Dennis R. Castellano – US Marine Corps Recon, SSgt, Beirut, Silver Star, Purple Heart, Blog of Shame

militaryphonies

6 years ago

“I picture myself as Lou Gosset Jr. in “An Officer and a Gentleman.” — Dennis Castellano

BACKGROUND

Dennis R. Castellano comes to us from Honea Path, SC. He is 52 years old as of July 2018.

Dennis is a chaplain, among other things, talked about on his biography page…

Source: http://americanchaplainsassociation.org/bio-dennis-castellano/

For the purposes of military claims, we have that he served for six years in the Marine Corps and achieved the rank of SSgt (E-6) and worked in a “hostage retrieval unit.”

He does speaking engagements and wears Marine dress blues along with his medals. Note that there are two hash marks on his sleeve, representing eight (8) years of service.

Medals are displayed in the above photo, but the photo below may offer a better look.

We took the time to identify every medal in the above photo. The ones we were not sure of are annotated with a guess.

Quite oddly, he has a Silver Star and a Purple Heart, but no Combat Action Ribbon (CAR). This is what stuck out to somebody and they alerted Military Phony about Castellano.

Now, on to other claims. Castellano sat down for an interview and he focused on his time in the military. He said he was in the Marine Corps from 1983 – 1986. He states while in boot camp “They saw some things about me. They put me directly – very few times do they do this – they put me from boot camp right into recon training before I even got to infantry training.” (Mark 2:46)

Source: https://youtu.be/FVpzH5XNgAI

At Mark 3:37, Castellano claims he was immediately sent out from Cherry Point, NC to Beirut, Lebanon and helped with the recovery of servicemen killed and wounded in the Marine Barracks bombing that occurred on 23 Oct 1983.

There are many other countries that he visited, he was wounded eight (8) times [MARK 7:45], earned the Purple Heart each time [MARK 8:06], Silver Star [MARK 8:08], DoD Commendation from the President, the Team Commendation, thirteen (13) commendations, and served from 1983-1989 [MARK 8:36].

There are more claims for his involvement in 9/11 rescue attempts in this video, but it is beyond our scope here at Military Phony.

It was at this point that Dennis R. Castellano’s military records were ordered via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

. . . . .

FOIA RESULTS

DoD MANPOWER DATABASE

USMC CAR & HSM DATABASE

The USMC CAR/HMS Database has been known not to be 100% accurate as some have reported awards missing but we put the results here just to be inclusive.

NPRC

. . . . .

DISCUSSION & SUMMARY

DISCUSSION

The military records do not support Dennis Castellano’s claim of many things:

No Silver Star or Purple Heart, and not many other medals either.
No assignment to Beirut, Lebanon.
He was trained as a cook vs. Recon. Nothing wrong with being a cook, which is an admirable profession – he just wasn’t in Recon.
Dennis Castellano has no award that would indicate deployment, combat, or wounds received from combat (i.e. Purple Heart).

Then, there is the matter of the discharge as an E-2 after service of only thirteen months. Thirteen months would indicate either a medical discharge, a hardship/family discharge, or he was a disciplinary problem.

E-2 is only one enlisted grade above the lowest at E-1. Without a hitch, most can achieve E-2 in six months and E-3 within a year.

The thirteen-month enlistment combined with the discharge as an E-2 both suggest the disciplinary issue as hinted at above. Costellano could have been stuck at the rank of E-2 or made a higher rank but then busted down to E-2 before getting out of the service.

Also, we were told by a prominent military historian that enlisted Marines, other than the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps, have NEVER received the Navy DSM and he could not find any enlisted Marine EVER receiving the DDSM.

. . . . .

SUMMARY

Many of the claims attributed to Dennis Costellano were not supported by his official military records.

STOLEN VALOR

If Dennis Costellano has used any of these claims to gain anything of value, including money, work positions, speaking engagements or medical benefits from the government it could put him in direct violation of the Stolen Valor Act.

His records do not support a claim of him being in a war or military conflict.

NOTE: We were contacted by one of his siblings who does not want to be associated with the brother’s deeds. Please do not confuse this guy with one of his siblings with very similar names. They are very reputable people and deserve our support.