Stealing Valor Back

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During his failed vice-presidentail bid, Tim Walz faced charges of stolen valor in about the same way as Brave Sir Robin from Monty Python and the Holy Grail faced his travails – had SIr Robin had the benefit of a compliant media that did its best to keep the issue quiet.  

And Walz is famous for holding town halls – in states where he’s not the governor.  In Minnesota, not so much.  

The allegations – that Walz, after a long and honorable career in the Nebraska and Minnesota Army National Guards, rising to the rank of Command Sergeant Major, left his unit (the 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery, in Mankato), the highest ranking enlisted man in the 700-odd man battalion and a vital part of the unit’s fabric, before submitting his retirement papers on the eve of its ordered deployment to Iraq in 2005, to run for Congress.  

Now, like about 99% of Americans, I never served – and I’m pretty circumspect about criticizing someone else’s military service. I’ve spent a lot of my life reading about soldiers; I ghost-wrote a book for one of them. I’m not qualified to heckle.   

Among those who might be considered qualified to heckle are the man who replaced him as Command Sergeant Major of the 1/125 Field Artillery:

“He had the opportunity to serve his country, and said ‘Screw you’ to the United States. That’s not who I would pick to run for vice president,” Thomas Behrends, one of the retired officials who signed the letter, told the New York Post on Tuesday.

Or the unit’s commander:

John Kolb, who became lieutenant colonel of the Minnesota unit a few months after Walz quit to run for Congress, joined the attacks soon after Vice President Kamala Harris admitted her running mate “misspoke” about retiring as a command sergeant major.

In a widely shared Facebook post, Kolb said Walz not only “retired early” and “broke his enlistment contract,” the Democrat also failed to “complete the Sergeants Major Academy” and “did not successfully complete any assignment as a Sergeant Major.”

Or the battalion’s chaplain:

“In our world, to drop out after a WARNORD [warning order] is issued is cowardly, especially for a senior enlisted guy,” retired Capt. Corey Bjertness, now a pastor in Horace, North Dakota, told The Post. 

Bjertness, 61, was the chaplain for the 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery, of which Walz was command sergeant major before retiring in 2005, two months before the unit deployed to Iraq. Walz has said he did so to run for Congress, and he was elected the next year.

“Running for Congress is not an excuse,” Bjertness said of Walz’s decision to quit. “I stopped everything and went to war. I left my wife with three teenagers and a 6-year-old and I was gone for 19 months.”

They’re qualified – although their observations got next to no coverage in Minnesota media.  

Fast forward to this past Wednesday; Walz decided to put in one of his very rare public appearances, at Minnesota’s annual “Veterans Day on the Hill”.  

It didn’t go well:

🚨 Tim Walz was heckled and booed by military veterans in Minnesota today over his stolen valor. pic.twitter.com/It80ZIeZCC

— Dustin Grage (@GrageDustin) April 10, 2025

Joe Steck, a US Air Force and Minnesota Guard veteran, commented (via Minnesota conservative news outlet Alpha News):

“Veterans Day on the Hill is when Veterans get together and let the representatives know that you made promises to us and we need these things taken care of,” Steck said. “Gov. Walz, I’m not a fan of his politics, but he has been good to the veterans, I will say that. In general, he’s always gotten claps, people maybe didn’t like his politics, but they’ve never been rude to him.”

Steck continued, saying that beyond the heckling, what really was impactful was the veterans’ response to the things Walz said in his speech. “It wasn’t as much the shouting, it was the silence. That is the thing. They sat on their hands, it was silent. He said stuff that should’ve been clapped at and it was not,” he told Alpha News. “Walz did actually say some good things, but they were not going to hear it because they wanted him to know how they felt.”

This is going to be an interesting addition to Walz’s inevitable 2028 presdential bid.