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thedrifter
02-02-07, 07:24 AM
Wandering soldier turns up on the Net
Article Launched:02/01/2007 10:29:41 PM PST

The e-mail from Peggy arrived about two weeks ago.

Peggy is not her real name, but I suspect the one with which she signed the e-mail isn't real either. As I began reading her story, I had no idea where it was going or why she was telling it to me. But all that became quite clear.

Her story went like this.

In 1968, Peggy was 18, fresh out of high school and engaged to a soldier in Vietnam. She took a job in Washington, D.C., and was there only a few months when her soldier broke off their engagement. Peggy's heart was broken.

By 1969, she and a friend had begun to frequent a D.C. bar, befriending Marines stationed in and around the capital. The one she got to know best was a handsome 32-year-old.

"We became friends and dated for several weeks," Peggy wrote me. "He was a fascinating person and so easy to talk to. I enjoyed his company immensely. We went to nice places for dinner, and he was always a gentleman. I had never known anyone like him and I was in awe; also, I was quite proud of myself for attracting an older man of his stature."

At the time, Peggy was living in an apartment complex in which many servicemen also lived. She loved hearing their stories, those about parachute jumping. "They would talk about how it felt to fall out of the sky and I became eager to jump myself."

Mystery man

Peggy was learning more about her new friend. Among other things, he told her he had served in an airborne force as well. "(He) told me that either he was in the Navy attached to the Army, or in the Army attached to the Navy. I just don't remember which. And I never saw him in uniform."

She did learn that he was stationed nearby in Maryland, and from a friend who knew someone stationed there she also learned he was "sort of a mystery man." No one actually seemed to know what he did. "I remember from the stories he had told me that he had been in the military for a number of years."

They continued to date. He came to her apartment a couple of nights a week. On other nights, he said, he took karate lessons.

"One night we took pictures, and as he was leaving, he asked for the film and said he would get it developed for me. I will always remember he looked at me differently the time he left with the film. I can't describe the look, only that it seemed different."

The next week, he failed to show up for their usual date. Then, a couple of weeks later, there was a phone call. "Hon, remember the new parachutes I said I was going to test? Well, I was in Georgia testing them and one didn't open up. I have two broken legs and I'm in Fitzsimmons hospital in Colorado."

Says Peggy, "I was relieved. I hated it that he had two broken legs, but at least he hadn't stood me up."

She sent a get-well card to him at Fitzsimmons Army Medical Center, Denver, but it was returned. "I called the place where he took the karate lessons and asked if he was still taking classes, and was told that he was. My friend wanted me to be waiting at the karate place and confront him, but I wouldn't have any part of it."

She concluded he was married.

Truth on the Net

Years passed. Eventually, Peggy married the soldier to whom she had been engaged earlier. Marriage took them to one military post after another.

She kept thinking that at one of them she might run into her friend from Washington. "I just wanted to know why he left without a word."

Last month, she got an idea. On her computer, she typed in the mystery man's name: David L.C. David.

"That's when your story came up," she said in her e-mail.

The story was a column I had written in June 2000. It told how David David, a veritable fixture at area military events, a man who often appeared in a Navy dress uniform adorned with medals and said he was a SEAL, a man who had assisted in the annual Stand Down for homeless veterans, had turned out to be a fraud.

His story came apart when his background was investigated by a group that exposes phony military heroes. The group got in touch with me.

David, who had moved to Arizona, owned up to the impersonation. In a letter to friends in the Long Beach area, he said, "I want to sincerely apologize for my past actions regarding the gross misrepresentation of my past military service."

Days later, he returned to the city and told me the story of his masquerade.

He appeared at one military-related event, and again apologized. After he returned to Arizona, we exchanged a couple of e-mails. After that, I never heard from him again.

No one now seems to know where David is. Last year, I had a call from a Mississippi reporter who thought he might have lived there for a time, a report that did not pan out.

As for Peggy, her e-mail to me said, "I go along with some of his stories as being lies, but I believe he was a lot of things he said he was. I just hope he is not having a difficult time."

She adds, "I wish there was some way I could tell him that I always cared for him, no matter what the truth about him was. He filled a very important part of my life with compassion and friendship."

Tom Hennessy's viewpoint appears Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. He can be reached at (562) 499-1270 or by e-mail at Scribe17@mac.com.

Ellie