other assignments john c shumate was my uncle and my fathers uncle so i 've heard a few stories from my dad i've heard the story written here but working from back in the early days towards the present i've been told that john c shumate may have been part of the crew of and flown in an observation aircraft as an observer not sure what type aircrft i have a photo of him in his flight suit holding a machine gun at some point he did become a pharmacist as this article stated he did do this type of work in civilian life as stated in a newspaper article i have reporting on him and the incident in which he recieved the silver star from the stories i heard from my father it sounded like john c shumate separated from the military opened a pharmacy and at some point went back into the military my father mentioned a story about john c shumate being in the military mp's and in one incident taking a group of mp's to remove a bunch of squatters that had moved onto an old deserted military base have you heard of richard marcinko he is the founder of seal team six counter terrorist and red cell red cell was a group of navey seals tasked with going to different naval bases to test security they basically acted like terrorist they tried to sneek onto naval bases kidnap high ranking officials plant explosive etc etc the reason i mention this is because according to my dad john c shumate did this at some in the military he apparently tested the security of an air base because as the story goes he planted a fake explosive in a culvert small tunnel under a runway lastly i was told he was in military intelligence but that's all i heard april jeff thomas