I had planned to append this at the end of the Medal of Honor article but was afraid that people would think I was attempting to equate the Combat Action Badge with the Medal of Honor. That isn’t the case. The Medal of Honor was created about 150 years ago and in that time only about 3000 have been awarded. All the recipients in Iraq or Afghanistan were killed while performing the acts for which they received the Medal of Honor.
On the other hand, since its creation about four years ago, tens of thousand Combat Action Badges (seen here) have been awarded. To qualify, a soldier must be in an area that qualifies for hostile fire pay or i
mminent danger pay and must be engaged by the enemy or have engaged the enemy. All the soldier is required to do is to perform in a manner expected of all American soldiers. I mention this only because on July 2, I learned that I had been awarded the Combat Action Badge for an incident in Iraq. As our convoy rotated out of theater, my vehicle was taken under fire. SPC Daws, the gunner, and I returned fire, driving the terrorists from the field. I suspect that fewer than 150 rounds were exchanged and no one was wounded. About an hour later we reached the Kuwaiti border and our time in the Middle East was reduced to less than two weeks.
And I mention all this only because I have seen, in the last several days, articles suggesting that I have inflated my resume, that I was too fat to be a soldier, and a few questioning how I could have been a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, an intelligence officer in the Air Force, and suddenly a National Guardsman called to active duty in the Army in Iraq. I’ll just say that the National Guard is made up of lots of soldiers who have experience in other branches of the service. In our battalion, one of the first sergeants was a Marine Vietnam Veteran, the NCOIC of our MKT was a former Navy man, and I, of course was former Air Force. This eclectic make up of the National Guard is not at all unusual.
In another article some guy thought the claim I had written more than 100 books was a stretch. This guy, using his internal logic, thought writing two books a year was a difficult task and he could only find some 24 books that I had written when he searched the Library of Congress. Of course, he didn’t look at Amazon.com or he would have found about 50 titles before he ran into a duplication. Just a brief look would have found the four Scorpion Squad books I wrote as Eric Helm, twenty-one Vietnam Ground Zero books I wrote as Eric Helm (plus an additional four "Super" books), the fourteen Navy Seals books I wrote as Steve MacKenzie, the six Wings of Nam books as Cat Brannigan (hey, don’t blame me, I didn’t pick the name), the twenty-one science fiction novels, the book about lost gold and buried treasures, the two Bantam Books about the coming world war, the eighteen books about UFOs and the paranormal, and a handful of others on a variety of subjects... and not including the five that my agent has right now (nor the dozen that have never been published).
I once joked I was in the book a month club, having to write a book a month but one year I wrote nineteen. I wrote one book in six days... sure it was a short book and there wasn’t a lot of rewriting going on, but I handed it in on time.
So, I decided to mention these things to set part of the record straight. I’m not sure what causes these people to attack without bothering to gather all the facts. Simple Internet searches would have provided some of the information... I mean, for those who know where to look, they could have found a picture of my flight school class, a website that has a picture of me in Vietnam and a much later picture of me in Iraq, they could find listings of my bibliography, not always up to date but showing more than 24 books published, and other information proving that I’m not making these things up.
What often strikes me as funny is that those of us who have not embellished their credentials are held to different standards than those who do. I’m challenged to prove it, and do so, and those others say, "Well, my records have been changed to make me look bad." They aren’t challenged with the same vigor that I am... but I have the proof and they don’t.
So, once again, I mention that I was just awarded the Combat Action Badge as just another proof that I really did serve in Iraq.
3 comments:
It may just be, after all, the simple fact that you have gathered information tending to prove the existence of something we are being discouraged from noticing.
I admit that I was not aware of the amount of material that you have written, and humbly apologize for not at least checking one of your science-fiction novels out. For years I have written songs, and have always enjoyed that pursuit, but for the last several years have been attempting to put together just one-single book, and have been having a rough time of it. I guess, naively, I never thought it was going to be such a difficult task. I felt that I could do it, but have run into a self-created brick wall of doubt.
At any rate, we have seen this pattern of attacks against you, and others, before. It appears as one personality showing up in different people. It's as if you were a politician running for office, and some opposing group sees you as a threat.
Thank-you for sticking with it, all these years. I know you have made a positive difference in other people lives, as well.
-Bob
Congratulations on the medal, Kevin, and kudos for your long and honourable service to your country!
Paul
Hi Kevin. Looking for a place to give you a little bit of info. Just completed Part II of Spaceships of the Visitors. Statement was made about proving validity of airship sightings in 1897, with a century of time passed, along with the folks who saw them. I was a small girl when my own grandmother told me of being in that church group in Merkel, Texas. What you have quoted is mostly correct in fact for what she told me. She came to Merkel from East Texas in January of 1897, being 10years old. I had not even remembered her telling me the story until one evening several years ago, Merkel was mentioned on satellite TV, and it being such a small town, it grabbed my attention. There, Whitley Schreibler’s Communion was being discussed. The memory of her story came flooding back. This no-nonsense woman did not make that up. She experienced it herself. It would have been about 1960 when she told me the story, and although this is after Roswell, it was long before UFO hunting would come to the popularity we now see. In other words, there was no reason at the time for her to dream up a ‘tale’. I just wanted to set the record straight on that one particular sighting.
Karlen Gamble Hardy, granddaughter of Olga Sheppard Gamble.
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