Remember self-appointed captain, Simon “many-names” Rothschild (aka De Rothschild, McDonald, Surfer, Meyer, Weinstein, Costello) who was the “commanding officer” of an alternative cadet program in the Cornwall, Ontario area?
It has been said that “A Man Who Is His Own Lawyer Has a Fool for a Client”, Rothschild has proved that adage in spades as he unsuccessfully represented himself during the legal proceedings…
After 3 years of his court room theatrics during which he claimed the crown’s disclosures to him were lost, stolen or eaten by his dog, alluded to have been a special forces officer holding a special, super, secret security clearance and haranguing witnesses with ridiculous assertions all compounded by Covid-19 delays, his dick dancing has come to an end.
On 3 September 2021, Mr Rothschild was found guilty of 1 count under s419 – Unlawful use of military uniforms or certificates; and 1 count under s130 – Personating a peace officer. He was awarded a $1000 fine plus a victim’s surcharge of $300 for each count (total $2.6k) and 18 months probation. Uniforms seized from his military themed tickle trunk were forfeited.
Courtesy of the Glengarry News 9 November 2021
SVC is most appreciative of the OPP for their tenacity in pursing this matter, the patience of expert witnesses who were forced to endured his histrionic antics and to the courts for recognizing that stolen valour is not a victimless crime.
Mr Gerry Conway is another dude who likes to enthral gullible audiences into believing his military fairytales. Conway has spent the past few years telling Guelph, Ontario school kids of his exploits and then being splattered with piss outside of a US Marine Base in San Diego, California.
The Combat Infantry Badge, Bronze Star with the V for Valor and the Purple Heart, which Conway has absolutely no entitlement to, are clearly visible.
His obvious and frankly ridiculous uniform embellishments prompted us to contact our US counterparts in order to initiate a Freedom Of Information Act request to secure Conway’s military career file including the DD Form 214. The DD 214 is the capstone military service document, as it represents the complete, verified record of a service member’s time in the military (Active and Reserve), awards and medals, and other pertinent service information, such as highest rank/rate and pay grade held on active duty, total military combat service and/or overseas service.
The results will determine if, in fact, he was a member of the US Army, served in Vietnam with the 3rd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division, awarded the Bronze Star Medal for Valour and the Purple Heart which recognizes an individual wounded in action.
Additionally, the documents will prove his entitlement to lawfully wear the RANGER tab, US parachute wings, Air Assault wings (established in 1974 without retroactivity), Canadian Parachutist Wings and, what he likely believes to be British Parachutists Wings (however, he’s wearing the hat badge of the UK Parachute Regiment, as he likely doesn’t know the difference)
Mr Conway and his claim of being a US Army soldier leaving a US Marine Base to face 1000 protesters is nothing but a fabrication meant to deceive his gullible audience in a sick sympathy play!
Veterans take mental health issues seriously and many fight the stigma of PTSD on a daily basis yet, Mr Conway perpetuates lies and mistruths that lead to the view that all returning service members are damaged goods…
No need to run his particulars with the National Personnel Records Center, as he has admitted to never being an American Soldier, a paratrooper or a Vietnam War veteran.
Lest We Forget
“So where do these stories come from?”
The Myth of the Spitting Antiwar Protester – The New York Times
JERRY LEMBCKE OCT. 13, 2017
“The reporter was asking about accounts that soldiers returning from Vietnam had been spat on by antiwar activists. I had told her the stories were not true. I told her that, on the contrary, opponents of the war had actually tried to recruit returning veterans. I told her about a 1971 Harris Poll survey that found that 99 percent of veterans said their reception from friends and family had been friendly, and 94 percent said their reception from age-group peers, the population most likely to have included the spitters, was friendly.
A follow-up poll, conducted in 1979 for the Veterans Administration (now the Department of Veterans Affairs), reported that former antiwar activists had warmer feelings toward Vietnam veterans than toward congressional leaders or even their erstwhile fellow travelers in the movement.
I was glad the reporter was interested in the origin of these stories, because beginning even before the war ended, news organizations had too often simply repeated them — even though some stories had the hallmarks of tall tales all over them. Even The Times once quoted, matter-of-factly, a veteran telling of how he arrived stateside from Vietnam on a stretcher with a bullet in his leg, only to be splattered with rotten vegetables and spat on by antiwar college kids.
Whoppers like these go unchallenged by reporters and scholars perhaps because of their memoirist first-person quality, stories told by the men who say it happened to them. I collect the stories, I told the reporter, and have a spreadsheet with about 220 first-person “I was spat on” accounts.
But you don’t believe the stories, right? she asked. Acknowledging that I could not prove the negative — that they were not true — I went on to say there is no corroboration or documentary evidence, such as newspaper reports from the time, that they are true. Many of the stories have implausible details, like returning soldiers deplaning at San Francisco Airport, where they were met by groups of spitting hippies. In fact, return flights landed at military air bases like Travis, from which protesters would have been barred. Others include claims that military authorities told them on returning flights to change into civilian clothes upon arrival lest they be attacked by protesters. Trash cans at the Los Angeles airport were piled high with abandoned uniforms, according to one eyewitness, a sight that would surely have been documented by news photographers — if it had existed.
Listeners, I speculated, are loath to question the truth of the stories lest aspersion be seemingly cast on the authenticity of the teller. The war in Vietnam was America’s longest war at the time, and its first defeat. The loss to such a small, underdeveloped and outgunned nation was a tough pill for Americans to swallow, many still basking in post-World War II triumphalism. The image of protesters spitting on troops enlivened notions that the military mission had been compromised, even betrayed, by weak-kneed liberalism in Congress and seditious radicalism on college campuses. The spitting stories provided reassuring confirmation that had it not been for those duplicitous fifth-columnists, the Vietnamese would have never beaten us.
The “war at home” phrase captured the idea that the war had been lost on the home front. It was a story line promulgated by Hollywood within which veteran disparagement became a kind of “war story,” a way of credentialing the warrior bona fides of veterans who may have felt insecure about their service in Vietnam. In “First Blood,” the inaugural Rambo film, the protagonist, John Rambo, flashes back to “those maggots at the airport, spittin’, callin’ us baby killers and all kinds of vile crap.” The series supported the idea that decisions in Washington had hamstrung military operations. “Apocalypse Now” fed outright conspiracy theories that the C.I.A.’s secret war run from Washington had undercut the military mission. “Coming Home” and “Hamburger Hill” played on male fears of unfaithful wives and girlfriends, a story line hinting that female perfidy and the feminist subversion of warrior morale had cost us victory.
Women had been prominent in the opposition to the war. Two organizations, Women Strike for Peace and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, led early protests; Cora Weiss, Jane Fonda and Joan Baez lent their social and celebrity standing to the efforts to end the fighting. New Left organizations such as the campus-based Students for a Democratic Society intersected with the burgeoning women’s movement to boost young women into leadership roles in the antiwar movement. Placards reading “Girls Say Yes to Boys Who Say No” — no to the draft, that is — lent credence to the fears of conservatives who were pro-war and distraught over loosening strictures on premarital sex and believed that the rising of the women meant societal collapse.
The adoption of long hair, embroidered shirts and bell-bottom pants, and general rejection of military bearing by men in the movement evinced a softening of conventional sex-gender boundaries. By the late 1960s, troops in Vietnam were battling authorities over hair length, and the right to wear love-bead necklaces and draw peace symbols on their helmets.
Finger pointing for the loss of the war began even before it was over. The pacifists and radicals who stoked the antiwar movement were easy targets for the patriotic right wing looking for scapegoats, but the visibility of women in the resistance to the war made them suspects as well. After Ms. Fonda went to North Vietnam on a peace mission in 1972, she was denounced as a traitor in profanely sexist language and tarred as “Hanoi Jane.” Years later, the feminist author Susan Faludi wrote that fears of emasculation having cost America its victory in Vietnam were the basis of a backlash against women in the 1980s.
But, the reporter pressed, why spitting? Resisting the urge to plunge into the Freudian exegesis I wanted to take, I pointed to the long history of spitting imagery in legends of betrayal. In the New Testament, Christ’s followers spit on him in renunciation of their loyalty. Following Germany’s defeat in World War I, soldiers returning from the front claimed to have been spat on by women and girls. The German stories were studied by historians and found to be part of the “Dolchstosslegende,” or stab-in-the-back legend, that the military had been betrayed behind the lines, sold out at home.
Anticipating the question, I agreed that the presence of such stories in religious teachings and myths only pressed more questions to the fore about where the biblical Apostles and German folklorists got them, questions that will keep professors and students of cultural studies occupied for years.
But, I ventured, where the stories go — how they play out in the political culture — is more important than where they come from. The reporter seemed interested. In Germany, I recalled, the imagery of shellshocked World War I veterans became a stand-in for the nation’s lost pride and damaged sense of racial superiority. The riffs of betrayal in the photographs, films and news reports of veterans made victims by war kept alive the certainty that enemies outside the gates could never defeat a rearmed and unified Germany; the stories incited a dangerous witch hunt that led to the Holocaust.
Is the abiding American discomfort with the war it lost in Vietnam and the enduring allure of the spat-upon veteran stories indicative of betrayal preoccupations at work in our own culture? Is it the post-Vietnam lost-war narrative that feeds the back-to-the-future sentiments in campaign promises to restore and rebuild America? And are the recent public and political spectacles of nativism and gun-toting masculinity symptoms of a wounded people more than deviant personalities?
We were asked to have a look at this individual who wears a substantial group of medals detailing his service in South East Asia as a combat infantryman in the 101st Airborne Division.
In the group, there are two medals which are readily researchable. The first, the Silver Star, the United States’ 3rd highest award for heroism in combat and, the Prisoner of War Medal.
Our team could find no open source record of these two medals ever being awarded to Beres so, we contacted our US counterparts for their advice and assistance. They initiated a FOIA request for his military records on our behalf.
The documents received from the National Personnel Records Center are quite interesting as there’s absolutely no mention of the Silver Star nor the POW Medal…
We’ll draw your attention to the Decorations and Awards block.
The accounting for US Army Vietnam Prisoners of War (returnees / escapees) is 100% accurate, Beres isn’t listed!
We are asked to have a look at Dobson’s high speed, low drag claims by some brothers from another mother.
Dobson is wearing the MiD oak leaf on his NATO Former Yugoslavia ribbon and he’s not listed an the GG’s website detailing the recipients. Now, there could be 3 reasons for that, (1) an administrative error, (2) he’s a former SF operator and his award was never named publicly or, (3) he’s wearing it without lawful authority…
Secondly, he’s wearing the undress ribbon of a medal that only 31 Canadians have ever been awarded, we can find no record of him serving on either the UNOSOM 1 or 2 missions.
This medal is separate and distinct from the Canadian Somalia Medal that members of the CAR Battle Group were awarded.
SVC has reviewed the nominal roll for the CAR BG and he’s not listed as a member on that either.
We are also well connected with the Airborne Forces groups, and not one soldier can recall serving with him as a jumper. Additionally, the Pathfinders are one of the tightest fraternities in the Canadian Army, and again no one knows of him, attended the patrol pathfinder course with him, nor served with him in the regiment!
We can find absolutely no evidence of Mr. Dobson being an Infantryman in The Royal Canadian Regiment, a paratrooper, member of the Canadian Airborne Regiment and/or a Pathfinder,
He’s not Mentioned in Dispatches,
https://www.gg.ca/honours.aspx?lan=eng
Dobson didn’t receive the MiD from the Brits either as some have suggested… http://forces.gc.ca/assets/FORCES_Internet/docs/en/honours-history-medals-chart/commonwealth-and-foreign-honours.pdf
He didn’t serve in Canadian Forces Europe, the Former Yugoslavia or Somalia,
Not a single day in the Canadian Army, however, he’s wearing a lotta bling for a fella that was in Army Cadets!
SVC reached out to Dobson with the goal of assisting him sort out the situation, although he has read our emails, there’s been no response.
With a 0 and 3 record, we can safely assume he wasn’t on the regimental unarmed combat team. Two KOs and a turtle, yep, that’s the fighting spirit the CAR was known for!
Mr LePotvin liked to tell his stories of searchin’ and killin’ missions in the jungles of Vietnam as an eighteen year old Staff Sergeant paratrooper.
A friend of SVC, thought that perhaps, LePotvin was being less than truthful as his Army timeline didn’t marry up with recorded history. So, we were asked to look at a couple of photographic images…
As per our SOP, we contacted LePotvin and asked him to help us sort out the situation and, we received this in return.
He then quickly dumped all of his social media accounts however, it ain’t our first time at the rodeo and we scooped up anything of interest before connecting with him…
So, we asked our American Partners at “This Ain’t Hell”, the pre-eminent Stolen Valour (or “Valor”) web site in the United States for their assistance in determining fact from fiction.
Those fine folks easily punched holes in LePotvin’s story and they contacted the US National Personnel Records Center (not Centre) as permitted by US law, to obtain his military records.
The Bottom Line
Mr LePotvin was encouraged, by members of the Sarnia Veterans Community, to surrender the bogus medals and apologize for his reprehensible actions.
He’s done the former, and we are still waiting for him to do the latter.
Is that RCAF ink on his right forearm? Weird, as he was never a member of the CAF either….
Mr Albert Brum, a serial embellisher of long standing was exposed by our friends at “This Ain’t Hell” in 2017 and he has recently resurfaced. Although, SVC was not involved in the original expose, we have been advised that Mr Brum has articulated a desire to leave the trinkets that support his military themed fairy tale as a lasting legacy of his service to a Canadian military museum located near his hometown.
This has prompted us to ask a couple of questions.
Will his donation include the three World War 2 Campaign Stars that he wore without lawful authority and the Legion of Honour that he was awarded by the French government for his supposed service in the liberation of France?
Can we expect that the US medals and insignia including the Bronze Star and Combat Infantry Badge (second award) will be included in the package?
Brum would have believe he was a member of First Special Service Force (The Devil’s Brigade) with service in Italy and participated in the liberation of Rome.He then claims to have transferred to 1 Can Para and made a jump into France on D +1 (7 June 1944) as a reinforcement. However, Brum is not listed on the nominal roll of the FSSF nor has any documented overseas service in Continental Europe! His story changes to suit the circumstances, the event and the audience and of course, he claims to have been a sniper!
In fact, he has actual WW2 service in the RCAF (April-Nov 1944) and transferred to the CA (Jan 45-Apr 1946) where he eventually became a jump qualified RCE Sapper who volunteered to serve in the Pacific theatre. But, he has absolutely no service in an operational theatre.
Brum is not a graduate of Royal Military College of Canada.RMC didn’t reopen until Sept 1948 making it somewhat difficult for him to complete his studies, graduate, train as a gunner officer and deploy to Korea in 1949 and again in 1951.In 1949, he joined the Militia where he eventually became a Major in the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry serving until 1969.
Once again simple arithmetic and recorded history proves that his claims of post war operational service in Korea and South East Asia are a complete fabrication!
He never achieved the rank of Colonel in the CA, he was never a “CANLOAN” officer with the US Army in Vietnam or Cambodia in 1963 and 1965 nor, does he have any service with the US military as a Green Beret.
Major AE Brum CD should have been proud of his military service, there was no need for him to embellish his accomplishments over the course of several decades yet, he did.
Robert LUPTON Hamilton, OntarioPaul ABBOTT Sudbury, Ontario area.Robert J McKinnon Calgary, AlbertaMarianne KNAI Longueuil PQ, Esquimalt BC, Dallas TexasKai Corey DUPS Kent County MichiganBradley BELL Calgary Alberta“captain” Simon Derothschild Cornwall On/Montreal QcMario GRENIER, Quebec.Mario GRENIER, QuebecMark OSBORNE, Moncton, NBWilliam GREUSHCOW Ottawa, OntarioAlbert BRUM Honolulu, Hawaii / Hamilton OntarioAndy “Kruzer” KRUZYNSKI Kincardine, OntarioPatrick VANDAL Drummondville, QuebecPatrick VANDAL Drummondville, QuebecWilliam (Bill) MacKenzie Niagara Falls, OntarioCaptain Robert HASTINGS Kingston, OnHendrik Van der pol Summerside, PEIMark S Beres Beachville, OntarioJohann JEPPE Calgary, Alberta.Kenneth LAROCHE Sudbury, Copper Cliff, Orillia OntarioAndy WRIGHT Edmonton Area, Alberta.Dwayne Curtis EISEN Okanagan Falls, BC Stephen EVANS Wallaceburg, Ontario James FRENCH Cloverdale, BC “SIR” Brent HABETLER Lloydminster, Sk
Terry “captain landmine” BIRCH Cornwall, Ontario
Thomas QUIGLEY GTA, OntarioKen POITRAS Winnipeg, ManitobaMatthew CONNOLLY Kentville, NS Robert DESABRAIS Warren, Ontario Hubert MEYERS Fort Frances, OntarioHerne STEELGRAVE was Gary Reginald ROWE aka Herne GALLOWSGLASSJean Charles PERREAULT Levis/Bagotville, Quebec Jean Charles PERREAULT Levis/Bagotville QuebecJacques “Ti-Co” HAMEL Trois Riviere, Quebec Mark S HALDEN St Catherines, Ontario Daniel WHITSELL Windsor, OntarioGerry CONWAY Guelph, Ontario Andrew Robert FARROW KW Ontario / Nanaimo BC Stephen Dennis McDONALD Calgary, Alberta David MacKENZIE Dugald, ManitobaJean Pierre ISORE St Jean sur Richelieu, QuebecJean-Pierre Isore St Jean sur Richelieu, Quebec
Matthew TREMBLAY Thornloe, OntarioJohn Edward JOHNSTON Nipawin, SkRyan FOSTER Calgary, AlbertaRichard IVIE Calgary, AlbertaDaniel “Fon-Fon” LAFONTAINE Quebec City, QuebecWilliam Edward LANG Pembroke, OntarioOskar KONTORSKY GTA, OntarioWayne JOHNSTON Toronto, OntarioJoe FRAGA Surrey, BCHelmut KRES Edmonton, Alberta Eric JANSSENS Orono/Bowmanville, OntarioJames M DOBSON Windsor, Ontario Robert COOPER Wetaskiwin, AlbertaDennis C SURRENDI Nanton, AlbertaIan DEWAR aka DEWAR-ADAIR Hamilton, OntarioJames WELLHEISER Ayr, OntarioElwyn/Elwin EVANS Teulon, ManitobaDavid Jeffrey DODD Peterborough, OntarioCurtis ROUSH Smithville, OntarioDavid C TOWNSEND PEIDonald LEMMOND aka TYRELL Hamilton, OntarioByron S RODRIGUEZ North Battleford, SkArnold LePOTVIN Sarnia, OntarioRichard FANCY Halifax, NSLawrence PATTERSON Amherst, NSRobert Wayne KELSO Antigonish, NSEarl Clarence WOOLERY III Markdale, OntarioPeter Miklos TOTH Red Deer, AlbertaBob KELLY Leamington, OntarioFranck GERVAIS Cantley, QuebecArt MURRAY Cornwall, OntarioGerry MORGAN Chatham, OntarioMichael McNaught Kingston, OnSean BALDACCIN aka MARTIN aka HILTS Northbrook, OntarioDale GRAY Oshawa, OntarioDavid Christie Whycocomagh, NSSteven A MARTENS Scotch Creek, BCCarl DALE Kingston, OntarioIan NEWBY Aldergrove, BCArt LEONARD GTA, OntarioPascal MIRON Repentigny, QuebecAshley ZEDNER GTA, OntarioMichel- Eric CASTONGUAY Levis, QuebecAlexandre / Andre ASTLE Pembroke, OntarioPeter PASANEN Burnaby, BCRobert N White Petroli, OntarioClayton DONOGHUE Orillia, OntarioRobert “Bobby” COLLINS Saanich, BC
We have now ID’d the individual who claimed to be a CSM in the Royal Canadian Regiment and a former member of the Canadian Airborne Regiment.It now appears that Mr MacKenzie has a long history of impersonating an infantryman that dates back several decades and in fact, continues to so based on images pulled from multiple social media platforms.
There is likely much more to his story as stolen valour is often just the tip of the iceberg…
As expected, Mr Proulx doubled down with the standard poser responses… Dude, give it up before you are further embarassed when your US Army records are accessed via a FOIA request and made public.