Brit Vets lobby for their own Stolen Valor Act
They’re called “Walts” across the pond in England, referring to the James Thurber short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, which was first published in The New Yorker on March 18, 1939, about the meek little man who escapes his harpie wife and miserably mundane life inside his mind with his fabricated adventures. According to the UK’s Daily Mirror, British veterans are fed up with them;
Campaigners said it was a “shameful indictment” on the Coalition that fakers can get away with their lies.
SAS veteran and former 1 Para soldier Robert Henry Craft said: “Not only do we want to expose them as pathetic individuals, we want them punished.”
Shamed novelist Mark Powell, 47, was uncovered in January last year for lying about his “SAS past”.
The 47 year-old claimed he had been on covert operations and was credited in TV interviews as a Special Forces security expert.
They’ve set up their own website at Walter Mitty Hunt
We urge you to join in with the hunt, and help us to “out the Walt” these FAKE War Veterans and Emergency Service personnel?
These Walts are everywhere:
In virtually every single pub and club in the country,
buying our “stolen” medals on e-bay,
parading on Remembrance Sunday and throughout the British Legion, 365 days of the year,
giving it the “big one” saying they were 1029th man on the balcony,
or boasting “I was the first one up the beach in ’82”.Walts are idiots! They really are! We’ve even caught them red handed in “some” anti-Walts pages of Facebook!
Yeah, we know the feeling. Some of the funniest phony discussions I’ve read were on ARRSE (The Army Rumor Service), another British site.
Category: Phony soldiers
I happen to like both the story and the movie, starring Danny Kaye. Tapocketa tapocketa tapocketa. Maybe they should have named the evil-doers the Tony Blairs.
Good on the Brits anyway.
I love ARRSE and lurk there quite a bit.
The Arrsepedia entry on walts is great stuff: http://www.arrse.co.uk/wiki/Walts
Also, the entry on “The Baron of Castleshort” is hilarious-http://www.arrse.co.uk/wiki/James_Shortt
That’s good…..I’m going to checking out their ARRSE more often, uh, er, I think?
Old Tanker-there is some anti-Americanism in some of the threads on the message boards there (some of it hilariously misinformed). Very often some of the Brits who post there will take up for us (other times not), but it can be a bit much some times. There are several Americans who post there, most notably a retired Marine colonel who goes by “jumpinjarhead”.
I’m not familiar with the “1029th man on the balcony” reference. Anyone know what that means?
11B2P-it is a reference to the SAS action against the Iranian embassy some years ago. A common “walt” boast is to have been the “second man on the balcony” as part of the SAS assault on the radicals who had taken the embassy.
We fired a guy at work for misconduct in which his supervisor/department director described him as a “Walter Mitty.” It always makes me chuckle when I hear people labeled as such.
#3 Old Tanker:
You caught that too eh?
#8
😉
The punishment will be armed combat against Christopher Lee…who in in 80s is still an ass kicking badass. I think he us 8′ tall and has killed more Nazis than a Russian winter.
@4, yeah, I think I’ll be skipping that site. There’s enough anti-Americanism at my local college.
Cheers for the link lads, from all at WMHC! Tim.
Check our website – we’ve outed another 2 Walts today!
The reference to the Balcony is taken from the UK Special Forces raid on the Iranian embassy in London where the assault started from a frame charge being placed against a window to effect entry the SAS was on the balcony to do that so people fakes that is claim to have been on THE BALCONY
Hello American brothers and Sisters . Nice to see you responding and looking at our l’il ol site from across the pond. I am sure we all suffer the same problems by the sound of it with people “bigging it up” in the Pubs and Bars , what really grips me is that there are collecting and keeping money under false pretence that it is for wounded veterans. I cannot see our weak kneed government (of either party) doing anything to stop this by legislation so we will just keep naming and shaming on our own initiative . Thanks for your kind words and support . Pete Sweet . WALTs site UK.
…PS . RE the ARRSE site . Please do not take too much note of all that is said on there , (anti Americanisms etc) . Many denizens of that site are not military but wannabes and troublemakers , though the bulk are serving or ex forces . One of our most popular members of the Walter Mitty Hunt Community is one ” F K” who for his sins is a goddam yankee but we like him all the same !
Peter Sweet-there are just a few, but they show up on any thread having to do in any way with America to tell us what a wretched lot we are.
I can ignore some of it, but after a while it makes me want to scream. Still, I enjoy lurking at ARRSE and I find a lot of the threads both informative and entertaining.
68W58 . I know what you mean but some of these people are just anti everyone ! Whatever the subject and however reasoned your views there are people on ARRSE who will throw abuse , mainly because they still live with Mummy and have no other life…it makes them feel good .
……and….I hang around an American site..”Flame warriors.net”. I contribute sometimes but those guys can make you feel REALLY bad about being British ( and also worried about the state of America ) if they are a true reflection of attitudes , which I am sure they are not .