On 01-09-09, BOB ACKLEY said to TIM RICHARDSON:


TR> Otto made the claim that he had contacted a Marine recruiter in
TR> Sheboygan, had given them Richard's name, the recruiter checked
TR> Richard's marine record out and told Otto Richard had gotten a
TR> dishonorable discharge!


TR> You and I both know that cannot possibly be true. That is a baldfaced
TR> lie. No Marine ( or any other branch of military service) in a
TR> position to check records, recruiter or otherwise, would even discuss
TR> such a thing with some civilian who just walked in off the street and
TR> made such a request. (I know this of personal knowledge, as I have
TR> talked to Marine and Navy recruiters on that very subject since, and
TR> was told no such thing is possible!)


BA>Well, they *might* discuss it without naming names, among themselves and
BA>most likely not with outsiders.  But that presupposes access to the
BA>information, which the overwhelming majority of service personnel don't
BA>have.


Exctly. One of the Navy recruiters I talked to about this was a man I've known
for over twenty years. He's retired from the Navy as a CPO, has been on
several West Pac cruises, and his wife is in the Air National Guard, and was
recently in the war zone.


Back in the mid fifties, my older brother and two of his friends enlisted in
the Air Force and went to Lackland. About three weeks later, one of the other
guys was back home, out of the Air Force. His story was that some NCO had
taken to harrassing him a lot, had finally offered to `go out behind the
barracks' with him, and to the NCO's surprise, this guy pounded the crap out
of him!


Well........this guy was about 5'8" (I don't know how big the NCO was), but he
was a small version of Hulk Hogan! He'd been a varsity wrestler, had been on
an amateur boxing team and finished pretty high-ranked in the state amateur
boxing matches back then. Not the sort of person you'd just casually offer to
`go behind the barracks' with. And he had a hair trigger temper to go with it!


He also had a dishonorable discharge.


I don't know what the real story was, but I had a hard time believing anyone
would look at this guy and offer to fight him.


But the Air Force had a policy back then that, after about ten years or so,
you could apply for your discharge to be upgraded (a dishonorable discharge
back then was a huge deterent to a prospective employer to hire you) to
honorable, depending on what the DD was for in the first place. Anyway, thats
what he did, and his discharge was upgraded to `Discharged under honorable
conditions'. I was amazed!





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*Durango b301 #PE*