{"id":65651,"date":"2016-05-08T09:00:07","date_gmt":"2016-05-08T13:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=65651"},"modified":"2022-01-23T23:31:08","modified_gmt":"2022-01-24T04:31:08","slug":"james-w-fritch-phony-beirut-and-desert-storm-vet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=65651","title":{"rendered":"James W. Fritch; phony Beirut and Desert Storm vet"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"fritch-facebook\"<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

The folks at Military Phony<\/a> sent us their work on this James Fritch<\/a> fellow who did an interview with the Norwich Bulletin<\/a> (the article didn’t make the internet edition, but Military Phony has a photo of the article<\/a>). He talked about some of his derring-do during his military career;<\/p>\n

In the service: James Fritch, 57 of Plainfield, followed a family tradition and enlisted in the military as a reservist at 22. He went active duty at 23 and served from 1980 to 1992, first in the Air Force and then the Army. \u201cIt always seemed like a thing to do,\u201d he said. \u201cMy family has always served in the military, either here in the states or in Germany. So I was just following tradition.\u201d Fritch started off in the Air Force as a law enforcement specialist. He transferred to the Army to train in medicine and special operations and served as a special forces medical specialist. \u201cI loved everything,\u201d he said of his time in the military. \u201cThe camaraderie, the pride everyone took in the job they were doing. The ability to serve my country was a joy.\u201d <\/p>\n

Fritch was in Beirut in 1983 when the Marine Compound was bombed, killing 241 U.S. military personnel, and was in country during the U.S. embassy bombing that killed 63 people and the 1984 bombing of the U.S. embassy annex building. On the day of the Marine Compound bombings, Fritch and his unit were in their tents only a kilometer away. When they heard the blast, his unit rushed to the barracks and tried to rescue survivors and remove bodies from the rubble. For two weeks after the attack, Fritch helped identify bodies, working 18 to 20 hours a day. \u201cWe tried to return them to their families,\u201d he said. Fritch served for a total of seven months in and out of Beirut as part of a small unit focused on anti-terrorism and finding terrorist leaders in Lebanon. Fritch also took part in Operation Desert Shield in Iraq as a reconnaissance team, but in 1992, old injuries forced him to retire. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to leave my buddies,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were very close-knit.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, first of all, he was in the Air Force, and they didn’t think that he was in Beirut;<\/p>\n

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

The Air Force thought that he was at Rhein Mein Air Base in West Germany during the operations in Beirut. The Air Force was so so convinced that he was in Germany, that they gave him an Air Force Achievement Medal for his work while he was stationed there;<\/p>\n

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

He did work with the identification and preparation of the remains of the victims of the Beirut bombing, but if he felt the explosion, and then ran to help with the recovery efforts, the bomb was large enough to shake him awake in Germany, and he’s one stalwart MFer to run from Frankfurt to Beirut and then get back before the Air Force missed him.<\/p>\n

Next up is his claim that he was on a reconnaissance team during Desert Storm. He was in the Army during Desert Storm, but the Army thought that he was a residency student at Fort Bragg’s MEDDAC while he was really snoopin’ and poopin’ in Iraq. You’d have thought someone would have noticed that he was missing;<\/p>\n

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

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

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

Stupid Army thought he was a 91C hospital medic when he was really a snoopin’ pooper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The folks at Military Phony sent us their work on this James Fritch fellow who did … James W. Fritch; phony Beirut and Desert Storm vet<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":65652,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,391],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-phony-soldiers","category-valorvultures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65651","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=65651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/65652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}