Bragg soldier demoted 2 ranks after being convicted of using his brother's name
Posted: Wednesday, December 18, 2013 9:19 pm | Updated: 12:34 pm, Thu Dec 19, 2013.
By Paul Woolverton Staff writer
A soldier who used his brother's identity to enlist in the Army 25 years ago was demoted two ranks Wednesday afternoon at the conclusion of his court-martial at Fort Bragg. Sgt. Maj. William Anthony Morrone Jr. was convicted earlier Wednesday of fraudulent enlistment and making false official statements for his use of his brother Gerald's name and Social Security number throughout his 25-year military career.
He said he took his brother's identity in 1988 because he couldn't get back in the Army any other way following a less-than-honorable discharge in the early 1980s. The judge demoted Morrone to sergeant first class. In an unsworn statement to the judge before sentencing, Morrone said he loved being in the Army. "It's the best thing in the world. It really is," Morrone said, choking up. "So I came back in. That's what I did.
"Morrone said he first joined the Army at age 17 in 1979. He had to get his mother to sign off on his enlistment because of his age. "Since I was a little kid, I always wanted to be a soldier," he said.
Less than three years later, Morrone was kicked out. It wasn't clear from comments in court what led to his discharge.
Morrone's unsworn statement and the evidence presented during the trial this week indicated that he tried several times to re-enlist in during the 1980s. He also got into trouble with the law in Washington state - with a guilty plea to a felony in 1987 followed by a failure to complete the terms of his probation and punishment. Those factors, too, would have kept Morrone from re-enlisting. William Morrone said that in 1988, he lived with his older brother Gerald and came across Gerald's birth certificate and other personal papers. That spring, he took these to sign up for the Army again. For the second time, William Morrone went to jump school to become an Army paratrooper. His brother's college degree gave him a head start at his revived military career, with his rank private first class instead of private, a prosecutor said. Morrone was stationed at Fort Bragg and spent much of the next 25 years here. He served in the first Gulf War in the early 1990s and the Iraq war zone during the war on terror.
