Several of you sent us this link to the latest Army Times story about SFC Dillard Johnson, whose book calls him the “deadliest soldier”. Apparently, as he did when I talked to him the other day, Johnson still blames his publisher for the tag, and everything else that’s wrong with the story;
Johnson is the first to admit the claims are bogus. He blames the hype on his book publisher, HarperCollins, which he says ignored his efforts to tone down sensational parts and spread the credit.
“The actual numbers that squadron came up with are incorrect. And the actual numbers that the U.S. Army had were incorrect,” Johnson said. “We didn’t go back into the compounds and count bodies, we left. We shot people for 28 miles, but nobody went over there and counted people.”
Yeah, well we knew the claims were bogus, but there they are on the book jacket, regardless. As I said the other day, he sent me his DD214 which I promised that I wouldn’t publish. I had some questions about it and I emailed my concerns which included; he’s never been infantry, but he has a CIB. No one on the planet is authorized a second award of the CAB, yet there it is. He has senior jumpwings, but there’s no mention of either the Basic Airborne Course or the Jumpmaster course. There’s a Southwest Asia Service Medal with only one bronze star. Mine has three silver stars for Desert Shield/Desert Storm/Provide Comfort. He has ONE Good Conduct Medal in 20 years? He claims that he has a boatload of sniper kills as the unit (E7) sniper – but no sniper training is listed.
So, he wrote back;
Yep your right I just looked I never did the full sniper school only did the short MTT at Stewart. So I never said I went to the course so there should be no issue there. I guess I missed the other items I had a hard time getting my MSM on there when I retired. My secondary of 11B should still be on my ERB that you have. I will look and see if I have a copy of that I have my Cert for JP school.
That was on June 28th and I haven’t heard back and I looked at his ERB again, and I don’t see an 11B secondary, but that might be these old eyes malfunctioning again. I’m guess that an MTT at Fort Stewart means that a mobile training team came to Stewart, but the training should still generate an academic report and an annotation on the ERB, I would think, but I could be wrong. I just know that two weeks of German language training is on my 2-1, so sniper training would rise to that level of importance in my mind. I got an MSM after I retired, too, so it’s not on my DD2214, but then I don’t claim to have one, it’s certainly not worth the time to get it on a DD215, it’s only an MSM. I’d get sniper training on my DD214 before I’d fight to get an MSM on it.
From the Army Times article;
“Dillard was a good soldier,” retired Command Sgt. Maj. Anthony Broadhead told Army Times. “However, he tends to exaggerate a bit.”
Broadhead is in the book, as the then-sergeants first class and their crews destroyed an Iraqi police compound and fought off an ambush in late March 2003.
“This is a very smart guy tactically,” said Broadhead, who added that he hasn’t read the book yet. “He’s a good guy to have with you in combat, but he’s self-absorbed into being some sort of hero.”
Yeah, I bought the book a few weeks back, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to read it yet. I’m waiting for my inquiries to be completely answered. Someone tells me that the DD214 stinks and he’s having some AG-types read it, so we’ll see, one way or the other.
UPDATED: I talked to SFC Johnson this morning and he’s sent me documentation for his CIB from when he was assigned to 2/18th Infantry of the 197th for Desert Storm. He also sent documentation for Jumpmaster School at Fort Bragg when he was with the 82d Airborne Division. So we can lay those issues to rest.
