Native Americans have a rich history of serving with distinction in the military.  Among their ranks are those who have been awarded this nations highest honor.

Claiming to follow in their footsteps is Arland Moss, aka “Shadow Box”. Our ASE Certified Automobile Technician likes to display his military honors.

Arland Moss displays awards that suggest he served in Naval Special Warfare with SEAL Team Three.

He even claims to have attained the rank of PO 2nd Class.

Look, we just report what we find.  According to “Shadow Box”, sonar techs do their rank differently than the rest of the Navy.  For some reason he claims they use a First Class rank insignia for other purposes.  Go figure.

When he is not using his Automotive skills, it appears he has something to do with keeping the peace and having scary black guns.

Those high speed shades really accessorize the outfit.  He might wear them to keep the glare of his shadow box from giving him eye strain.  In any event some things struck us as odd.

So, we decided to look into matters.  A background check on Arland Moss revealed some interesting things.

We kept checking with the National Personal Records Center but we are getting a response like this:

We think this is odd since he uses this picture that he says is from 1980.  We will continue to pester NPRC for records but, since we can already prove his claims of being a SEAL and the contents of his shadow box are complete nonsense, its hardly worth any clerk’s effort.

It could be him. Hard to tell without the high speed shades.  At any rate, there might be some plausible reason NPRC can’t find his records.  We think he might have served.

What we do know is Arland Moss was never a Navy SEAL.  We checked the Navy SEAL database and there is no record of Arland Moss. We also know that rank insignia is for 1st Class Petty Officers that are Sonar Techs and they get promoted with the same rank structure everyone else in the Navy does.

Getting back to the awards he displays, let’s see what we found.  This is called a Republic of Vietnam Special Service Medal.

The RVN Special Service Medal was a decoration of South Vietnam which was issued between the years of 1950 and 1974. The decoration was awarded to any military service member who performed an act of outstanding meritorious service to the South Vietnamese State.

This one is called an American Defense Medal.

The American Defense Service Medal was awarded for service in the Armed Forces between September 8, 1939, and December 7, 1941. Army members had to serve 12 months to be eligible, but Navy and Marine Corps members were eligible based on any length of service.

Arland Moss was not a pre-World War II veteran (as the American Defense Medal suggests) , of that there is no doubt.  He was also not in Vietnam.   At least he had already been born by that time, attaining the ripe old age of 14 when the last Marine was flown off the Embassy roof.  We have no idea why The Republic of South Vietnam would award a service medal to a 13 year old since they stopped issuing it in 1974.

The rest of those ribbons and medals are a mystery.  We would attempt to go through the proper order of precedence but nobody could have ever had a legit rack of ribbons that look anything like that.  We thought the Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal and the Navy Good Conduct Medal side by side was interesting.

We have to mention the SEAL Team 3 Medal.

Of course there is no such authorized Medal in existence.  It appears that “Shadow Box” had to come up with something to glorify his nonexistent days in the Teams, so there we have it.

We managed to capture an image of “Shadow Box” without the high speed shades.

We believe there is some Federal Law against Felons playing with scary black guns. Maybe those laws don’t apply to the Indian Nations.  The Department of Homeland Security should be a little more cautious about giving spiffy looking patches and guns to people.  Particularly those who appear to have spent time in prison.

Arland Moss was never a Navy SEAL.  His little shadow box full of medals are not his. He is a disgrace to countless Native Americans that have served with dignity and honor.

According to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society there have been 32 Native-American MOH Recipients.  

https://www.facebook.com/arland.moss

https://myspace.com/grand_am_99/photos

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This Ain’t Hell: http://thisainthell.us/blog/?p=64292