{"id":27247,"date":"2011-10-30T12:32:20","date_gmt":"2011-10-30T16:32:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=27247"},"modified":"2011-10-30T12:32:20","modified_gmt":"2011-10-30T16:32:20","slug":"the-media-is-going-to-believe-what-they-want","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=27247","title":{"rendered":"The media is going to believe what they want"},"content":{"rendered":"

We first dicussed Ralph \u201cCotton\u201d Lawson<\/a> back in August when we discovered an article about him and his “Most Interesting Life” of winning the Second World War ll by his lonesome. Well, here we sit months later an the newspaper that ran the original story, finally comes out and tells the real story<\/a>;<\/p>\n

The Union Daily Times contacted the U.S. Department of Defense for clarification. Lt. Cmdr. Alana Garas of the Navy Office of Information in Washington, D.C. provided the following summary: “He joined our Navy Aug. 13, 1941 and served until Aug. 13, 1947. He was discharged as an RM1 (Radioman 1st class). His NAVPERS-553 (DD-214) states he ‘served on’ the S.S. Challenger, COMFLTAIRWING 17 (aboard the Cumberland Sound), S.S. Oregonian, U.S.S. Melville, U.S.S. Pine Island, U.S.S. Rehoboth and Acorn 45 in the Philippines.” Garas also addressed the status of Lawson’s awards.<\/p>\n

“His awards include the American Defense Ribbon, American Theatre Ribbon, Philippine Liberation Medal, Good Conduct Medal Japanese Occupation Ribbon, European Theater Ribbon and the World War II Victory Medal – NO Navy Cross and NO Purple Heart,” she stated.<\/p>\n

Does this mean there is no record of Ralph Lawson serving as a pilot? “Based on the information that was available in Mr. Lawson’s record, no,” Garas stated. “If Mr. Lawson had been a naval aviator, I believe information regarding flight school and the date he was designated as a naval aviator would have been included.” The Aug. 13 story also stated, “Lawson had already acquired two years worth of college credit while serving, and when he returned, he earned a bachelor’s degree in business from Newberry College.” “In order to be a naval aviator (pilot), one must be a commissioned naval offi-cer,” Garas stated. “If Mr. Lawson had not entered the Navy with a degree, he would not have been commissioned.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So after that, authoritative information from the Navy, why would the “journalist” even include a convoluted explanation from “Cotton”?<\/p>\n

“In ’47 they let me go back to an enlisted rank so I could get out and go back to school,” Lawson said. “So that’s what I did. I went to Wofford. I could have stayed in and retired, but I didn’t want to stay that long.” In addition to his discharge papers, Lawson has printed information con-firming his story, which he said was a copy of his ship’s log.<\/p>\n

“I understand that some of the records could have gotten lost,” he said. “We were hopping from one island to the next.” Lawson also said he has no idea why records of his service as a naval aviator cannot be located.<\/p>\n

“People are going to believe what they want to believe anyway,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, all officers really want to back to being enlisted so they can get oout of the military sooner, I’m sure none of them thought to simply resign their commission.<\/p>\n

Now, I understand that journalists have to provde both sides of the story, but this doofus doesn’t even take the column inches it would take to call Bullshit on Larson. And lets him get in the last word. Old fools are the worst fools.<\/p>\n

Thanks to UpNorth for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We first dicussed Ralph \u201cCotton\u201d Lawson back in August when we discovered an article about him … The media is going to believe what they want<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-phony-soldiers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27247","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27247\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}