Stolen valour, tin medals and tin pot generals

The actor Brian Dennehy died yesterday of heart failure due to sepsis. He was 81.

The star of Rambo: First Blood, Gorky Park and Cocoon among more than 50 feature films and countless television work often played the role of the likeable tough guy. He was cut from the same rough thespian cloth as Jason Robards and George C. Scott.

There are gushing eulogies for Dennehy today. It is predictable in that way we have of airbrushing clean any hint of scandal the moment someone falls off the branch. But Dennehy was a high-profile member of a shadowy group of fraudsters, fantasists and con-artists guilty of what the Americans call stolen valour.

In a 1989 interview with the New York Times, Dennehy claimed to have suffered concussion and shrapnel wounds while on combat duty in Vietnam. Four years later in a short interview with Playboy magazine, Dennehy said he served a five-year tour of Vietnam and suffered minor injuries.

In that interview, Dennehy was asked if he’d ever taken a life in combat. He offered a reply which in retrospect can only be seen as a florid evasion:

“Anyone in combat would agree that it’s pretty much accidental. It’s not what you’re thinking about. You spend a considerable amount of time just trying not to be in a combat situation. You’re trying to avoid coming face-to-face with anything. So, when something bad happens, it’s usually accidental.”

Public deception

None of it happened. Dennehy had served in the US Marine Corps between 1958 and 1963 but did not set foot in Vietnam. The closest he came to combat was playing inter-service American football in Okinawa.

Dennehy publicly apologised for his deception in 1999. But there are reports that he continued telling embellished stories of courage under fire to anyone silly enough to listen. Once an actor …

False anecdotes

Pulitzer Prize winner and history professor, Joseph Ellis was known to lace his lectures with anecdotes of his wartime service in Vietnam. Praised for this meticulous attention to detail in biographies of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, Ellis told the Boston Globe he was a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division, had served in General Westmoreland’s staff and then added some other salty stories of life as a heroic non-combatant in promoting civil rights and attending anti-war protests.

In truth, Ellis had been a reservist but had never left the comfortable confines of academia. He had no association with the civil rights or anti-war movements. His books continue to sell with many reviewers choosing to ignore his deceptions.

False gallantry exposed

Politicians trading on war time gallantry have been exposed. Mundane military service, laudable enough, has transcended into lurid legends, fearless acts of bravery that never actually took place.

Stolen valour has become so widespread it is thought that for every US Navy SEAL, there are at least 300 imposters.

It is a major problem in Australia, too, where the term military imposter is preferred. The exposure of Australian military cheats is left essentially to a group of volunteer ex-servicemen and women known collectively as the Australian and New Zealand Military Impostors Group to sort out.

Australian military imposters

ANZMI conducts investigations, obtains statutory declarations and examines military records. They rely on members of the public, often military veterans to bring these the charlatans to their attention.

The group’s website, an archaic walk down memory lane through an internet circa 1998 (guys, if you’re reading this get in touch and I’ll fix that up for you) presents a rogue’s gallery of liars and cheaters, embellishers and the terminally deluded.

The offences range from the wearing of tin medals (medals purchased rather than bestowed), wearing medals unearned, all the way to complete fabrications of military service. The numbers of these fraudsters who have inveigled themselves in RSL branches, often to become office bearers, is astonishing.

Equally amazing is the apparent ease in which the deceptions are accepted. Questions are rarely asked even when a fraudster appears to be selling a story that defies belief.

On ANZAC Day 2013, “Major-General” Neville Donohue addressed a dawn service at Clayton in Melbourne’s east, bearing a stack of medals on the left side of his chest so numerous and shiny North Korean generals would have been envious. Present at the service on that day were the current Speaker of the Parliament and member for Casey, Tony Smith and then Labor member for La Trobe, Laura Smyth.

No one present seemed to bat an eyelid.

But later in the day, Donohoe turned up at the traditional Collingwood v Essendon ANZAC Day clash at the MCG and was filmed entering the ground chest out, medals dazzling, to a television audience of millions, proving the rule that the only bad publicity is too much publicity. ANZMI was swamped with bemused correspondence from genuine veterans.

It transpired the budding Monash had been a mere corporal in the Royal Australian Corps of Signals between 1970 and 1976 and was never deployed overseas.

Four years later, Donohue was found guilty of 30 charges relating to deception, falsely purporting to be a returned service person, falsely purporting to be a Commonwealth official, to be wearing medals without entitlement, obtaining property by deception, using false documents, and driving while suspended. He received a four-month prison term.

Outright deceit

I have spent hours trawling through the ANZMI website. It’s a walk-through of terrible people, often engaged in criminal acts of fraud and outright deceit.

The psychology is fairly predictable. As a nation we hold our veterans in high esteem. They are our most honoured group. The imposters trade on that, lust after it and profit from it often monetarily and in desperate attempts to be admired. Often, they have become stuck having to perpetuate lies. Once a lie of that order is told, it is very difficult to undo. More likely it will be compounded with other lies, other deceptions. The ANZMI motto is “If you tell the truth, it becomes part of your past. If you tell a lie it becomes part of your future.”

A military imposter is so offensive to us because they undermine those who have shown courage and commitment in defence of their country.

We have a bit of time on our hands now, so I recommend the ANZMI website to you. There are hundreds of names there. Some you may know. You may know of others whose stories don’t quite check out or seem unfeasible. If so, drop ANZMI a line.

This is one problem we can fix.

This column was first published at The Australian on 17 April, 2020