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Phony SEALS

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Sir Rodney:
Sir James brought up a very interesting point.  Most people I know who served in any branch of the military don’t go around advertising it at every opportunity.  Most young people (18-40 year old) are happy to talk about their service if you bring it up first.

My father’s Vietnam generation is a little different as they usually don’t talk about their experience much, if at all.  I know very little about my father’s tour with the Army in Vietnam and he has never volunteered much at all.  I don’t fit the definition of an Army brat as I only spent the first 6 months of my life near Fort Benning just as my father was getting out.

People who blab nonstop about their military heroics immediately send up a red flag for me.

Sir Wolf:
ya this is always a sticky point when i do WW2 reenactment. mainly because the vets are still out there visiting. some people don't want any medals/ ribbons etc others say to be period correct you need to look and have exactly what they had. my group has do's and don'ts as to which and what they wear.

Sir Matthew:
I have a freind who was a SEAL and is not out of the service working as a private security contractor with the Afghan government. Impersonating a SEAL to one of them is a very good way to get yourself seriously hurt. Those guys take that way personally. He never really talked about what he did or where he was, he's not allowed to for security reasons and while he never denied what he did in the service, he also didn't advertise it. Again, for security reasons they aren't allowed to. His family and close personal freinds knew what he did, but we had no idea where he was stationed, which team he was part of or what he was doing on the team. Anyone who makes those kind of claims and advertises what they were/did is probably either flat out lying or at the very least embelishing the truth.

As for what we do, I don't think there is even a comparison. I would even go so far as to say it's not even the same as the WW2 or even Vietnam reenactors. Most people dressing up and reenacting either of those eras are obviously too young to have been there. I know Vietnam isn't all that long ago, but most reenactors I saw from that era are far too young to have fought even in the later part of the war. I think that to reenact the different time periods and wars as we do is our way of bringing honor to those who were there. It's also our way of ensuring that future generations don't forget their sacrifices or repeat the same mistakes that were made then.

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