The Thompson Submachine Gun drum magazines typically have 50-round capacity. There may be something in the 1050-round neighborhood, but a 450-round magazine would be rather large, especially in a rotary configuration.
Maybe his Thompson was belt-fed. :rolleyes:
It’s from the movie Ronin. Rober DeNiro’s character (Sam) outs one of the characters (Spence) who claims to be prior SAS. Sam challenges Spence to state what color the boathouse is in Hereford, allegedly because anyone that was in the SAS would know the answer.
1050 would certainly be a bit big as well 
They did make 100-round drums but I’ve read that they were noisy and slow to load so not very popular outside of the gangster set.
I’ve actually met quite a few Special Ops guys through the HORSE (STS squadrons, Combat Weather/Pararescue), and yeah, it’s just one of those things: nobody brags. If you have a suspicion, ask them what squadron they were in, where they were, and then later on use the power of the Internet to find out what they did. If they do brag, they’re spinning yarns and telling you a tale. . .
I mean, I’m active duty, but won’t bore you with the details of my airfield construction, even though I wasn’t special forces, most have this idyllic vision of RED HORSE as “Damned Up There”.
Most consider the details of the work “cool”, but it ain’t. You just do what you do.
Tripler
Now I’m gonna be a PowerPoint Ranger, in the AFRC Chairborne Corps. 
d’Oh!
I meant drums in the 50 to 100 round range…
Forget what these guys say. Just walk up to him and punch him in the face. If he kills you with his bare hands, you have your answer.
One of my teacher colleagues had obviously worked in the military, but he never boasted about it. He kindly offered to explain to pupils how you could live in the wild with just a small kit (items such as needle, thread, compass) and arranged for another class to have a go on an assault course at a local military base.
Several years later I noticed him reading a book about British soldiers in Germany when there were 4 zones of control (US, UK, Soviet and French). I borrowed it later and found a picture of my colleague. He had been an SAS officer and carried out missions in the Soviet Zone. The book stated he’d been targeted by the Soviets and had narrowly escaoped death a couple of times.
When I asked him about it, he gave a short description, then changed the subject.
As others have said, usually a boaster is a fake.
Yeah, the old Seven Samurai tactic. Get someone to hide inside the door with a stick, ready to hit him as he walks through. If he reacts and stops it, he’s clearly been in the special forces/is a samurai :D.
You’ve been reading too many Tom Clancy books. People who really have been in special ops units do talk about it and sometimes you can’t shut them up. It’s the black-ops members that aren’t supposed to talk. Most spec ops people aren’t involved in black ops; in fact they often have responsibilities that you wouldn’t consider “badass” although they are important, complex, and, well, specialized. For example the OP’s neighbor might have very well been a dentist or something, pulling wisdom teeth to win the hearts and minds of the people deep behind enemy lines (seriously).
No, it will not. Unless you are the veteran, or have the signed authorization of the veteran, or a deceased veteran’s next of kin, you will receive only limited information under the FOIA about his service in the U.S. armed forces. Specifically,
• Name
• Service Number
• Dates of Service
• Branch of Service
• Rank and Date of Rank
• Salary *
• Assignments and Geographical Locations
• Source of Commission *
• Military Education
• Promotion Sequence Number *
• Awards and decorations (Eligibility only, not actual medals)
• Duty Status
• Photograph
• Transcript of Court-Martial Trial
• Place of entrance and separation
Items marked with an asterisk are rarely available in the records.
And if the veteran is deceased:
• Place of birth
• Date and location of death
• Place of burial
Note that only the vet’s branch of service is given (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines), not his unit (e.g., Special Forces).
I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but it’s my personal experience that a veteran, any veteran, will not talk about what they did, solely because they did so damn much. If you’ve found a “bearded warrior” who didn’t shut up, I’d quietly listen to his stories, and the next day verify it somehow. There are some who do brag, but in my experience, it’s only been in quiet company, and then only over a couple of beers. . .
Tripler
“So there I was, over Grozny . . .”
There is a big distinction to be made related to your comment here.
Special Forces relates to a particular type of unit in the Army. Special operations iis entirely distinct from that. For instance, every unit in the Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) does special operations. What I do is no big secret, you can look it up easily on the Internet. It’s simply that the job is not within the purview of the “normal” forces. Gunships, for exmple, are not bombers, fighters or transports. Their job is not one of the “standard” jobs withing the Air Force. Therefore, they became a part of AFSOC, which is in turn a part of US Special Operations Command, which consists of jobs that run the gamut from the traditional “Snake eater” types to my job, which is simply a unique one.
I am in a special ops unit. I am not, however, a chairborne warrior who tells stories at bars. See the difference?
That’s all. Nothing more than a nitpick, but an important one.
Mmm. At least since the Civil War people have made careers out of faking military service. At the same time, since long before that people who have legitimate service records have made careers out of telling their tales ;). Grant made a good bit of money for his family for example shortly before his death when he had his memoirs published.
Not all braggarts are false. There’s veterans with interesting stories that aren’t lying, not all bragging is false, although a high percentage of it is.
And that’s all I’m saying: for the uninitiated, be prepared to turn on your BS-meter, and have a rock of sodium chloride in yer back pocket.
Martin, yer absolutely right: there are plenty of good men and women with pretty good stories to tell. However, in the case of the OP, it is rare to none that someone will advertise that, “Hey! Lookit me!! I was Special Forces, oooOOooooh!”
Tripler
There’s a lot of veterans who just don’t plain tell their story, and it’s those histories we miss.
Etymology of “snake-eater”?
There are only a handful in relation to the numbers of people who have served, but there are actually a number of bloggers who do just that.
They do all tend to flap more on the right wing than the left, but most of them have a good anecdote or two. Most of them also have tips on how to spot fakers.
You may be interested in three books about an SAS patrol deep behind enemy lines in Iraq.
The first is ‘Bravo Two Zero’, by Andy McNab. (All comments are Amazon reviews, but having read the books I agree with them.)
‘In January 1991, eight members of the SAS regiment embarked upon a top secret mission that was to infiltrate them deep behind enemy lines. Under the command of Sergeant Andy McNab, they were to sever the underground communication link between Baghdad and north-west Iraq, and to seek and destroy mobile Scud launchers. Their call sign: Bravo Two Zero. Each man laden with 15 stone of equipment, they patrolled 20 km across flat desert to reach their objective. Within days, their location was compromised. After a fierce firefight, they were forced to escape and evade on foot to the Syrian border. In the desperate action that followed, though stricken by hypothermia and other injuries, the patrol ‘went ballistic’. Four men were captured. Three died. Only one escaped. For the survivors, however, the worst ordeals were to come. Delivered to Baghdad, they were tortured with a savagery for which not even their intensive SAS training had prepared them. “Bravo Two Zero” is a breathtaking account of Special Forces soldiering: a chronicle of superhuman courage, endurance and dark humour in the face of overwhelming odds.’
Next came ‘The one that got away’ by Chris Ryan.
‘The SAS mission conducted behind Iraqi lines is one of the most famous stories of courage and survival in modern warfare. Of the eight members of the SAS regiment who set off, only one escaped capture. This is his story. Late on the evening of 24 January 1991 the patrol was compromised deep behind enemy lines in Iraq. A fierce fire-fight left the eight men miraculously unscathed, but they were forced to run for their lives. Their aim was to reach the Syrian border, 120 kilometres to the north-west, but during the first night the patrol accidentally broke into two groups, five and three. Chris Ryan found himself left with two companions. Nothing had prepared them for the vicious cold of the desert winter, and they began to suffer from hypothermia. During the night one of the men was to disappear in a blinding blizzard. The next day a goat-herd came across the two survivors. Chris’s remaining partner, went with him in search of food and was never to return. Left on his own, Chris Ryan beat off an Iraqi attack and set out alone. His greatest adventure was only just beginning. This is the story of courage under fire, of hairbreadth escapes, of the best trained soldiers in the world fighting against adverse conditions, and of one man’s courageous refusal to lie down and die.’
Finally comes ‘Soldier Five: The Real Truth About the Bravo Two Zero Mission’ by Michael Asher:
‘The Bravo Two Zero mission, in which an eight-man SAS patrol was discovered many miles behind Iraqui lines and had to make a run back for the border and safety, is probably the most famous incident involving British troops in the Gulf War. Two bestselling books–Bravo Two Zero and The One That Got Away–were published and two of the soldiers, using the pseudonyms “Andy McNab” and “Chris Ryan”, were launched into new careers as writers. Even the most uncritical reader of the two books would have been aware that some artistic licence had been employed. What Michael Asher claims is the truth about Bravo Two Zero is, however, astonishing. Asher, fluent in Arabic and familiar with the ways of the desert Arabs, travelled to Iraq 10 years after the Gulf War and re-traced the steps of the SAS patrol, finding Bedouin eyewitnesses to events. There is an almost comical disparity between McNab and Ryan’s version of the mission and the version Asher reports. According to McNab, when the patrol was discovered, it was by Iraqi soldiers and a furious firefight ensued with the SAS men downing a dozen or more men before fleeing. According to Asher, the mission was “compromised” by three Arab locals, one of them a man in his 70s, and the SAS wisely decided that discretion was the better part of valour and withdrew. According to Ryan, on his lonely journey to the Syrian border, he was obliged to kill two Iraqis, one with his bare hands. According to Asher’s sources, he omitted to mention this at his initial de-briefing. One of Asher’s aims in his book is to rehabilitate the reputation of Vince Phillips, one of the dead. Most readers of this book and of the tale told by the Arab who discovered Phillips’s body will probably decide that he has done so. Yet Asher does not seem motivated by a desire to denigrate the heroism of McNab and Ryan. We get the heroes we want and Asher understands that the Rambo-like exploits they reported were what we, and the media, demanded of them. Their real heroism, respected by both Asher and the Bedouins to whom he spoke, lay in their powers of endurance and determination when utterly isolated and alone, hundreds of miles inside enemy territory. In The Real Bravo Two Zero Asher has written a far better and more humane book than either of the two he deconstructs, but he still seems to understand why McNab and Ryan produced the books they did.’
Special Forces training usually involves extreme jungle survival… one good way of staying alive is killing and eating snakes, and troops are taught how to do this.
I guess it sounds so gruesome and different from ordinary life that it’s an image that stuck.
I don’t see this friend much anymore. We run in different circles now. I tried looking him up on Military.com but I couldn’t remember how he spelled his last name. For the name I tried, I got one hit which listed MOS as 12B1C, whatever that is, and a pay grade of E4. If it’s the same person, that obviously doesn’t jive with what he told me.
He tells me some stories which sound very believable, but then he tells me things like the thing about tommy guns. (Actually, he was telling someone else, but I was right next to him). I would think anyone who was an 18Z would know a lot about weapons he might encounter in the field, although he probably wouldn’t be able to quote muzzle velocities. He also told me a story about visiting some of his friends at Fort Bragg on vacation one time and claimed that the standards for joining SF had become very lax since he was in.
Anyway, it’s hard to figure out why he says this stuff. No one believes him and he certainly doesn’t do it to get girls. He told me he hadn’t been laid for several years before I met him and that was ten years ago.
That said, he is not a bad guy, just a little weird, and all my other friends are weird.
FWIW,
Rob
FWIW, this would be what’s called a “combat engineer”, which is essentially a ditch-digger who gets shot at. At the lower enlisted grades, essentially you’re talking about construction workers and everything that implies. I could easily see how a 12B would want to make people to think he had been something else.