Vance Wrote that He Avoided “Significant” Combat
In two written works, Vance gave readers room to infer that he saw minor military action
The Vance Files: This article is one of a series examining the early writings and record of vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance (R-OH). You can support TFN’s reporting with a paid subscription or one-time donation.
Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) wrote in 2016 that he did not experience “significant” combat during his military service in Iraq.
It was not the last time that Vance, who has accused his Democratic rival of “stolen valor,” qualified his military experience in a way that left the degree of his combat experience unclear.
The 2016 statement came in a New York Times op-ed about the Iraq War and then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. “I avoided significant combat,” Vance wrote.
Already an established conservative writer, Vance did not explain why he added the qualifier, how he defined “significant” combat, or why he left room to infer that he saw combat in some degree that didn’t rise to a level worth mentioning.
He employed similarly ambiguous language in his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” released two months later.
“I was lucky to escape any real fighting,” Vance wrote.
Again, Vance doesn’t make clear why he didn’t just say he saw no fighting, begging the question of whether he may have thought fighting he did see simply didn’t merit discussion more than a decade later.
Then, at last month’s Republican National Convention, Vance said that if he and his wife kids are buried in his family plot, the cemetery will hold “seven generations of people who have fought for this country.”
How Vance fought for this country may not have been significant in 2016, but could be now, considering his recent criticisms of Gov. Tim Walz (D-OH).
In a 2018 video circulated by Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, Walz says that he “carried [weapons] in war.”
Walz was apparently referring to his wartime deployment in Europe, which did not include combat. The campaign said today that Walz “misspoke.”
Vance responded to the video on Wednesday. “What bothers me about Tim Walz is this stolen valor garbage. Do not pretend to be something that you’re not.”
Vance said, “I wonder, Tim Walz, when were you ever in war?” He added, “I’d be ashamed if I was him and I lied about my military service like he did.”
The critique drew comparisons to the 2004 efforts to discredit the military record of then-Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), a Vietnam combat veteran, during his presidential campaign. One of Trump’s campaign advisors reportedly helped lead those attacks.
Ironically, Vance’s 2016 op-ed already has received renewed attention for calling Trump “unfit” to be president. But Vance also argued that white voters saw Trump as the only Republican leader to say that the Iraq War “was a terrible mistake imposed on the country by an incompetent president.”
Making his case, Vance cited his military experience.
Referring to his grandmother’s skepticism when he enlisted, Vance wrote that, “I eventually learned that her wariness about the war was justified.” He said, “Thirteen years later, the war’s costs are obvious, especially to military families.”
“Though I avoided significant combat, many did not. One good friend suffered horrible burns when his vehicle rolled over a roadside bomb. Another came home traumatized; his alcoholism eventually landed him in prison.”
Vance also referred to “voters furious at politicians who sent their children to fight and bleed and die in Iraq” and said, “I am proud of my service and proud of those who served alongside me.”
Many of those who served alongside Vance during his four years as a combat correspondent were fellow members of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing’s public affairs division. (The title of combat correspondent is something of a misnomer as it does not necessarily involve on-site combat coverage.)
On Friday, the Independent reported that a former fellow combat correspondent, Cullen Tiernan, said the role came with risks.
“When we first landed, we got mortar and rockets from Baghdadi, the neighboring town,” said Cullen, a progressive activist who remains friends with Vance. It was unclear whether Vance was on that same flight or whether Cullen was saying their plane actually took fire.
Although Vance qualified as an expert M16 marksman, his memoir doesn’t recount any combat, significant or otherwise.
One of his dispatches, though, described a firefight in northwest Iraq as if Vance were there, citing no sources for on-the-ground details he provides.
“After the Marines on the ground radioed for the emergency casualty evacuation, the Huey landed under the watchful eye of the Cobra attack helicopter,” Vance wrote.
“The mood inside the chopper was tense. The crew yelled for a corpsman to hop on the helicopter before it took off for Camp Al Qaim to deliver the Marine to a medical facility.”
The dateline for Vance’s story is Camp Al Qaim, not the city where Vance’s story says the firefight took place. All of the quotations in the article were from afterward.
In “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance refers to a “dangerous” civil affairs mission he covered.
“Civil affairs missions were typically considered more dangerous, as a small number of Marines would venture into unprotected Iraqi territory to meet with locals,” Vance explained.
In the article at the time, however, 11 years earlier, Vance said there was no cause for concern because they did have protection. “With their Army brothers providing security, the 6th CAG [Civil Affairs Group] can stay in its lane without worry,” Vance wrote about the visit.
His memoir employs harrowing language to describe his entry into the world of media relations back home.
Vance wrote that “The Marine Corps threw me to the wolves” by tasking him to do live TV interviews.
Vance’s training reportedly would have had to include a 56-day Basic Public Affairs Specialist Course. Mastering media relations, Vance writes,
“...taught me a valuable lesson: That I could do it. That I could work twenty-hour days when I had to. I could speak clearly and confidently with TV cameras shoved in my face.”
After hundreds of thousands of people came to the base for an air show, he recalls, “our media relations worked so well that I earned a commendation medal.”
Vance also describes the two biggest impacts of his final two years in the Marines. One was an Iraqi boy’s excited response when Vance gave him an eraser during the civil affairs mission.
The other was what the Marines taught him about managing his life. “I took mandatory classes about balancing a checkbook, saving and investing,” he wrote.
At one point, an older Marine upbraided him for considering buying a car without comparing auto-loan rates. “I felt so lucky to even get a loan that I was ready to pull the trigger immediately,” Vance wrote. “The Marine Corps demanded that I think strategically about these decisions.”
Jonathan Larsen is a veteran journalist and TV news producer who’s worked at MSNBC, CNN, ABCNews, and TYT. You can support his independent reporting with a paid subscription to his occasionally obnoxious newsletter, or by making a one-time donation.
He’s talking just like someone who’s been located in the AO. Yes - things go bang in your general vicinity, but it doesn’t mean you’ve been on the two way range.
The loan was the Shillbilly's personal Vietnam