Thread by @MuellerSheWrote

Can confirm. I was drawn into a debate about military service and accidentally said it was my grandfather and not his brother who perished in WWII, and they’ve hung me out to dry with that error. 1/

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1671622037071093761

First, when asked about my family’s service, I consistently reply with “we lost my dad to exposure to agent orange when he was 46, we lost my great uncle over Germany in WWII, and my grandpa was on the Gregory when it sank at Guadalcanal.” 2/

I’ve told my grandpas story a zillion times and have shared articles about it. He went down to the after steering room and manually operated the rudders until he was forced to abandon. Here’s an example and the article. 3/

And here’s what happened to his brother-in-law, my great uncle Fritz who was a pilot KIA. Turns out it was Rumania, not Germany - which is what grandpa always told us. 4/

But a sock account drew me into a debate because he insisted that non-combat vets like me don’t count. It appears I got distracted and left out the part about Fritz, accidentally attributing his fate to my grandpas. Here’s that erroneous tweet. 5/

I figured it would be obvious to the average person that OF COURSE we didn’t lose grandpa or none of us would be here. But regardless, trolls took this mistake and decided to convince people that my entire life is a lie and I can’t be trusted for anything. 6/

So the lesson is DO NOT DEBATE THE TROLLS. I’m so guilty of that in the past because they draw me in with stuff that personally stings. So if you think my entire body of work is suspect because the wrong family member died heroically in the war, I don’t really care. END/