Originally Posted by
megan
Posting because it has personal interest. Problem is, the period he claims to have served in Vietnam I was there, and 2i/c of the platoon he claims to have been in, also the call signs he claims to have used he couldn't have, as they belonged to other individuals.
You might note that he also claims being in the British Army 1955 to 1957, and has the British General Service Medal and Suez Medal. Any way of checking his British Army bona fides?
Tricky - I'd suspect that'd be his two years of National Service. He may have been involved during Op MUSKETEER, and the GSM with Near East clasp would've been issued as a result.
Using Ancestry there is a Clive H Collins with a USA Aviation background who has the date of birth given. The record is from 1972 and has him as a CW2 in the USAR.
There's a photo of him -
here
I wonder whether this is more a result of confusion (either the late Mr Collins's memory failing him towards the end of his days, or on the part of a proud relative attempting to decipher personal papers and getting entirely the wrong end of the stick - the RAF Historical Branch has regular instances where someone's great uncle clearly wasn't adopting a Mitty-esque approach but that his family pieced together information from stories and personal papers and ended up with a very different career for their late relative, and one which said relative had never, in fact, claimed for himself...)