{"id":77047,"date":"2018-01-09T11:00:22","date_gmt":"2018-01-09T16:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=77047"},"modified":"2022-01-23T22:46:29","modified_gmt":"2022-01-24T03:46:29","slug":"melvin-douglas-needless-embellishment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=77047","title":{"rendered":"Melvin Douglas; needless embellishment"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Our partners at Military Phonies<\/a> send us their work on this fellow Melvin Curry Douglas<\/a> who claims to be 20-year-veteran of the US Marine Corps as well as a combat veteran of Beirut, Grenada, Honduras, Panama, Desert Storm and Kosovo. He also claims to have left the Corps as a Gunnery Sergeant (E-7).<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He was a drill instructor, briefly, in 1994;<\/p>\n

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

According to his records, Douglas left the Marine Corps as a Staff Sergeant in 1994, eight before the 20-year mark that he claims. He did serve in the Gulf War and he served aboard the USS Guam in the Adriatic Sea while that ship was supporting Operation Provide Promise in Bosnia and Herzegovina. <\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Military Phonies, a summary;<\/p>\n

What is clear is that his records do not support his claim of being in Grenada or Beirut. He was with BLT 1\/6 at the time and they did not participate in either. The 31st MAU was offshore of Beirut briefly and had 3\/3 on board, but they left the area when needed elsewhere. Douglas was with 3rd MARDIV (Okinawa) at the time so conceivably could have been a member of BLT 3\/3. If he was and the ship was off shore, then he would be a Beirut veteran.<\/p>\n

On page 9 of the FOIA results, it shows that Douglas was awarded a Sea Service Deployment Ribbon (SSDR) on 19 Nov 1983. He was with 3rd MARDIV at the time so this award could not be related to BLT 1\/8. BLT 1\/8 members received a SSDR for ending their mission to Beirut around this same date.<\/p>\n

Douglas claims he was with BLT 1\/8, but he joined 1\/8 much later in June 1984. BLT 1\/8 and BLT 3\/3 were not part of the Grenada invasion on 25 Oct 1983, so by claiming he was in Grenada it undermines his Beirut claim since his records do not support that.<\/p>\n

We suspect that the claim of being in six combat zones were a result of ships that he deployed on perhaps entered the territorial waters of regional skirmishes. Due to the billets that he held at the time (i.e. Marine Detachment on USS Missouri, etc.), Douglas would not be in a position to go ashore and participate in ground operations.<\/p>\n

This is parsing words \u2013 having \u201csix combat zones under your belt\u201d and being in combat are two different things but it is implied they are one and the same. He did state his claim emphatically when he spoke of \u201cmy days as a killer on the battlefields of Panama, Grenada, Honduras, Beirut, Kosovo, and The Gulf War\u201c, so there is little room for doubt about what Douglas was claiming.<\/p>\n

To wrap this up \u2013 Douglas\u2019 military records do not support a claim of him being in combat in Grenada or Beirut. This casts some doubt that he was a Beirut veteran but the possibility exists that his ship was in territorial waters briefly, which would qualify. The fact remains that he was not a combat veteran of either Beirut or Grenada, according to his records.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our partners at Military Phonies send us their work on this fellow Melvin Curry Douglas who … Melvin Douglas; needless embellishment<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":77048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,391],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77047","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\/77047","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=77047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/77048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}