{"id":82328,"date":"2018-10-16T07:31:30","date_gmt":"2018-10-16T11:31:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=82328"},"modified":"2022-01-23T22:42:59","modified_gmt":"2022-01-24T03:42:59","slug":"michael-sonny-smith-fake-bronze-star-fake-purple-heart-fake-service-in-vietnam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=82328","title":{"rendered":"Michael “Sonny” Smith; Fake Bronze Star, Fake Purple Heart, Fake service in Vietnam."},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The fine people over at militaryphony.com<\/a> send us their case on\u00a0 Sonny Smith who has been telling stories about his acts of daring-do while he was in Vietnam.<\/p>\n

\n

‘I Got Medals, But I’m No Hero’ – Vietnam veteran Sonny Smith finally shares his story<\/h3>\n

Most people who have seen him around town likely know that Sonny Smith, a 35-year resident of Eureka Springs, is a veteran. But only a small number of folks know the details of his war service, and those are the members of his American Legion Post No. 9.<\/p>\n

The full story of the Vietnam War has yet to be told by anyone, he says, and some veterans are still reluctant to share their experiences.<\/p>\n

But for the Lovely County Citizen’s Veterans Day commemoration, Smith decided to share his story in a typed letter:<\/p>\n

M. Sonny Smith was born in Glendale, Calif., on Aug. 20, 1950.<\/p>\n

After being drafted into the U.S. Army in August 1968 at the age of 18, and after basic combat training, field radio mechanic school and the U.S. Army Airborne Jump School, Smith was sent to Fort Bragg, N.C., headquarters of the 82nd Airborne Division, 3rd Brigade, Combat Team. There he was assigned to the 1\/505 Parachute Infantry Regiment, nicknamed “The Panthers.”<\/p>\n

He arrived at Fort Bragg in November 1968. A week later, he was off to Vietnam.<\/p>\n

Smith was in Vietnam for 12 months and eight days, returning with his unit in December 1969. During his last four and half months in country, he got “volunteered” into becoming a helicopter door gunner, he says.<\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

Sonny Smith, front row left, poses for a photo with members of his squad in Vietnam. Smith and the men in the top row left and right corners, were the only three who survived.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

“My primary military occupational speciality (MOS) was a tactical communications, radio mechanic\/operator,” he said. “One day this helicopter comes in and its radio is shot up, and they have a personnel casualty. I had to wait until they pulled the body out before I could hop in to work on the radio.<\/p>\n

“Just as I started to open my tool box, the pilot takes off and the co-pilot threw a COMM (communications) helmet at me and says ‘Put it on and man the machine gun, you’re our new door gunner now. That dead guy they just pulled out of here was our last one.'”<\/p>\n

Smith finished his tour of duty in Vietnam attached to the 1st Cavalry as a helicopter door gunner. Toward the end of his tour, while door gunning in a fire fight, he was hit in the leg by enemy ground fire and was later awarded the Purple Heart.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The whole story is published\u00a0HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n

His official military records tell us a different story.<\/p>\n

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

The Army says he does not have a Purple Heart, Bronze Star or Jump Wings.\u00a0 According to his records, he might be trying to pull a Dick.<\/a>\u00a0 Knock it off Sonny Smith.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The fine people over at militaryphony.com send us their case on\u00a0 Sonny Smith who has been … Michael “Sonny” Smith; Fake Bronze Star, Fake Purple Heart, Fake service in Vietnam.<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":667,"featured_media":82329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,391],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82328","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\/82328","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\/667"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/82329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}