- The Guardian, Wednesday July 9 2008
A soldier who boasted on Facebook that he had served with the SAS and killed more than 100 people has resigned from the army after he was exposed as a fantasist by genuine soldiers.
Jim McAuley bragged that he had been a paratrooper at the battle of Goose Green during the Falklands war and claimed to have been the second SAS man on the balcony during the London Iranian Embassy siege 27 years ago. He also claimed that he had spent time in Afghanistan: "I did a spell with the boys in black but can't really say too much." He boasted that he had taken out two enemy machine gun emplacements in the first Gulf war and was involved in the rescue of captured Irish Rangers in Sierra Leone.
In fact, he used to serve in the Army Catering Corps and for many years organised local poppy collections in Chorley for the Royal British Legion. In recent years he had been training cadets at the Lancashire Army Cadet Force in Preston.
He was forced to apologise and quit his job after admitting his claims of being in the Paras and SAS were lies. He was caught out after serving soldiers sent him messages posing as a woman, Jenny Gilbert. They threatened to expose him and he backed down after they sent a message demanding an apology.
One of the soldiers told McAuley on an Army blog: "We ... take a very dim view of people like yourself who try to live off the glory of these actions, especially given that we have lost many good comrades who were involved in them.
"It is our experience that people such as yourself (we term them as Walter Mitties) once caught tend to lay low for a while then surface somewhere else. We will be watching, of that have no doubt."
McAuley, who is married with an adult son, apologised in a local newspaper.
