Stolen Valor is such an epidemic these days, because so many veterans that didn't go to the Middle Eastern conflicts and were in CONUS as support feel left out of the "action." Problem is that everyone is sensitive about what is worn on the uniform, much if it for very good reason. Combat action is a hard thing for people to get because of the political aspects of various operations, and what the US Government is willing to fess up to when deploying forces to some these sensitive theaters.
I was in Somalia as a Corpsman assigned to BSSG-5's 7th ESB. My battalion supported the entire occupation supplying the fuel farm, water treatment plant, and supported many projects with our combat engineer company. I was company corpsman for the Engineer Company as well as one of the support corpsman for EOD and the fuel farm/water plant.
We were targeted by snipers (poor ones, hence why I'm thankfully alive) of the Somali warlord's insurgents on countless occasions. During the entire time we were in that country, we were promised that we would be awarded a combat action, UN medal (of some kind relevant to the operation) among other things. The UN drug its feet, and the US Government refused us the combat action--until TWENTY YEARS LATER!! They finally have awarded my unit both combat action and a UN Operations Somalia medal.
But that's not all, the US NAVY is just as bad about awarding acknowledgement where it is due. I have broken service. I was honorably discharged in 1995 and re-entered service as a Journalist (At the time we were called "JOs") and even though I had earned the FMF Service, and eventually the warfare pin when it was created (retroactively) the chain of command on my ship REFUSED to allow me to wear it!
Stolen valor comes in all forms shipmates! It comes from those who don't earn it, and also from those who deny it to those who HAVE earned it. To this day, I have never worn my complete awards, and I wouldn't squeeze into my old jumper now if I greased myself with Crisco to try, so I am especially pissed off by those who wear those awards who never earned them. Especially when i think about how those awards I did earn would have potentially changed the course of my career and fundamentally my life--by the merits those awards would provide when calculating my advancement points when I was on active duty. There were times when I missed promotion to HM3 by just a small fraction of a point. The combat action would have pushed me over the tier into the promotion. The only reason why I got out when I did the first time was because I was so frustrated with the NEC of 8404 and being passed over for advancement because I didn't brown-nose people enough, that I decided to take a break. (Somalia had a great deal to do with this as hindsight has taught me. It fundamentally changed how I viewed the world and the people in it and around me. My acceptance to blindly follow orders all but evaporated and people that took advantage of others to achieve promotions in my rate just blew my mind and fueled my already formed anger issues due to combat action--which wasn't "officially" recognized by my government policy makers.
But don't get me wrong, I'm not jaded. . . not really. I am well past it now because there is nothing that can be done about what HAS. All I can do is live my life and be the best human being I can--being a veteran is one way of doing that and it can never be taken away from me.
Eventually, the VA might catch up with me on all the right paperwork if I hound them enough about it, and perhaps I will someday receive an official letter of reward in a presentation--though I won't expect it. I had to dig up the information on my own through the US NAVY .mil website and other official government pages. I did this so I could verify what i actually rated to wear after hearsay through other veterans instigated me to look into my Mogadishu service--among other things.
I had the privilege to serve both the USMC on the ground and the US NAVY as a sailor in the surface fleet on a carrier. Despite any misgivings I may have had in a more immature past version of myself, most of my memories I've hung on to have been the good ones.
Stolen valor many times goes unrecognized due to ignorance of the facts about the individual wearing the uniform. But when we are out in public, if something stands out to the point of rediculousness, then we have a duty to point it out and correct that indiscretion.
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