Fire official says Navy petty officer lied about saving two children from a burning home

You're like a brick shithouse SGT Robert Pryor, cant keep a good man down. Was that letter your attaboy. Sounds like a Soldier's Medal to me.

SFC William Farrell - I think I was put in for an ArCom and was denied. It wasn't as bad as it sounds. The bad part was that there only one way out, it had a concrete floor, the fools were cooking with stolen gasoline in the doorway when it tipped over, -- blocking their exit. Then some other fools started pouring water on it, causing it to spread under the bunks, which is were the indigenous people climbed for protection from the spreading flames. It was just some stupidity on the part of the indig that a 14 year old could have handled. I yelled at the guys pumping water onto the flames to stop. Then I just reached through the open doorway and started pulling bedding down onto it to make a walkway. I'm serious when I say this, I learned what to do under those circumstances when I took shop in eighth grade. We actually had to practice putting our gasoline, wood and electrical fires in my junior high school. I got slightly burned putting out both gasoline fires -- 1962 and 1969. LOL It may look like some sort of a big deal the way it was written up, but it was about as difficult as securing an shopping cart at Aldi Supermarket. Just as everything you did in the military, I did what I was trained to do. I just don't understand why the sailor in the story would bother making something like that up.

SGT Robert Pryor - You have to wonder Robert. I live in Newport, RI and the next town over is a VFW post that I do not belong to but they have apost home and we used to have our VFW meetings there. Many years ago, there was a member there by the name of Bruce Cotta. There was a ceiling tile emblazoned with the DSC, the SS, BS, Purple Heart and Soldiers Medal. Turns out Bruce is a hero, he legitimately has the SS, BS, PH and SM but not the DSC. He got himself a DSC, typed up some phony orders and mailed them to Patrick Kennedy to be presented to Bruce at a suitable ceremony. Medal was presented, the town post office was in the process of being named after him. For some odd reason Bruce wanted more. Why would he do this? I'd still look up to this man. I read that he was in the process of trying to upgrade his phony DSC to the MOH. I'm writing it all down and just found an article! http://www.1stcavmedic.com/Cotta-Controversy-Resolved.htm

SFC William Farrell - I just don't get these characters. Now he will be branded for life as a wannabe. My wife's ex made up a bunch of daring do hero crap about his Viet Nam service -- none of which rang true to me so I sent off a FOIA request for his records. It turned out that the closest he got to Viet Nam was AIT at Ft. Sill, OK as a member of the Colorado National Guard. He was never activated and certainly never sent anywhere beyond Basic and AIT. One day he had my then 16 year old step-daughter in tears because he was threatening to kill her boyfriend, "just like all the (racist term omitted) he killed in 'Nam." That did it, I had previously been hiding the truth about her father from her -- but no more. I went up stairs, got her dad's records and handed them to her. She called him and asked him once more about his service in Viet Nam, and he again repeated all his wannabe crap to her. She immediate called him a liar, telling him she was holding his records in her hands. He asked her how she got his records so she told him. He responded by saying she should maybe check out her step-dad's background. She knew almost nothing about my military service, beyond I did serve and had a whole lot of scars. When she told me what he said, I told her I agreed with her father, and showed her how to look up some things about me. Together we punched up my DSC citation on the Legion of Valor web site. As she read it, she began to laugh. I never thought anything was funny about that citation. When she was done reading, she asked if she could send the URL to her father in an email. I told her it was public record for all to see, so go ahead. He called back later, crying like the little bitch he was. Had he never made up his lies, his daughter would have still loved him. But no, he had to live the rest of his life knowing that his daughter knew he was a wannabe. A situation that only got worse a few years later when she got married and her husband joined the Army. A lot of veterans and service members despise wannabes more than the average citizen, and her husband made sure she understood why.