Category: Phony soldiers

Someone sent us their work on this fellow, Frederick “Rick” Mulanix, who told a journalist at West Hawaii Today the story of his time in Vietnam;

When he was 17 years old, Rick Mulanix served the first of his two tours of duty in Vietnam. Mulanix fought valiantly for his country and made tremendous sacrifices while in Vietnam. For his valor, he received four Purple Hearts, two Bronze Stars, two Silver Stars, a combat infantry badge and an Air Force accommodation.

[…]

Mulanix was a member of the 1st Battalion 7th Cavalry Second Platoon under Lt. Co, Harold G Moore. He was involved in the infamous battle of Landing Zone X-Ray on November 15, 1965, in the Ia Drang Valley, Central Highlands, Vietnam. It was the first major battle between the United States Army and the North Vietnamese Army — recently documented on the PBS special “Vietnam,” and written about in the critically acclaimed book We Were Soldiers Once… And Young.

Mulanix fought bravely for his country and three days before his second tour ended, he was sent to Da Nang to be cleared and sent home. While in Da Nang, the Viet Cong were on the perimeter of the airport and Mulanix was sent out on a search and destroy mission. The Viet Cong were waiting for the Americans, and a major firefight ensued. Air support was called in on the radio, and tragically the wrong coordinates placed the air attack directly on top of Mulanix and fellow American soldiers. The friendly fire killed several Americans and gravely wounded Mulanix.

During the firefight and airstrike, Mulanix suffered injuries to both legs, his shoulder and had a head wound from being shot. While the young soldier recovered from these traumatic, easily identifiable wounds, he did not know at the time that he would later suffer internally from massive chemical exposure.

During his two tours, Mulanix spent much of his time in dense jungle regions. The triple canopy jungle prevented enemy supply lines and troop aggregations from being seen for the air. Millions of gallons of the herbicide and defoliant Agent Orange were sprayed by aircraft to defoliate and clear the jungle. Mulanix and thousands of others were consistently exposed to this poison. He still remembers the day a Dow Company representative came into camp and told the soldiers that the chemical was perfectly harmless to humans, and he remembers being covered by it multiple times.

In case the article disappears, here are the screen shots.

Mr Mulanix claims that he was with 1st Battalion 7th Cavalry Second Platoon under Lt. Co, Harold G Moore and involved in the infamous battle of Landing Zone X-Ray on November 15, 1965, in the Ia Drang Valley. According to the National Personnel Records Center, Mr Mulanix was in the Air Force and he was a security guard at Torrejon Air Base in Spain on November 15th, 1965.

In fact, he never went to Vietnam, he never earned two Purple Hearts, two Silver Stars, two Bronze Star Medals, a Combat Infantryman Badge. He didn’t even earn the Air Force Commendation Medal that he claimed to have in the article.

He was stationed in Maine, in Spain and in Germany. He was in the Air Force, not in the Army and certainly not in Vietnam. Mulanix wasn’t exposed to Agent Orange, someone at the VAOIG should check on that.

While we sympathize with him, that he lost his leg to cancer (supposedly), he didn’t get cancer from Agent Orange resulting from his service in Vietnam, that much is clear.

The New York Times Magazine publishes a letter from a daughter, entitled “Should I Reveal That My Dad Pretended to Be a Vietnam Vet?“. The daughter tells the story of her father who had everyone in the family convinced that he was a wounded Vietnam veteran;

I was with my father when he purchased a Purple Heart medal at an antiques fair. He explained that he had lost his, that it was possibly with his first wife. Although I thought it was odd he wouldn’t simply ask for it back, I was a young person who trusted her father, and I didn’t press him.

As he was making plans for the end of his life, he instructed my stepmother not to include his veteran status in his obituary. She honored his wish, though she didn’t understand why. After he died, she wanted to know more about his military service and details about where he had served, in the event that she was entitled to survivor benefits. She sent away for his records and received back his DD Form 214 (Certificate of Release or Discharge from Active Duty) showing that he had been honorably discharged in 1968 for being medically unsuitable for duty before he even finished basic training.

We’ve seen this same scenario play out hundreds of times in the years that we’ve been in the stolen valor business. We’ve had to force family members remove their undeserving dearly departed from veteran cemeteries, we’ve had to force altered headstones when inaccuracies were involved. I remember when I called one of our partners once, he had just got off the phone with a widow who discovered that her recently-deceased husband wasn’t eligible for interment in a veteran cemetery.

I had the daughter of a friend who joined the Marine Corps and she recalled the stories that her father had told her of his derring-do as a Marine, so she asked us to get his FOIA for her. She discovered that he had never earned the Navy Cross or Purple Heart he had claimed – he had never heard a shot fired in anger. She had suspected, but the verification that he had lied crushed her and drove her further from her father’s arms.

The NYT advice columnist responds in part;

Hard as this would have been, it would have been better if you’d taken up your suspicions with your father while he was around to explain himself. He could have apologized; you could have forgiven him.

Should you reveal the truth now? Just as truthfulness matters in relationships with the living, understanding important moral facts about the dead is valuable as well. People who were close to him and have a memory to hold on to will be in this respect better off if you tell them the facts. Some will also, no doubt, be upset. (Your sister may remain in denial.) But that’s part of the proper emotional response to other people’s behavior. Not everything that feels bad is bad: Some pain is worth it.

And no, you don’t owe it to your father to treat this as “water under the bridge.” The dead can have an interest in our respecting their privacy. But he isn’t entitled to have his reputation protected after his death, because he was never entitled to that protection in the first place.

There is a lot to be said about correcting the historical record. To all of the valor thieves out there who lurk on these pages; fix your lies, especially with your families. You really don’t want their last memory of you to be a liar.