OK, I read the article and it doesn’t make sense to me. Born in 1956, enlists in 1973 (at age 17, possible with parental consent) but is facing 15 years in prison for drug trade. Jurisdiction issues results in the charges getting dropped and he gets back into the military (huh?!). In 1984 pulls a gun on a sleeping police officer but eventually finds Jesus via the LDS.
The ribbons are… not correct… the CAB is most certainly worn above everything else. I’m going to study his ribbons and see if anything else is way off (in addition to what has been mentioned), it’s hard as it’s such a poor picture. But, it looks like he just made something up and threw it on.
I also notice that to the left of the badge folks are calling the CAB he’s wearing Army aviator or aircrew wings. Not inconceivable, but it’s another red flag.
Enlisted can’t be aviators; you’ve got to be an officer or warrant officer. At least that was true when I was in 20 years ago; things may have changed. Enlisted can be aircrew. But there aren’t that many, and those that are don’t tend to carry M16/M4 and wear camo as opposed to flight gear. Although a guy who’s supposed been in the Army off and on for 41 years may have changed jobs a time or two.
I almost feel insulted.
M16s have triangular front sight posts. The shrouded front sight post and the gas collar are obvious SAW characteristics. Not to mention the magazine sticking out of the side of the weapon system which is unique to that weapon. The large rear peep sight, as opposed to one integrated into a carrying handle like the M16, is also visibile.
Not to mention the fact that the air crew/aviation badge is never worn below the ribbons either.
Can anybody tell what he has above his ribbons? I cannot make it out with any certainty.
That was my first thought as well; if this guy had been in the Army since 1973 by the time the 2003 Iraq War came around, he would have to have been some kind of very senior NCO, or he’d have fallen prey to the “out” part of the “up or out” military promotion procedures.
I did a google image search and the picture is a little bit clearer. It almost looks like a CIB above the ribbons. I was Navy, not Army, but I’m pretty sure you can’t have both.
Also I think I see the National Defense Service ribbon at the top left of row 2, which is pretty high, but it’s difficult to tell for sure.
I don’t have your knowledge of the military but weren’t some older reservists called up for support jobs? I guy I worked with was one of the first reservists activated in 1990. And we joked about it after he returned because he was in the Coast Guard Reserve.
But he said that he hadn’t been surprised when he got activated. While he was in the Coast Guard, his specialty was supplies - essentially he set up warehouses. And when the United States was building up its military presence in Saudi Arabia, some of the first people that got sent in were people like him. They were the ones that had to set up new facilities to handle the flood of equipment and supplies that was coming in right behind them.
I have Aircrewman Wings earned for my first MOS but I’m now a 12B Engineer (after being a 19K). Of course I’m too damn old to be humping the SAW. That’s what privates are for.
You can have both. But both can’t be worn at the same time. The CIB is only authorized for Infantry and Special Forces (11 and 18 series). It’s also only if you are in an Infantry or SF unit at the time of the action. So an 11B can get a CIB on one deployment when assigned to an infantry unit and then get awarded a CAB when assigned to a non-infantry unit and gets involved in a combat action. But there is not an infantryman on earth that would wear the CAB instead of the CIB. And you can’t wear both at the same time.
But I can’t tell if that is a CIB from the picture.
Thanks Bear! You were one of the people I hoped would look at it.
Johnson is the one claiming to have all of these fantastic experiences, which rather conveniently, are all unverifiable. All three photos, including the one with the medal in question, are supplied by Johnson.
He also is quoted as saying, ironically,
My emphasis.
We can quibble if he’s actually claiming to be a war hero or not, but he is a self-proclaimed Black Panther “associate,” says he was almost a murderer, a convicted felon who got off on a technicality and allowed to reenlist, and other equally improbable stories, none of which can be verified. The pictures he supplied are bogus, as Bear_Nenno has pointed out, and you want to pick apart the question of he is claiming to be a “war hero” or not. Whatever. Let him sue me for libel, that will be an interesting deposition.
Nope. The credit for the photo is to Johnson himself.
Yeah, the Deseret News is a Mormon-run newspaper pretty much for Mormons, and article is meant to be faith-promoting, as can be seen by the comments.
Interesting. Thanks for pointing that out.
Yeah. There is that.
What’s the point of this question? (I ask already knowing the answer because of who the poster is.)
As others have pointed out, this was a passing mention of the possibility of bias about a church-run newspaper having a faith-promoting story about one of the members of its faith. Were this story to run in a newspaper run by any other religion in similar circumstances, I have complete faith (heh, heh) that others would also find it relevant.
Ironically, your objections, as an active Mormon, most likely did more than my two-word description to call attention to the Mormon aspect of the story, one which I as a former Mormon, deliberately downplayed. It could have been quite easy for me to have sensationalized it, such as making reference to Paul H. Dunn and his war stories.
Right, I get that. I’m just wondering if the John Johnson in the pic I linked is the same guy, because he appears to have a CAB, AC wings, and a Navy ESWS on his uniform, along with 10th Mountain XVIII Airborne patches.
This guy doesn’t work in a lumber mill, Derleth.