How many of you veterans or active military have been accused of being a "poser"?

Only on RP, actually. That was rather fun.

So you're saying that I shouldn't have gotten all my ribbons and shiny little badges tattooed on my chest?

While I've never been called a poser I have had a coin dropped on me in my own house from a Ranger friend. Drinks where on me already so it was more esprit de corps than anything. I think with me you can see it as I was raised a military brat. That experience alone ingrained more military in me than my own service. My mother was also raised a brat and then married my father so its hard not to look or act military for me. From my yard alone you would think I was a Marine. Squared off bushes and manicured curbs.... "Get off my grass"

I've never been suspected as being a poser, now being butt of a military joke or two based on being an Air Force retiree...plenty :)

I have been a couple of times. One person thought that my "Iraqi Freedom Vet" hat was evidence that I was faking it. I laughed and showed him my V.A. ID card.

I've never worn my uniform since taking it off when I completed my last drill with the FLARNG. When I was active duty in the regular Army, I never wore my uniform off-duty. Never. Had a distinctive haircut though - a very severe, short even on top, proper high-and-tight. Never had any problems

DISCLAIMER Below this line, I take off the politeness filter and I turn up the candor dial. I have a bit of reputation here for snapping at snide comments. If you want to know what's on my nerves, read on, but I'm not being real friendly in the rest of this comment. Also, if you're not part of the problem don't read yourself into the target of my criticism. I'm annoyed with a very specific category of duds. I'm very proud of our entire military. Best people I ever worked with. END DISCLAIMER

However, when I worked at a defense industry firm, I worked mostly with Navy and a few Air Force veterans. We only had 3 other Army vets, that I knew of, from non-aviation MOSes in the entire business. Two were retired MI officers, one of whom was prior-service enlisted as an 11-series (Infantry), one retired Field Artillery officer. My resume covered 3 MOSes I held at different times, Medic (then 91B, redesignated 68W or something later, but still medic), MP (95B, earned through MOS Q in the TXARNG during a break-in-service), and Combat Engineer (12B, earned through MOS reclassification at Fort Leonard Wood when I went back to the regular Army after my break-in-service). Combat Engineer, especially, includes things that on paper the average veteran of clerical or technical background and experience seems to associate with things more action-movie than a actual Combat Engineer veteran would. The effect is double with people who never served at all. So, it has been my personal, direct experience that many (not all, just many) veterans of services and MOSes/rates that differ greatly from those that serve as attachments to Infantry rifle companies seem to think that everything that is not done by a clerk or a technician is done by...wait for it...the SEALs! Of course, why not. That's what they saw in their last action movie, that's what they read in their last Tom Clancy novel, that's what they played in their last video game. So, they think _everything_ outside of their world of experience is some sort of exotic endeavor performed only by the heroes of their favorite strain of American mythology. As a result, there was a certain amount of friction caused by the facts on my resume with some of the people I worked with at that business. I don't look anything like a character in an action movie. (I'm mean, I'm not a waddling, triple-chinned, fat-body or pencil-necked anorexic like some of the false-accusers I'm referring to, but I'm unlikely to get invited to a casting call for an action movie - that's for certain.)

More recently, I got asked in a job interview if I had deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. I replied that I had never been to Iraq or Afghanistan, to which the interviewer (who had never been to so much as the MEPS station or a recruiting office) replied, "Is that supposed to be like, 'It's classified or something?'" in a very, very snarky manner.

Following that, I encountered a waddling nitwit that looked up my Linkedin or other profile and saw that I had been assigned to HHT 1/3 ACR SAS, where SAS refers to squadron aid station. So this bumbling half-wit proceeds to declare that I have professed affiliation with the British Special Air Service, also abbreviated SAS, and that I'm not even British. Later the same moron declares that I've claimed to an "operator" because he has read in the same profile that at 2 duty stations I was responsible for operator-level maintenance, which any genuine Army veteran will recognize as having nothing whatsoever to do with Special-anything. Operator-level maintenance is what the Soldier operating the equipment (vehicle, weapon, sensor, whatever) does to maintain it in accordance with the instructions in the accompanying TM. But anyway....you wouldn't know these things if you have no experience in soldiering in a maneuver unit or its attachments (or if you never served anywhere in any capacity).

Then there was the wannabe that didn't like it that I had former colleagues from my military service in my Linkedin profile, as well as folks I had met in the defense industry. So, if I had a contact who had been SF, then of course, to the wannabe that had a problem with my Linkedin profile, then I must have included my colleagues in my profile to suggest that I was SF. Of course, because...everything in the mind of the wannabe who never served, in the mind of pogue veteran that elected to serve in a technical or administrative MOS or rating, everything else in the military must have been done by....the SEALs. Because, that's the current mythology among everyone from bronies to the brawndo crowd. You know, I started out in the Army as a Medic, and many Medics go to hospitals and TMCs. I went out of my way to ask the replacement detachment (oh, yeah reminds me, another wannabes and pogues don't understand - the meaning of the term "detachment" but more on that in a moment), anyhow, as I was saying, to ask the replacement detachment for orders to a maneuver unit. I ended up in a Combat Engineer battalion, but at that time as a Medic since that was my MOS. My very last unit ever was a clinical unit at Camp Blanding Florida in the FLARNG. So, I've been a pogue. When I was a Combat Engineer, (By which I mean a 12B, an MOS-qualified 12B, Combat Engineer), I was a grunt. I've been both. Since I've left the Army, and since the Army has been involved in various armed conflicts since I left, I try really hard to be absolutely fair and uncritical of any MOS or rate or service. But for this rant, I'm gonna lay on some candor. I never liked pogue units. Too much soap opera. Too much immaturity. It was like adult daycare. I liked Combat Engineers. I don't have anything against pogues, but if a pogue is going to insult my service record, then let me share with you that I think you're a fairy.

Back to the word "detachment." Same twits that didn't know what HHT 1/3 ACR SAS meant, same twits that didn't know what operator-level maintenance was, same twits that didn't like it that some of my Linkedin network is made up of folks who weren't PAC clerks, are the same twits that don't what a "detachment" is. They know they've read in their favorite Tom Clancy novel or saw on the their favorite History Channel (poorly made) documentary that Army SF uses detachments as an element of organization on their MTO&E, but they don't know what a detachment as a term, means. It means something detached from its parent unit. There are all kinds of detachments. But if you're a Naval Reserve version of an Army PAC Clerk, or if you're a Air Force technician of some sort that maintains aircraft or some subsystem thereof, then perhaps you have not encountered this information. If you are some triple-chinned, bubble-butt, waddling half-wit who never served, then of course you haven't encountered this information. But Florida Medical Detachment, for example, does not imply Special Forces. It implies a medical unit (in this case a very clinical one), detached from some larger unit.

On this whole SF thing: I was never SF, I've never claimed to be. I didn't have the eyesight. I had a picket-fence PULHES, but that's a complicated story and my eyesight was not suitable for service in SF. Otherwise, I would have considered going to selection, for that or something similar. However, I knew people in the Army that later did go SF. I also met people after the Army, in the defense industry, who had been previously been one of various forms of special operations forces. I'm not going to exclude them from my network because some waddling incompetent or some flat-top wearing, never-served loudmouth has some sort of issue with it. Stuff it.

This is why I have extreme wariness and skepticism toward the whole Stolen Valor vigilante thing. I've been falsely accused and slandered by the type person I think should be on the receiving end of such attention rather than its issuer.

I see posts on blogs about phonies, and here on RallyPoint, that show both complete lunatics in ludicrously fake and improperly-assembled attempts at uniforms (those people are genuinely crazy - I mean legit nuts), and people who seem to be doing something a bit more serious aimed at gaining material advantage (ie fraud). I say go after the latter for fraud and be kind to the former as they are just insane.

I am proud of my service. I am proud of the American military. I am fortunate to have been healthy enough to serve and I have the greatest respect for those I got to work with during my service. I retain an interest in military history and American defense policy even now that my service has ended. I am not interested in attention-seeking, but I'm not going to hide my service from my resume for fear of offending someone who doesn't like it because...screw them. To the false-accuser, whether a fellow veteran or a civilian coward who never had the personal responsibility or initiative to serve, I say, "May you suffer an eternal hell of Keith Olbermann reruns and Morris Albert music in Satan's very own Chuck E. Cheese franchise forever and ever and ever."

Kind of an older post, but I'll jump.

Never have myself, but there was one time I was walking back to my truck and saw this guy, slightly stooped over at the waist, intently studying my "GWOT" plates like the damn thing was the Rosetta Stone. He didn't even look at me when I walked by him at first.

"So what ah," he skeptically asked, "is Gwot?" Pronouncing it was though it were a word and not an acronym. I got the feeling the guy was spooling up to say more. As though he felt something must have been wrong with my plates because he didn't recognize what GWOT meant.

"Global War On Terrorism," was my only reply. I could tell the lightbulb went off as soon as I said it.

Twice. One time, I was wearing my AH 1S Cobra hat, and two young Marines came up and said, "Semper Fi". When I told them I had been a Cobra Crew Chief in the Army, they accused me of stolen valor, because the Marines fly Cobras, NOT the Army. An older Marine, nls, came up and said I was telling the truth, because if the Army hadn't used Cobras there would have been none to hand down to the Marines.

The other time, they started asking about deployments and duty stations, and when I told them my whole 12 years were CONUS, one of them said, "He must ne legit, nobody is going to make up a story about being stateside for his whole enlistment."

People don't believe me when I tell them that I have served. I have to keep my military ID available at all times on hand or a copy of my DD 214

No, but I also don't advertise myself as a soldier. I don't mention it unless they ask. And they're usually surprised.