Tamara posted on FB last night about somedude in her hotel bar who was pretty obviously talking out his ass about his alleged military experience.
Oh, God, this douche at the hotel bar won’t shut his face about all the Viet Cong he killed in the battle of Bahrain.
He doesn’t like Glocks. You should buy a Sigma, he says.
It’s so easy to tell the real thing; they’re guys like my Dad, who wouldn’t talk about it. The only real inkling I ever got about his service was when he told me it was the best worst time of his life; sometimes wished he could go back, but was glad he couldn’t.
Oh, and he did tell me how he got his Bronze Star: “I was a stupid kid who thought he’d live forever. We were under fire, and somebody had to repair that phone line to the forward observation post, it wasn’t fixing itself.” And he’d talk about incidentals, funny things he remembered, like the cow they shot that one time “by accident”, or how he’d trade his ration cigarettes for his buddies’ ration pipe tobacco, or how, while advancing through the French countryside, he ran across the busted-up K98 Mauser that’s sitting behind me in my office right now — and why it was practically the only souvenir he managed to bring home.* But he never talked about combat.
I hope he’s enjoying Valhalla.
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* Because he mailed it home. The rest of his souvenirs, including a Luger and a pair of Zeiss binoculars, and French perfume for my grandmother, were all stolen from his tent by some fucking asshole while he and his platoon were on R&R in the Austrian Alps.