The Walter Mitty Hunt Community.

[5haron]

Has anyone seen this Walter Mitty Society, page? It's a sort of expose of civilians who are pretending to have served in war-zones and/or pose as ex-service personnel.
It seems to be a major issue atm. I came across this on a Holyhead friend's page, my friend explained this WMHC page concept. Apparently there's a lot of it about? Anyone any experience of it? I see some of my fb friends are already members.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-W...579581?fref=ts

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...4702551&type=1


btw - apologies if this has already been broached :)

[ap1]

That second threads quite painful. I look at the site occasionally…Indeed one of our own RWF starred on it last year….Bet that was a painful ride for him. I get the point, but there is a lot of muppets who just jump in and put the boot in, many of whom probably also have an interesting tale behind their lives. We need "Stolen Valour" legislation to sort it out, once and for all.

[5haron]

That second threads quite painful. I look at the site occasionally…Indeed one of our own RWF starred on it last year….Bet that was a painful ride for him. I get the point, but there is a lot of muppets who just jump in and put the boot in, many of whom probably also have an interesting tale behind their lives.

Blimey, you mean they targeted an ex-comm as a fraud? That awful!

The second thread made my blood crawl tbh. I don;t know the guy but via the HH grapevine heard he's not a very...um..trustworthy type, so the ambulance chasers are having a field days. I also believe he's ex RAF. So if he does have tour gongs, I'm guessing they are his own. Not sure what the protocol is about wearing your own medals but Pat used to be an instructor with the cadets and nothing was ever mentioned then. In fact nearly all the instructors were ex-service and all wore their own brass and silver.
Anyone know what is acceptable/allowed?

[keithwill38]

The Walter Mitty group are normally very good in wheedling out people who dress as ex servicemen and wear medals they are not entitled to,,its not very often they get it wrong as they have quite a few resources that they utilise to find out if a person is genuine or not,and only after exhausting all avenues do they post anything about a person .I agree with Al that there should be legislation in place with regards to wearing non entitled medals.

[Gwyn Nicholas]

Whilst I agree that those who pass themselves off as service or ex-service personnel should be outed, there are those who are too quick off the mark to point the finger to draw attention to themselves. I argued the case on a site the other week, where a chap in uniform on a military stand, had his service questioned over the calibre of a Bren used in the Falkands war. When I asked the accuser for details of the stand, where when etc with a view to contacting the units museum, I got no reply and the thread died. It is a dangerous game accusing someone of lying about his service without 100% surety, especially as many we know now suffer from PTSD and such an accusation could be the final straw for some.

[Scouse75]

As a disclaimer....I'll be wearing Al Poole's court mounted medals again this year(probably the tenth year in a row!!!) at the remembrance parade in my home town. I have however, fashioned a sleek little cover that hides his LSGC as I was never going to get that one!! lol. Reason being, Al's admin is squared away, and mine is still **** and haven't had mine court mounted yet.

[ap1]

Only squaddies would hand over the family heirlooms to the squaddie mates…For a decade!!!! Ive actually attended funerals, where Scouse is wearing my medals….Mental. But sums us up I suppose. Have a good day mate.

[Clive Hughes]

Not re. the WMHC, but I've come across a few dodgy veterans myself. One in about 1980 was dressed as a London hotel commissionaire or something similar, waxed moustache and immaculate dressy uniform, and a WW2 14th Army patch on one shoulder. Pity his medals were First World War ones...

Then there are those who have done genuine and praiseworthy service, but want to gild the lily a bit when it comes to gongs. I used to own a medal group to an artilleryman NCO who really had been besieged at Ladysmith 1899-1900 and served all through WW1 on the Western Front, also gaining his Long Service medal (he did 22 years in all), before ending up in the WW2 Surrey Home Guard: seven honest gongs covering nearly 50 years or so. Eventually I realised that he'd added a couple of extra bars to his 5-bar Boer War medal, an unentitled WW1 mention in dispatches emblem, and an even less entitled French Croix de Guerre avec palmes. Would he be classified as a Walt? Or what?

More painful was the man (by then dead) who had told his family he had a specific WW2 gallantry award. Could I see it, I asked them out of interest? No, he'd been so disgusted at the OBEs that pop stars got after the 1960s that he had sent his own gongs back. I checked, and he'd certainly been very much in harm's way during WW2 and really earned his bits of cupro-nickel. But not the gallantry one. Maybe he'd been recommended and it was turned down, so he self-awarded? I didn't spoil it for the family, anyway.

How would you guys handle someone you spotted in that sort of situation - a genuine vet but with added bling??

[ap1]

I think they have a name Clive! "Bloaters or Crumpers" ….as opposed to Walts, who've never served. But it's not just the inflated story, as we know, most squaddies(me very much included) are masters or mistresses of the "Pull up a sandbag" tale. Now it's the whole shebang, using social media, wearing medals they aren't entitled to, or indeed purchasing/wearing medals that are not issued, then developing stories and a persona to match. It does wind me up.

I suppose in the eras that you mention, it was almost impossible to get caught out. Now with so few people as a percentage of the population, having served, and the rise of the internet, catching them is like shooting barrels of fish. You only had to watch yesterdays London commemorations for a few mins yesterday to start pinging them in the crowd. I think it's a foolish veteran that decides to go down that path in this day and age… I believe it was a subject that was briefly mentioned at this years Comrades AGM.

[gary57]

I was in the my local having a beer after being at the cenotaph yesterday. One or two had been had when I got asked by a couple of the younger chap about my service .I give them a look and said do you know of the SAS !!They both said yes and by now some others were now tuning into the conversation at the bar. Well I said I wasn't in that lot :).