Thank you for replying. He has unfortunately been manipulating our whole family for years on many levels. He has always been VERY difficult, but about 8 months after our mother passed in 2015, he suddenly had a "mental breakdown", was admitted to a psych ward and when they spit him out-the claim was PTSD...our other brother and I were totally floored, because he NEVER made any mention of this in years prior and to our knowledge he had never been in any combat. I stepped up to "help" because I wanted to try to make sure this was all legit after I took him to a VA appointment and they asked for some documentation on these things and he got totally pissed and refused saying it was picking old scabs and then later told me the the incidents were secret and there was no paperwork and if he were to call on people who knew he was there they would get into trouble for taking him, cuz he "Volunteered"...I was immediately suspicious and started asking pots of questions. He claimed 3 traumatizing military events that led to PTSD:
1) witnessing a fire in the galley on USS JFK in 1995 where a man burned to death while he and other tried to save him. I looked at all the research on the USS JFK and could find ZERO record of any such casualty
2) He claimed to have witnessed a jet crash at NAS Bell Chase, VA and that the pilot burned to death in his presence. Again I cannot find any record of this event either.
3) That he was on this IA to Afganistan for 30 days. While there he was supposedly in a hummer where a gunner was killed right above him and he had to "take over" and pieces of this man's head jammed his gun. Every incident was told to us all in vivid detail, which made us all cry and feel that his horrible behavior toward us all was justified because of this.
He also said he was in Panama in the very beginning of his service for 2 weeks and that he was grazed on the back of the leg, which I cannot see any terrible scar... claimed initially that he came home from Afganistan "full of holes", which my other brother and I can't remember ever seeing scars on him-later changed the story to say he was never "shot" but somehow got shrapnel in his face. He has this piece(ball shape) of metal on a dressing that he claimed came out of his chin...maybe it did but we only saw what looked like an infected hair follicle and then he presented that to us.
He claimed his ex wife was present for the Belle Chase incident, but when we reached out to her, she stated that she never heard anything about a fire on the JFK, claims he NEVER went to Afganistan and had NEVER been shot. He had also claimed that he was pulled out of retirement to go on search and rescue missions after Hurricane Katrina and had to remove dead bodies from the water. She states that never happened. She left him in 2006, just after Katrina and she was with him for 11 years. When I asked him if she knew about this stuff, he said "No, she didn't give a shit about me....she just knew I was gone all the time" I asked if these missions were "secret" and nobody was supposed to know....what on earth happened when someone was killed?" He said that the military just makes stuff up to tell the families all the time. He was gone all those years and almost never showed up and now he is here and claims to have had all this trauma and treats us all like shit and justifies it with this Diagnosis. We are just looking for answers because we think he needs serious mental health attention.
I will attach his DD214 as we are not sure how to read it except for googling things and I think "service medal" is for when someone served during that time and "expeditionary medal" is for combat?? Is that right? If not we may be WAY off base and just need to deal with the DX and move on. Thank you for any clarity...we just really want him to get the right help and if he is lying then we need to confront him and get him to acknowledge this figure out why.
