More on SFC Dillard Johnson

On SFC Dillard Johnson

I wrote my other post before reading a post on This Ain’t Hell. Earlier today TAH mentioned: “Several folk sent us the records of Dillard Jay Johnson, the deadliest man in the history of the world, or something. The records seem to be missing a couple of years, and his Silver Star; … His FOIA shows that he served until 2006, but his 2-1, or whatever they call it these days, seems to stop in 2004; But he is listed on the DoD website as a recipient of the Silver Star; Oddly enough, his kills aren’t listed in his records. I know this won’t clear up any of that discussion, but there it is for what’s it’s worth.”

Later, TAH has:

“So, SFC Dillard Johnson emailed us this morning for a phone call, and of course, I complied. Because we’re about the truth, no matter how it shakes out. Johnson acknowledged the fact that we were probably the most fair of the people who were writing about him. I had to remind him that we never doubted his Silver Star after he offered to send us his citation, but, I told we didn’t need it. I told him our that concerns were mostly about the 2700 kills. He told me that number came from his little pocket notebook that all of us NCOs carried. That he’d put in tick marks for the number of weapons and bodies that he counted between sandstorms on the way to Baghdad. He admitted that it probably wasn’t the best way to report “kills” after I told him that if I’d counted weapons from Kuwait to the Euphrates, I’d have beaten his numbers.

“He also admitted that the 2700 kills were a total of his troop not just him and his crew. Johnson also said that the actual book doesn’t refer to that number – it appears on the cover and in the liner notes, but not in the actual text of the book. I just bought the book today, so I’ll let you know if I find the contrary to be true.

“I told Johnson that in the future he should stay away from numbers, math sinks everyone. He said that he wanted to explain the number thing during his Fox & Friends interview, but that Kilmeade never asked the question about the numbers that they had agreed upon before the show.

“Then came the 7,000 rounds of armor piercing ammo that he’d claimed to have fired so that he got cancer from the DU. Johnson admitted that it was a pretty difficult number to swallow, especially since Bradleys only have 900 rounds on board (three hundred in the ready box to feed the gun and another 600 stowed). So 7,000 is at least 8 trips to the resupply point. But he said the number comes from the discussion he had with techs from Redstone Arsenal while he was at Walter Reed being treated for his cancer.

“So next up was the question about Johnson getting booted from the Advanced NCO Course at Benning for wearing an unauthorized CIB. He admitted that it did indeed happen. It also involved an NCO who had it out for him (a common thread through many of his stories). He sent me a copy of his DD 214 (I promised Johnson that I wouldn’t publish it, so, no you can’t see it…take my word for it) and, yes, there’s a CIB on it, along with his Silver Star and four Purple Hearts, six Arcoms seven Army Achievement Medals, 2 awards of a CAB, an MSM and a bunch of other stuff. I only see one Bronze Star Medal for merit, though.

“But, yeah, he did get booted from ANCOC for that incident, he returned in the next class and ended up on the commandant’s list, he says.

“So, that’s about the extent of our talk, I still have his number in case the rest of you have questions you want me to ask him. Trust me the first version I wrote before was better than this one, but the blog ate it during the transition to a new server.”

http://thisainthell.us/