 🙂

MCPO NYC USN (Ret.)

Geeze Us Krist. Yous guyz do knot gets it.

Of all the branches we r the most smartest in d milaterry.

Retired Master

@8, I am even haveing more fun reading it, cuz I am Air Force, and I know we are in a different world altogether.

Green Thumb

Turd.

teddy996

@8- advancement exams for SEALs and those in the nuclear power business were fucked up for about 40 years. Because people in those jobs did not have separate designations from the conventional rates, they had to test for advancement using tests that had absolutely nothing to do with their job.

I imagine an army equivalent example would be in order for an infantryman to advance in pay grade, he would have to pass a test consisting of questions about helicopter engine maintenance. Yes, it was that fucked up. For 40 years.

kp32

@7-

1. No
2. No

2/17 Air Cav

The Navy declared war on English long ago and has never lost a battle. Along the way, the Navy replaced most English words with Poopdeckian. There is no English/Poopdeckian Dictionary. The lingo is passed on from one generation of sailors to another. In fact, during WW II, even Bletchley Park was stymied by some of the Navy lingo.

A Proud Infidel

Slovenly Extreme Asswipe Lowlife, THAT’S the acronym that belongs to this asswipe turd burglar and all posers, PERIOD!! As for me, I was just another Regular Army leg from 91 to 94, I ETS’ed and came back into the National Guard in 03 as soon as I found out that I could, and that it would get me deployed. I’ve since done Asscanistan and Kuwait, and I feel like I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, let alone anything I have to artificially embellish. One thing is for sure, as every day passes, I feel like I have even less tolerance for ANY kind of poser, I want to treat each and every one of them like a cheap doormat with Jane Fonda’s picture on it!! As for ALL real-life SpecOps Warriors, Green Berets, SEALS, Rangers, Air Force SpecOps, USMC Recons, I’m just another “leg”, and my hat’s off to y’all, thanks to you, the places that you go, and the dirty deeds you do to our enemies, a LOT more everyday, run-of-the-mill types like me and my “Joes” come home alive and unscathed, and as an NCO, I’m grateful. I have just as much angst against these poser assclowns as you do! I’ve just finished another lengthy night shift at the mill, so it’s now shower and bedtime for me. (I HOPE I did the right thing to fix that ^&*(*&%*^&%$%$%^*(^$%&&(*!! hot water heater!)

Combat Historian

#12: No worries, I did understand (most of) the gist of what you and NHSparky were talking about, it was just so fun reading those navyacronyms that I just had to throw in a jest 🙂

ChopIT

I hated taking advancement exams as an IT and then getting questions on: women’s gynecological health, how long their fingernails could be, other medical questions -you know, HM stuff. I could score in the 90 percentile on my rate (DP and RM work), but would get confused on some of the other crap.

NHSparky

@12–yeah, that pretty much covers it. Go to A-school, spend a few weeks on theoretical subjects you’ll likely never see again, go to Nuke School and study a plant you’ll never see in the fleet, go to Prototype and learn to qualify on a 40-50 year old reactor plant you’ll never see in the fleet, then go to your carrier/boat and take a year to get qualified, being bitched at the whole time cause you’re dink, and take rating exams on shit you haven’t seen since A-school, if ever.

Ah, I love the Navy way of doing shit.

NHSparky

Well, as was previously discussed, before about 2007, SEALs came from a number of “source ratings” that were considered useful in the SEAL community, such as HM (Corpsman, or Corpse-man if you’re Obama), ET (Electronics Tech), RM (Radioman), and one was HT (Hull Repair Tech) from which came welders.

So while it’s entirely possible, even likely, that this guy was in a SEAL-source rating, there’s no way in hell (according to Senior Chief Shipley) that he ever attended BUD/S, and no BUD/S, no SEAL. Simple as that.

Twist

SOSR, GOTWA, ACE

With all the Navalese going on in here I thought I would throw out some Army talk.

Combat Historian

#19: Too bad the Navy did not have an “NI” rating that they could source SEALs from. “NI” would be “Naval Infantry”, but I guess the Navy did not do infantry, so that wouldn’t work…:)

ChopIT

#21 – That’s why we have GMs, and MAs – Gunners Mates (weapon handlers) and Master-at-Arms (police).

TrapperFrank

At one time in the Army, before Special Forces became a branch, it was an additional skill identifier. You took the yearly SQT test on the branch of your feeder MOS. We SF light/heavy weapons types took a test that was heavy on mech infantry stuff like track vehicle maintence…. No one passed.

Combat Historian

Come to think of it, the Navy did/does have a “Gunner’s Mate” rating. Are there many gunners’ mates who apply for BUD/S? Are gunner’s mates even a proper source rating for SEALs?

Combat Historian

Oops, I typed #24 before IT came out with #22, so he answered my question.

DaveO

#21 Combat Historian:

The Navy does have Naval Infantry. We call them Marines. The Navy has a Medical Corps, a Supply Corps, and a Marine Corps. Marines are the sailors who wear floaties when swimming in the pool.

Combat Historian

#26: Guess that explains all the phonies who said that they were “Marine SEALs” 🙂

teddy996

@25- SEALs drew from ratings that were physical and technical rates: boatswains, electricians, hull technicians, gunners mates, enginemen, torpedomen, radiomen, etc. I don’t believe yeoman and store keepers were approved, and highly specialized professions like fire control tech and nuclear power personnel were not allowed, if I recall.

ChopIT

#25 – no problem… BTW I’m no longer an IT – I’m a Chop, aka Pork Chop, aka SUPPO…

🙂

OWB

Ding, ding, ding! This blather just explained something significant.

Back in the day, USAF exams were pretty easy to manage because they were very specific and easy to pass with a reasonable amount of study and retention. At the end of my career, exams bore no resemblance to the books, the regs, or actual performance of duty. Perhaps the USAF just adopted the USN way?

ChopIT

@28 – the SEALS have support staff such as SKs (now LS) and YNs (Yeomans). Funny though, a 2 star that just retired from NSW started out unrated, became a SEAL, then rated as Commissary Man (CM – a cook) while being a SEAL, then got commissioned as a PAO (public affairs officer) and then back to NSW to be a SEAL.

ChopIT

@30 – are you saying the Air Force is faster at adopting inefficiency?

Retired Master

#30, and I had soooo much respect for the Air Force!!

NHSparky

@28–correct. “Nukes need not apply” was a pretty common deal when it came to shore duty, and don’t even THINK about applying for a different community unless you got de-nuked, in which case that became pretty much career-limiting. IIRC, back in the 90’s when I was in, nukes could in theory apply for SEAL only if they were at the end of their first enlistment and hadn’t reenlisted yet. I don’t know of any nukes that tried to become SEALs, and of course don’t know of any who actually did.

And on another off-topic note, that’s probably why I have an RE-R1 reenlistment code on my 214…one of those, “Sure, we’ll let you back in, but only as a nuke” kind of deals.

OWB

@ #32, #33: Not sure yet! It was a puzzle to me at the time and I need to think this through. It would have been in the late 90’s/early 00’s that I observed the issue and gave up on USAF exams because I simply could not figure out what to study or even understand what the questions were. (Anyone else read an exam question, know the answer only to discover that the answer was not one of the choices? Then try to figure out just which of the wrong answers will satisfy the grader?? Not for one or two questioins, but for all of them???)

Maybe the USN shipped over their test writers around that time. Would explain a lot.

teddy996

@31- correct. But the YNs and SKs were stationed at the command, in support of the team. They were not operators, much like the armorer GMs in charge of maintaining and storing the team’s weaponry. The teams function just like any other naval command in that regard. Still do, though boat operators have their own rating now as well.

If an unapproved rating wanted to class up for BUD/S back in the day, he would have had to transfer into one of the approved ratings first. Didn’t matter what his knowledge level within the rate was, just that the rating badge matched an approved list. Because the teams taught their guys killing and blowing stuff up, it wouldn’t matter to the team what source rating you were. Many applicants would just choose whatever was the most understaffed, or whatever rating they felt had the easiest rating to pass exams for quick advancement. It was an asinine deal all around.

I know that guy you’re talking about. Casey Ryback. Saw a movie about him once…

Ex-PH2

I think some Navalese acronymese should have stayed, e.g., WAVES.

The Poopdeckian Dictionary? I have not heard any of that stuff in ages, except for what goes on here, which is minimal at best.

NHSparky

“I’m just a lowly, lowly cook…”

Actually, I would be more afraid of the cooks on my last boat than a SEAL. They knew LOTS more ways to kill me, things like baboon’s ass, slumgolium, pork adobo, pizza night, horsecock and pillows of death midrats, etc., etc…

Retired Master

No such thing as a lowly cook!! Squids wouldn’t be able to run a ship,flyboys would’t fly and the grunts couldn’t get around without you.

Hondo

TrapperFrank: yep – until 1 October 1984. That’s the date on which SF became the 18 career field if I recall correctly.

PintoNag

@2 Twist, you owe me a keyboard.

MGySgtRet

@26- The Marine Corps proudly states that we are a Department of the Navy. The Mens Department….Thank you, I will be here all week……

MGySgtRet

Oh, and Glen Mason is a douche nozzle.

USMCE8Ret

@26 – DaveO… what the fucking fuck?!

Marines don’t wear “floaties” as you would put it.

I’ll have you know that those who are hydrogically challenged wear vertical floatation support devices and a glow belt, which are the prescribed gear in the pool.

Get it right! 🙂

USMCE8Ret

(…and Glen Mason is a fuck-tard.)

Ex-PH2

@44 – I’ve seen videos of Marines in Recon school dive all the way to the bottom of the pool and go right back up to the surface. They do not need any flotation support gear. They just need oxygen.

FatCircles0311

@26: Uh, been in the Navy lately? Marines are far more qualified swimmers than most sailors stationed aboard ships. You basically got it the other way around. Marines expected to survive in water with their gear while sailors aren’t expected to survive once in the water.

Crotchity Old Bubblehead

#38, Memories, sweet, sweet memories. NOT!

Who could forget pusspockets and moonrocks.

One boat I rode had a MSC (Cook Chief) decide that an unused and sealed off Aux tank (big ass tank in the bottom of the boat that is normally used to adjust the trim condition of the boat by adding or subtracting water in a specific tank to make the boat heavier or lighter forward, aft or some combination of the two) was cool enough to allow storage of large items such as coffee, flour, sugar and cheese in while underway. He stored everything he could get in there so we wouldn’t ride his ass on storage and sound short issues. After being underway for three or four weeks, he and his knuckleheads didn’t think that the bulging sides of the cheese cannisters meant anything and opened one up. Talk about an ungodful smell. To make matters worse, he wasn’t convinced it was the way the cheese was stored vice being just one bad can and opened a second. The entire forward compartment was in EABs (Emergency Air Breathing SUCKASS DEVICES that plugs into a mounted manifold to supply breathing air but instantly becomes a bondage device when in use) in less than five mins. We had to clear datum (leave the area) for about 6 hours before we could ventilate the whole time sucking face. Talk about a redass(he pissed the crew off). He ended up being voted to spend time in the TDU (Trash Disposal Unit) room on 1/2 way night(one night of a the mission or patrol that we would purposely cut loose, eat lobster, steak, shrimp and other fine foods, play poker, watch movies and otherwise have a good time). He ended up being extended in the TDU to the next day because the WHOLE boat (crew, chief’s quarters as well as the weird room) saved all of the trash and throways from that day on. As the saying goes, the stupid shall be punished, and he was.

DaveO

#47: is that why they dress sailors in utilities that closely resembles water? Easier to spot them in the ocean?

You’d think they’d have sailors wearing Hunters’ Orange in case they fall off the ship.

And I don’t believe any Marine is going to tread water or swim with all of his combat gear.

2/17 Air Cav

@42. Now that was funny!