Lakeland area resident called out regarding U.S. veteran status

Vilas County veterans service officer Brian Thomas has made it clear he believes Lac du Flambeau resident Wally Obermann is not a veteran of service in the United States military.

Thomas, a U.S. Air Force veteran, first encountered Obermann in July of 2022, and soon afterward, based on records he found, came to his conclusion regarding Obermann’s veteran status. 

‘He is not a veteran’

Thomas told The Lakeland Times he first encountered Obermann on July 21, 2022, when Obermann applied for a hearing aid through the Veterans Administration (VA). 

Thomas told the Times he wasn’t in the office on June 28, 2022, when Obermann picked up a VA medical application form but the assistant CVSO “convinced Wally to set up an appointment so we could discuss the application.” 

“July 21, 2022, that’s when I did meet with him (Obermann) to apply for VA health care,” Thomas said. “He did not have a certified DD 214 and the one he had looked tampered with.”

The DD 214 is a document used by all U.S. military branches that certifies the release or discharge of an individual from active duty. 

Because of the concern about the condition of the DD 214 form, Thomas said he sent a records request to the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) asking for Obermann’s DD 214. 

“At that time, we hung onto that application for health benefits but didn’t send it since we didn’t yet have that certified DD 214,” Thomas said, adding that Obermann’s discharge paperwork wasn’t in the database for the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs (WDVA).

On August 25, 2022, Thomas said he was out of the office when Obermann returned with his original DD 214 that didn’t appear to be tampered with. 

“I assume that’s the one the NPRC sent him,” Thomas said. “It was an original, certified copy with a seal.”

That DD 214 shows Obermann’s date of rank as being Jan. 21, 1966 with a discharge date of April 22, 1966; three months and two days. 

“Discharged because of not meeting medical fitness standards at time of induction,” Obermann’s DD 214 states. 

Nowhere on either DD 214, the one Obermann originally presented that Thomas said appeared to have been tampered with or the copy from the NPRC, states Obermann served with any unit other than his basic training unit at Fort Knox, Ky. It was classified as an honorable discharge. 

Another form Thomas has since obtained for Obermann’s file is from the headquarters for the U.S. Army Armor Center at Ft. Knox and dated April 18, 1966; it’s a set of orders authorizing Obermann’s discharge from the U.S. Army for what was determined to be “erroneous induction.”

Those orders from April 18, 1966, also give the reason for Obermann’s discharge as a “physical disability.”

On Sept. 8, 2022, Thomas reviewed Obermann’s VA medical form; one of the questions on that form asks “Did you serve in Vietnam between January 9, 1962 and May 7, 1975?”

“I was getting ready to submit that health care application when I noticed he (Obermann) checked ‘Yes’ to serving in Vietnam,” Thomas said. “So, I mailed him a letter with a new application for correction and on that letter, I did let him know that there were some errors on that form, to please correct it and mail the new form back to us.”

As of Nov. 10, 2022, his office hadn’t received the VA medical form from Obermann and Thomas said that was when Obermann’s photo was noticed in the “Veterans Salute” section of the newspaper (Obermann contacted the newspaper in 2023 and asked that the photo be deleted).

“His being a sergeant and serving for two years,” Thomas said, adding that’s when he notified members of the Vilas County Veterans Service Commission of the situation. 

On Nov. 23, 2022, Thomas said his office received the VA medical form from Obermann “and he checked that box once again.”

“So, that was twice that he did it,” Thomas said. “It wasn’t just once. I did call him at that time to discuss his false answer regarding whether or not he served in Vietnam. He said he was confused with the question. I told him to stop aggravating his service and brought up his recent submission to the newspaper as well. I explained to him he is not a veteran for VA purposes since he has no official entry date (according to the DD 214) due to not meeting medical fitness standards at the time of induction. I also told him he wasn’t medically retired as he previously claimed, either.”

Thomas said Obermann insisted that he was medically retired from the Army.

“Interestingly enough, he said he was let out because it was all a big mistake,” Thomas said. “I asked him, and this is the part where he gets a little personal. I pushed him. I did. I kept asking him “What was the mistake, Wally?’ and he wouldn’t answer. He wouldn’t answer with what the mistake was. So, at that time, I told him not to contact our office any further and to stop with his fabricated stories. I was very stern with Wally.”

Since then, Thomas said he’s run into Obermann on occasion and Obermann was wearing veteran apparel. 

“I went up to him and I said ‘Wally, I told you this before. You need to stop acting like this. You need to stop portraying yourself as a Vietnam veteran because you’re not and he tried shushing me away. I wouldn’t let him shush me away and I did very sternly let him know that he needs to stop this. I wasn’t yelling, I wasn’t screaming but I did voice my displeasure.”

Thomas said it didn’t end there as he once again confronted Obermann after the 2023 Veterans Day observance at Lakeland Union High School, a conversation Thomas said his wife recorded. 

“I let him know to stop,” Thomas said of that encounter with Obermann. “And he gave me excuse after excuse after excuse. The more I pressed him, the more excuses he gave. It comes down to he wears that (veteran-related) stuff because he thinks he’s authorized to wear that stuff because he had friends that died in Vietnam and that was his answer to that one.”

A friend of Obermann’s from Milwaukee, Nick Kokalis, was 22 when he was killed in action in Vietnam’s Quang Nam province on Oct. 28, 1967. 

“I went down with Nick on a train from Milwaukee to Fort Knox when we first got drafted into the Army,” Obermann wrote on the entry for Kokalis on the website for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund in 2015. “We will always remember him because of his quick wit & his beaming smile. I will be going on a ‘Never Forgotten Honor Flight’ in 2016 to see his name on ‘The Wall’ and honor him. I will never forget him. He was a great guy!”

Thomas said there is no disputing the good work Obermann has done to raise money for the Never Forgotten Honor Flight (NFHF). 

“If you want to give back to the veterans, none of that veteran portrayal was necessary,” he said. “I told him that. Multiple times.”

Cease and desist

A co-founder of the NFHF, Marine veteran Jim Campbell, told the Times he and the organization’s board don’t dispute — and are grateful for — the work Obermann has done for the organization. 

He agrees with Thomas that the fundraising work could have been done without anyone portraying themselves as a veteran. 

Still, he said, this will be the third instance since the beginning of the NFHF where there have been questions raised about the actual military service of a person applying to go on a flight, which he indicated is something the NFHF can’t afford as it relies on the public’s trust in its fundraising efforts.

Campbell said Obermann will be receiving a letter from the NFHF informing him that he is to “cease and desist any and all fundraising activities” related to the NFHF. 

In addition, moving forward, Campbell said there will probably be some changes regarding the process for veterans to apply for a seat on the NFHF; Thomas said he’s provided some suggestions to Campbell as to how those changes may be implemented when it comes to verifying a person’s military service.

“We’re going to evaluate our application acceptance,” Campbell said. “I don’t know where it’ll go but we’re gonna do that.”

The Honor Flight 

In July, 2016, The Lakeland Times published an article about Obermann, who in April of that year, went to Washington, D.C., on the 23rd Never Forgotten Honor Flight (NFHF) out of Mosinee’s Central Wisconsin Airport. 

Obermann told this reporter he had been drafted into the United States Army in January, 1966, and served until April, 1968. 

He said he’d been assigned to the U.S. Army’s Third Armored Division. 

“Some soldiers in his unit, including Obermann,” the 2016 Times article reads, “remained Stateside by virtue of having their orders lost.”

Instead, Obermann said he did his entire two-year tour in the Army as a member of the 34th Military Police Detachment based at Fort Knox, Ky. 

In the years since that trip to Washington, D.C., Obermann has worked to raise money for the NFHF organization, most often with members of the Lakeland Union High School (LUHS) football team. 

During his fundraising efforts, primarily for the NFHF, he has identified and has been identified by media outside of the Lakeland area as a Vietnam veteran. 

In the 2022 Veterans Day special section the Times and its sister publication in Rhinelander, The Northwoods River News, publishes annually, a photo of a young Obermann in dress uniform was included and he was identified as having served in the Army from 1966 to 1968, the Vietnam era, and left the service as an E5, or sergeant. 

Obermann was offered an opportunity to tell his side of things prior to the publication of this story but he declined to go on the record. 

Brian Jopek may be reached via email at [email protected].