![](https://freeamericanetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/veterans-accuse-walz-of-embellishing-military-career-abandoning-national-guard-battalion.webp)
OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
1:43 PM – Wednesday, August 7, 2024
Veterans are accusing Democrat Minnesota Governor Tim Walz of “embellishing” his military service and deserting his National Guard battalion. Walz, the Democrat Party’s nominee for vice president, purportedly never saw combat and left the service before his unit was sent to Iraq in 2005.
“We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, are only carried in war,” Walz said in the past.
However, a number of veterans who were personally familiar with Walz have now openly asserted that Harris’s vice presidential pick never even deployed.
Retired Command Sergeants Major Thomas Behrends and Paul Herr claimed in a letter published on Facebook in 2018 that during Walz’s initial gubernatorial campaign, he left the National Guard after discovering his battalion would be sent to Iraq, even though he had promised his fellow soldiers that he would be joining them.
“On May 16th, 2005, [Walz] quit, betraying his country, leaving the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion and its Soldiers hanging; without its senior Non-Commissioned Officer, as the battalion prepared for war,” wrote Behrends and Herr.
60-year-old Walz left the military in time to begin his political career the next year, winning a congressional bid in 2006.
Additionally, Walz’s radical far-left policies as governor has seemingly been ignored by left-wing mainstream media outlets, which praised him as a “down-to-earth White guy” who could win over rural America in the 2024 presidential election.
Meanwhile, Walz has also made a number of offensive jokes about a true decorated service member, JD Vance (R-Ohio), while viciously ridiculing him.
“I came from a family where nobody in my family had ever gone to law school, I grew up in a poor family,” Vance said. “The fact that Tim Walz wants to turn it into a bad thing is that I worked myself through college, through law school, and made something of myself. To me, that’s the American dream, and if Tim Walz wants to insult it, frankly that’s pretty bizarre.”
Donald Trump’s running mate, Vance, was in the U.S. Marines and he was deployed to Iraq for six months in late 2005. The Ohio senator “enlisted in the military directly out of high school” and “joined the Marines in 2003,” serving as a “combat correspondent,” USA Today reported.
A reporter had previously approached Vance in regards to Walz ridiculing him on his past service.
After highlighting the extraordinary effort it required to fulfill his educational goals and after paying tribute to his modest beginnings, Vance unleashed a torrent of criticism on Walz for his heinous betrayal of his National Guard brethren.
“Well, I wonder, Tim Walz, when were you ever in war?” Vance asked. “What was this weapon you carried into war, given that you abandoned your unit right before they went into Iraq? And he has not spent a day in a combat zone.”
“Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, he dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him. I think that’s shameful,” Vance continued.
Stay informed! Receive breaking news blasts directly to your inbox for free. Subscribe here. https://www.oann.com/alerts