Stolen Valor – A(n ex-)wife’s perspective

I have said a few times in the last couple of weeks that the Tim Walz stolen valor scandal has hit me hard and made me furious, because it is personal.

Yet I have never been in the military. I have never served in combat, been shot at, or seen a buddy die. But I was married to a man who was in the Gulf War, and I did pay a heavy, scary, and emotional price for his service.

I met my ex while he was still in the military, but no longer in a combat deployment. The Gulf War was over, and he was Stateside. Being in the Navy, he did do one more six-month tour on the seas before he got out, and we married. I got pregnant with my fourth, and last, child the week we got hitched.

From the start, my pregnancy was just “off.” I didn’t feel like I did with the first three. I was not really more sick than usual or anything, I just felt weird. Ultrasound showed a normal baby developing in there. But I just knew something was up.

About four months in, an antibody in my blood tests showed up as elevated. I was told I had a blood incompatibility with my unborn son. My immune system was rejecting him. Similar to the Rh factor problem, but 20,000 times more rare, and there was no easy way to treat it. At first, I had to have blood tests monthly to check the antibodies. The numbers got too high in the seventh month, and the tests increased to weekly. If the numbers crossed a threshold, it meant an in-utero blood transfusion.

Needless to say, I was terrified for my baby boy.

I started asking questions about my then-husband’s service in the Gulf. The existence of “Gulf War Syndrome” was at that time being talked about but denied. I was advised to call a “hotline” that was set up at the time to answer questions. I called, of course, immediately.

I was told that there were NO anomalies in pregnancies of children of Gulf War vets. That “Gulf War Syndrome” was not a thing, it was a cluster of statistical coincidences. That I could not POSSIBLY be having any type of prenatal issues that had ANYTHING to do with the Gulf War. Nothing to do with the war, they said. No way, no how.

With that, I reported back to my doctor. She continued to monitor my blood. Thankfully, the antibodies never reached that critical line requiring a transfusion into his tiny developing body. My son was born three weeks early, healthy and beautiful.

And guess what? When they tested his blood, the “incompatibility” that had caused my immune response to reject my own child DID NOT EXIST. The doctors were utterly baffled.

Whatever my body was reacting to, it wasn’t present in his blood at birth. This has never been explained to me, but within a year or two, the military had acknowledged “Gulf War Syndrome.” And they had admitted to prenatal anomalies and problems, too. It was real. I will probably never know exactly what was wrong in my case.

This whole story is my way of saying that it isn’t only soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who suffer the consequences of war. It is wives, children, sweethearts, parents, friends, and others. And WE are offended to the very bones by someone who would PRETEND to have paid the price of a combat deployment, WE are offended by someone who would PRETEND to have given his best for the men under his command. The men who would come home and, in my case, father children who ALSO paid a price for their service. With a wife who paid, too, in fear.

Stolen Valor is craven, venal, dishonest, and immoral. “Tampon Tim” AWalz is a despicable, cowardly POS. He should not be Vice President. He should not even be a small town mayor. He shouldn’t be anything but ashamed.