Major Robert Michael Armstrong; stripped of award
Someone dropped off this link from the UK’s Daily Mail on Facebook. It’s about UK’s Major Robert Michael Armstrong who was found to have written up his own award of the UK’s Military Cross for heroic actions he didn’t take;
Two corporals were reported to have claimed there was no hostile fire by the Taliban when a vehicle in their convoy was blown up.
The Sunday Telegraph reported at the time that the officer who made the initial complaint felt aggrieved that actions attributed to Major Armstrong were those of other officers.
A junior officer lodged a formal complaint and Army chiefs then called in the Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Military Police.
Separately, the commander of Britain’s 16 Air Assault Brigade, Brigadier Giles Hill, was ordered to carry out a review into the citation. It is understood that he described the Royal Irish Regiment’s performance in handling citations as ‘dysfunctional’.
He found significant disparities between what Armstrong claimed had happened and what actually occurred and that the citation contained a number of falsehoods.
So, ultimately, the good major was court martialed, and sentenced to a year in prison, which was suspended for two years and the medal was withdrawn. According to The Mail, Armstrong should not have known that he was nominated for the award, let alone help to write it. When investigators checked his computer for evidence that he had written his own award, they found more than a hundred classified documents on his computer, because, you know, stolen valor isn’t their only crime – every time, every where.
Category: Phony soldiers
In before Faker 6-
Did he nominate himself for honorary CPO also?
I’ll bet that Major Robert Michael Armstrong is in the hiring pipeline at Archangel Group.
now he just needs to write a lie filled book like I did or falsely claim that he was nominated for a Pulitzer prize like my buddy, LTC Dave Grossman
http://thetruthaboutsocnetlies.wordpress.com/2014/08/23/giduck-pal-ltc-dave-grossman-falsely-claims-hes-a-pulitzer-prize-nominee/
And y’all thought that Grossman really was nominated for a Pulitzer. What a knee slapper!
sincerely
John “Faker 6” Giduck
He should be doing jail time for the mishandling of classified materials if for no other reason.
Going easy on someone caught as part of the rot is never ever a competent method of dealing with said rot.
As well as stripped of the award, he should be stripped of rank, stripped of money, and stripped of time. The suspension should be revoked.
I wonder how the men under his command (past and present) feel about him?
Here’s the official notice: https://www.thegazette.co.uk/notice/2209191
John Kerry got by with the same thing. (Did you know he was in Viet Nam)?
ohio…Really! Are you shittin’ me? John Kerry was in Vietnam? Who knew? Oh, that’s right Kerry knew. He sorta helped write himself up for some stuff too. But he tossed them on the White House lawn in protest. But wait, they’re hanging on his “I love me” wall in his office now. The man is a paradox I tell ya.
Too bad the U.S. doesn’t take those sort of things as seriously.
nbcguy54…Here-Here!
Huh, the 16th AAB is involved in this one.
From what I know of them, that Brigade is one of England’s best.
Hope they nail this arsehole for lying and give valor to those who deserve it.
The Royal Navy has been around 500 yrs or so & British Army over 350 yrs…really stunning this is the first case the King/Queen rescinded a medal.
Up until the 1900s the Victoria Cross could be forfeited if the recipient was convicted of an offence later on (mostly because it came with a pension, and the Victorians didn’t want to be seen to be paying criminals), and it happened quite a few times: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Victoria_Cross_forfeitures
George V put a stop to the practice, with his private secretary recording that “The King feels so strongly that, no matter the crime committed by anyone on whom the VC has been conferred, the decoration should not be forfeited. Even were a VC to be sentenced to be hanged for murder, he should be allowed to wear his VC on the scaffold.”
I didn’t know writing your own decoration was a crime. In the Air Force helicopter rescue units I served with in Iraq and Afghanistan it was commonplace for officers to write their own decorations up for valor. I’ve seen many a silver star, distinguished flying cross, and bronze star submitted by the proposed recipient. They’d even have a sitdown with the director of operations or the commander to plead their case for award.