{"id":36374,"date":"2013-06-23T14:27:26","date_gmt":"2013-06-23T18:27:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=36374"},"modified":"2013-06-23T14:43:27","modified_gmt":"2013-06-23T18:43:27","slug":"sfc-dillard-johnson-the-deadliest-soldier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=36374","title":{"rendered":"SFC Dillard Johnson; the deadliest soldier"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of you have sent links to the New York Post article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nypost.com\/p\/news\/national\/humble_hero_an_army_of_one_ccqcXGajsrui0A06YZ978H\">Sgt. 1st Class Dillard Johnson is the deadliest US soldier on record &#8211; with 2,746 kills<\/a>, so I guess that if I don&#8217;t write something, my inbox is going to fill up about him. There was an SFC Dillard J. Johnson in C 3\/7 Cav by a similar name. According to the <a href=\"http:\/\/valor.defense.gov\/Recipients\/ArmySilverStar.aspx\">DoD website<\/a>, he did indeed (or someone with that name) earn a Silver Star. The name at the DoD&#8217;s website is &#8220;SSG Dillard (No Middle Name) Johnson&#8221;, though. I&#8217;ve already written the author of the article, Mr. Buiso, how he confirmed the number of &#8220;kills&#8221; SFC Johnson has;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>With 2,746 confirmed kills, Sgt. 1st Class Dillard Johnson is the deadliest American soldier on record \u2014 and maybe the most humble.<\/p>\n<p>As a commander of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle nicknamed \u201cCarnivore,\u201d Johnson, 48, helped lead the ground assault during Operation Iraqi Freedom, overwhelming the enemy with a relentless show of military might that left a trail of dead in his wake.<\/p>\n<p>Johnson was obliged to report confirmed kills to his superiors, cataloging the dead in a green journal that revealed the astonishing tally \u2014 which only began to come light as he and co-writer James Tarr were researching his exploits for his memoir, also titled \u201cCarnivore.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;m not trashing anyone, or calling anyone a liar in the absence of evidence to the contrary, but I&#8217;d sure like to see this &#8220;green journal&#8221;. I&#8217;ve never heard of a tally of &#8220;kills&#8221; cataloged in the name of individual soldiers and I can&#8217;t imagine that anyone would participate in such a grisly practice.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>He counted the dead by tallying rifles \u2014 and human heads \u2014 among the mangled or charred wreckage left behind by the Carnivore.<\/p>\n<p>In his second tour, in 2005, he took up sniping, logging 121 kills, his longest from 821 yards, a skill that was honed hunting in Kentucky. His total is second only to the late Chris Kyle, the Navy SEAL who had 160 kills.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It might be true, who am I to question it &#8211; I wasn&#8217;t there, but members of a sister unit are questioning it in my emails, so&#8230;I have to think there&#8217;s something weak in the story. But, let&#8217;s sit and wait this one out and see what we can shake loose in the public forum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of you have sent links to the New York Post article Sgt. 1st Class &hellip; <a title=\"SFC Dillard Johnson; the deadliest soldier\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=36374\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">SFC Dillard Johnson; the deadliest soldier<\/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":[170],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-who-knows"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36374","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=36374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36374\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}