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CFIVA News
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WE ARE NOT ALONE! Saturday, June 30, 2007 WALTER MITTY SYNDROME, the desire to pretend to have been an International Volunteer in the Croatian and Bosnian independence wars is an illness not unique to one or two of those seeking to join our very exclusive ranks, so it seems. A "hero" of the 1982 Falklands War, who paraded himself publicly at this summer's 25th anniversary commemoration, has been exposed by a Scottish newspaper as a fraud and a fake. Clinically obese bus driver James Barrett (40) bought NINE medals on e-bay, including a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE). During the gathering of thousands of veterans on 17th June, Barrett, sporting a paratrooper's beret, hammed it up for the TV cameras, trading "war stories" with other veterans and appeared on the front pages of several newspapers. He even affected an emotional reunion with veterans of 3 Para Regiment. His antics were quickly spotted however; "I thought to myself right away, 'Aye, aye, we've got a Walter on our hands.'" Barrett's story simply didn't add up; "there's no way a former Para, who has lived through the discipline we had to face, would allow himself to put on so much weight." One veteran, who had lost close friends in the war, alerted journalists who later tracked Barrett to his address in Livingston, Scotland and confronted him on his doorstep. Said Barrett; "All I can do is face up to the fact I'm a Walter Mitty, a wannabe and I'm a disgrace." A medals expert calculated the porcine PSV perambulator would have required a minimum 34 years of military service to secure the awards he wore, some of which were mounted in the wrong order. Barrett was actually fifteen years old at the time of the Falklands War. James Barrett however is not alone. In 2006, "Captain Sir" Alan McIlwraith was exposed as the doyen of fantasists. Plain old Alan (27) passed himself off as a war hero and top military negotiator. He claimed to have the KBE, DSO and MC, purchased uniforms and even persuaded a woman to marry him, taking the title "Lady" Shona. In 2004, "Commando" Graham Eckerman, "VC" travelled the country ripping people off. He was in fact a registered sex offender, jailed for six months for falsely claiming he was raising ﾣ20,000 (30,000 Euro) for a dying boy. Mitty syndrome is nothing new. In 2000, eighty-three year old con artist Charles Cowden earned his 572nd conviction after posing as a war hero to swindle a woman out of ﾣ2,500 (3,775 Euro). In May 2006 unemployed Brian Dall was caught after seducing fifty women by posing as a paratrooper war hero. Dall lives alone with his mother in Essex.(with thanks to the Scottish Daily Record)
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