{"id":133626,"date":"2022-11-16T11:57:56","date_gmt":"2022-11-16T16:57:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=133626"},"modified":"2022-11-16T12:27:11","modified_gmt":"2022-11-16T17:27:11","slug":"phony-veterans-day-story-whats-the-deel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=133626","title":{"rendered":"Phony Veteran’s Day Story – What’s the Deel?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Veterans Day always seems to have a lot of people coming out of the woodwork.\u00a0 It becomes a marriage of reporters wanting to meet the public’s demand for a feel-good story appropriate for the day and those people that are all too willing to fill that void, even if it isn’t true.<\/p>\n

Ronald Deel came forward with a story of being a Marine in Vietnam, claiming to have been a P.O.W. for 183 days, a 2ndLt sniper and wounded three times.<\/p>\n

\n

Eastern Shore Marine reflects on combat, captivity in Vietnam<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

By Mike Detmer\u00a0 |\u00a0 November 11, 2022<\/p>\n

EASTON \u2014 One Greensboro Marine\u2019s service in Vietnam including combat, injury, capture and rescue.<\/p>\n

Ronald Deel was born in Ocean City and joined the Marines in 1967.<\/p>\n

He currently lives in Greensboro, where he has resided for 27 years, and handles sales for Coastal Pools in Queenstown.<\/p>\n

Deel chose the Marines as a ROTC pre-med student at the University of Maryland.<\/p>\n

After training, he was deployed to Pleiku, located in the Central Highlands, as a second lieutenant assigned as a sniper in the secretive Phoenix program.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was wounded three times, all at the same time,\u201d Deel recalled, \u201cI set up on a target, squeezed off a round … I was hit three times, and that was the end of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I woke up, I had been captured,\u201d Deel said.<\/p>\n

Deel\u2019s commanding officer had previously told him and his spotter that unlike the normal practice of not leaving Americans living or dead on the battlefield, there would be no effort to rescue them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we were ever captured, not only would they not be coming after us, but they didn\u2019t know us,\u201d Deel said. \u201cWe (the U.S. troops there) had no authority to be doing what we did. We had no dog tags, no identification, no uniform. We were as covert as you could be because of what we did.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey didn\u2019t want the American people knowing we did things like that,\u201d he said of the classified nature of their mission.<\/p>\n

After capture, Deel was a prisoner of war for 183 days, and he doesn\u2019t remember being freed. \u201cI don\u2019t really remember it, I wasn\u2019t in real good shape,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey came, they evaced me out. By the time I knew where I was, I was in Pearl City naval hospital,\u201d Deel said.<\/p>\n

After he was stabilized, he was shipped to the hospital in San Diego. After he recovered he was discharged.<\/p>\n

Deel said he doesn\u2019t think about the experience much: \u201cI try not to.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scars after the war were more than physical.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor twenty-something years, I carried a gun everywhere I went. I lived in morbid (fear) that somebody was going to grab hold of me and lock me up and abuse me psychologically and physically.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was based on his experienced [sic] as a P.O.W.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A research ninja associated with our community stayed on top of this after a few red flags.<\/p>\n

CLAIM: Ronald Deel claims to have been a Vietnam POW for 183 days.
\nFACT: He does not show up on the Official DoD Database (DPAA).<\/p>\n

CLAIM: Deel claimed to have joined the Marines in 1967. He claims to have attended ROTC at the University of Maryland as a Pre-Med student. He said he was a 2LT in Vietnam.
\nFACT: He was born in May 1953. In 1967, he would have been 16<\/del><\/span> 13-14 years old. Doubt he was a Pre-Med student in 1967. Would the Marines have taken him in 1967 as a 16 year old?<\/p>\n

CLAIM: He claims he was medically treated at the Pearl City Naval Hospital.
\nFACT: That hospital does not exist. There is a Pearl City in Hawaii. If he is talking about Pearl Harbor, then why would he say Pearl City?<\/p>\n

After contacting the journalist, who was a Marine himself, and shedding some doubt on the story, the ninja informs us that after a confession by Deel, the newspaper retracted the story.<\/p>\n

\n

Editor’s Note<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIn the Friday, Nov. 11 edition of the Star Democrat, a story was published concerning a person who had allegedly served in the U.S. armed forces. Upon further investigation and reporting, it was found that the subject of the story, Ronald Deel, fabricated his story of service.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Well, it played out on Veteran’s Day so some juice got squeezed out of the lemon before they realized the lemon was sour… metaphorically speaking.\u00a0 Kudos to reporter Mike Detmer for the follow-up and retraction.\u00a0 Thank you for your<\/em> service.<\/p>\n

So, it sounds like Deel wasn’t in the Viet of the Nam.\u00a0 \u00a0I wonder if he was at least a ‘Vietnam Times’ veteran?\u00a0 \u00a0 Think it is a good idea that he should keep wearing the Purple Heart ballcap?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Veterans Day always seems to have a lot of people coming out of the woodwork.\u00a0 It … Phony Veteran’s Day Story – What’s the Deel?<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":663,"featured_media":133628,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[396,461,408,391,446],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marinecorpsposer","category-purple-heart","category-stolen-valor","category-valorvultures","category-vietnam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/663"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=133626"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133629,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133626\/revisions\/133629"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/133628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=133626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=133626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=133626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}