Phony obituary
Ed sends us a link to an obituary written by a son about his father, James Manwill Robertson, who by all appearances looks like a good Christian man, until you get to this part;
Jim graduated from BYU with a BA in Spanish, after which he served in the Air Force for 8 years as a pilot and Captain. He flew over 150 missions and was twice awarded the Air Force Cross for his heroic efforts.
So a quick glance at Doug Sterner’s “Home of Heroes” shows that no one by that name was ever awarded even one Air Force Cross. So this guy’s right to free speech can now haunt his family – unless the son just made it up and threw it in the obituary.
Category: Phony soldiers
Yes, it sounds like that.
But in fairness, it’s certainly possible that the father never specifically said it was an Air Force Cross and that the son just looked up a bunch of medals on Wikipedia when he needed precise names for the obituary.
Air Force Cross, Air Force Commendation, Air Force Achievement. These are big differences to us, but not to some civilians.
Or maybe the son just found the ribbons and looked them up. Scanning the pictures, the ribbon for an Air Force Cross could easily be confused for an Aerial Achievement Medal when you’re a civilian with no attention to detail. Civilians do stuff like that.
Could be the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Or a Air Medal.
Well maybe the funeral homes and newspapers should learn to do some simple fact-checking before they printing obituaries.
I’m thinking the son probably was never in the military, knew that his dad had served in the Air Force and received some kind of “Cross”, and simply confused the Distinguished Flying Cross for the Air Force Cross.
That’s the charitable interpretation anyway.