When Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz chose to leave the military on the eve of his deployment to Iraq, Thomas Behrends went in his place.
“I needed to hit the ground running and take care of the troops — and tell them we were going to war,” Behrends said of the 500 soldiers under his command. “For a guy in that position, to quit is cowardice.”
Behrends, a 63-year-old farmer in Brewster, Minn., called the Democratic vice presidential candidate “a traitor” for retiring from their Minnesota National Guard unit just before their deployment to Iraq in 2005.
“When your country calls, you are supposed to run into battle — not the other way,” the retired command sergeant major told The Post Tuesday. “He ran away. It’s sad.
“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.”
Walz, 60, joined the National Guard after high school and served 24 years in the 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery, rising to the rank of command sergeant major. He retired in 2005 — months after a warning order that the battalion would be deployed to Iraq — to run for Congress. He was elected to office in 2006.
“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,” Behrends and fellow retired Guardsman Paul Herr wrote in a letter posted to Facebook during Walz’s first gubernatorial run, in 2018.
Behrends and Herr wrote that Walz could have requested permission from the Pentagon to seek congressional office while on active duty.
When Walz left the unit, he offered to raise funds to cover his fellow soldiers’ bus trips home for Christmas — a gesture that was seen as a cynical ploy by some of them, according to Behrends.
“If it were me, I would feel guilty about leaving and do something to make up for it, but if you ask me, he was doing it to buy votes,” Behrends told The Post. “He will do anything for votes.”
The unit spent 17 months in Iraq and suffered three casualties, including Kyle Miller, a 19-year-old from Willmar, Minn. --->READ MORE HERE
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| Glen Stubbe/Star Tribune via Getty Images |
A veteran who served with Kamala Harris running mate Gov. Tim Walz accused him of embellishing his time in the service and abandoning his unit just before they deployed.
In an interview Wednesday on "The Ingraham Angle," Ret. Command Sgt. Maj. Thomas Behrends, who said he was a member of Walz's battalion, scolded the Minnesota governor for misleading the American public about his military career.
His service concluded when he retired from his unit in the Minnesota National Guard right before they deployed to Iraq in 2005, the New York Post reported. The Minnesota National Guard told Fox News Walz's unit was not given deployment orders to Iraq until July and he had put his retirement papers in five to seven months prior to his retirement in that May 2005
Asked about Trump running mate Sen. JD Vance's accusation that Walz is guilty of "stolen valor," the National Guard veteran told Fox News host Laura Ingraham that it's "far darker than a lot of people think."
"He's used the rank that he never achieved in order to advance his political career," he said. "I mean, he still says he's a retired command sergeant major to this day, and he's not. He uses the rank of others to make it look like he's a better person than he is."
Questions emerged about Walz's rhetoric surrounding his time in the service after Vice President Kamala Harris announced him as her running mate on the 2024 Democratic ticket.
Walz is described as a retired "command sergeant major" in his governor's website biography and has also claimed he carried a gun "in war," despite never experiencing active combat.
Ingraham, however, said the Minnesota National Guard told the "Angle" he retired as a master sergeant. --->READ MORE HERE
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