AJ shows us how to be a man about it. (Updated)

Aj is a soldier.  He's the type that whose body you'd expect to step over post-battle at the Alamo.  He is probably the finest example of a border ranger out there and in my opinion, a damn fine human being. 

He was always a quiet guy and at our first meeting, I didn't peg him as a nationalist until after we swapped a few jokes.  AJ was loyal to JT sure, but more so to the mission at hand.  JT gave him a lot of lip too, which he patiently endured.  The man could patrol all day in 100 degree heat and stop to change a tire in five minutes.  All that considered, he was a friend to everybody out there.  Without him, we'd have spent more time trying to make it to the freeway on foot than doing what we had set out to do. 

Aj said the most I'd ever seen him say on his facebook page today.  It looks like he has turned and  faced the demon looming at our backs since the start.  His post is in response to the article on the Veterans Today site which initially gave us a glimmer of hope. 

"After reviewing the 9-11 recordings in their entirety, I request that this article be amended in respect to Lisa and her family. I can verify it is her voice, and after the 1st gunshot, you can hear JT say "You fucked up" before moving to kill Lisa. Its with a sick and heavy heart that I say that JT dishonored himself and betrayed us all, but mostly he betrayed Lisa, who took him in during some of his darkest days. He betrayed Amber and Hiott, who tried to help him with his campaign, and patrolled with him, and betrayed the innocent, little Lily, who was only just beginning her adventure through life, all people he had sworn to protect."

 

For someone who doesn't talk much, he said it all.  The sadness of all this is crushing.  But we have to face it for what it is now.  I respect AJ and I know he'd never go off half-cocked on anything, much less something as important as this. 

I'll never, ever get the image of that little girl's face from my mind.  She'll be there in my dreams and thoughts for the rest of my life.  But we'll continue on. 

They say in every life a little rain must fall.  I guess we're in a downpour with zero visibility right now. 

If AJ wants me to, I'll take down his post.  It just hit me as something that needed to be said at this point. 

UPDATE:  AJ asked that I add this to the post. 

Yeah, just put an addendum in there: JT was a strong, outspoken, and natural leader. He put himself out there so we didn't have to. He took the brunt of the abuse and hatred from the media, and put the crosshairs on himself if it ever would have come down to a cartel hit. His downfall may be pride, he was too proud to realize he needed help, since he was so used to showing a strong hand to our adversaries. I wish I had known he needed more help, or another place to stay, since it appears Lisa and JT were not getting along, though whenever I visited it didn't seem apparent, as far as I knew, she supported his efforts to stop narco-terrorism and the war against Americans. To all the Patriots out there, be strong, but stop and take inventory now and again. The struggle for survival is not going to be won in a single generation, as it has taken decades for us to get where we are, and we cannot afford to lose anymore Patriots.

And there you have it.  I'm going to expand on this more later but I agree with AJ, JT positively needed help.  He'd mentioned to me that he suffered from PTSS from things that happened to him while he was a Marine.  He had a quick temper as well, but always seemed to rapidly get it under control.  Nobody here is making an excuse for him or what happened.  All we can do is help provide a few hints as to what was going on in his head. 

I did know that he was in a complicated living situation.  However, I didn't think it was so much the result of a relationship going sour as it was his desire to be closer to the action.  With fuel prices at record highs, we all were trying to come up with ways to be closer to the border.  We'd talked a lot about campers and for all I knew, he was working on getting one.  He was going to pull it close to where we deployed from and live there most of the time.  It was my idea since I had a camper at a retreat once, which I had lived in comfort on and off.  I had told him that it was a difficult thing to secure but simple to maintain and highly mobile.  We'd talked about solar and wind power next.  If we'd ever completed the project sooner, maybe things would have been different.  IF IF IF.

Confusion.

There are very few times in my life that I've ever felt confused.  95% of the time I have a clear picture of the goal ahead, a straight shot to it, over, around and through the situations on the way. 










(Above) JT, Harry and I plant an American flag during the first phase of OLSII.  Veckal Valley.

These recent sad events are not the case.  JT, someone whom I loved and respected as a fellow warrior is being accused of the most horrible crimes I'd ever heard tell of in recent times.  I have no idea what happened and all my theories are just as wishful and flimsy the rest that are floating around.  Nobody knows and we're all afraid of what the possibilities are.  If you wonder why we have a hard time buying cloudy "their" versions of events, here are some reasons why.

People have pointed out the dozens of things that don't make sense about the whole thing.  I'm not here to list those, item after item along with variations.  Once the truth comes out, it will all be worthless except for the one that hit the mark maybe. 

I'll tell you what I do know for sure though.  Often while out on patrol, JT would talk about caring for Baby Lilly, Gilbert's lost little girl.  In fact, after talking to people, I discovered that most people who knew JT from a distance, assumed that Lilly was his.  He spoke about how caring for the child was the white thing to do.  I'd call around bedtime and JT would ask me to call back so he could help get the baby down for the night. 

Am I trying to paint JT as a saint?  No, what I am trying to do it convey to you some of the confusion everyone has over the charges being place on JT by the media:  baby killer.  How did he go from someone who loved children enough to care for one which wasn't his own, to someone who would gun down an infant?  I'm not making a statement, I'm asking a question. 

JT was very kind over the phone to my little daughter.  He always called her "sweetheart" as she babbled into the phone at him.  In fact JT was supposed to come be Santa Claus at my house last year.  "I get it.  Because I'm fat, right?" he said before he agreed.  "I'll put on the tights for a bro, I guess." 

My daughter, not much older than Lilly, even thanked JT once for bringing me safely home from a long patrol.  You would have thought he got a letter from the president (of another country).  Kids liked him too.  Even little Mexican kids would crowd around him and ask him if he was in the Army.  He's respond with "yo es Commando."  and leave it at that. 

I'm not telling you all this to justify or soften the facts of what happened.  What I am trying to do is illustrate to you all how we can't buy what the media is saying.  Once we hear it from law enforcement, then we'll probably have to take our medicine and accept whatever happened as the way it went down. 

Little Lily's face will be in my dreams for the rest of my life.  Whatever happened and no matter who did what, Lilly is gone.  She didn't get the chance we all go.  If you can read this, life has dealt you a better hand than little Lilly.  Her happy short life ended too quick and violent.  All a little child knows is love.  I'm sure she loved her mama, grandma and from the pictures, seemed to love Hoitt very much too.  The people who loved her was her life, which judging from the pictures, she never stopped smiling at them.  I can see her smile now and it makes it hard to avoid braking down. 

My last conversation with JT was about a movie he wanted me to watch.  This was Tuesday night and we talked in length about it, and barely anything else.  JT didn't watch much tv but when he did and something caught his eye, he'd email or call me about it.  I'd say on average I'd talk to JT about 3 times a week.  And almost daily he'd send out a group email or txt offering valuable info or just words of encouragement. 

When I got the call sometime on Wednesday, I was shocked but immediately thought that the whole thing was Cartel related.  It took me a while to even entertain the possibility that it wasn't. 

This is the first time I've sat down to think of all the good things about JT.  I've been holding back any good thoughts in case what the press said was true.  Two days later and the finally say hasn't been said.  But I remember JT in the field.  Every body's safety was his first concern.  His jokes around the campfire were enough to make your ribs hurt.  The man could make you laugh, I don't care who you were. 

Controlling they say?  He's guilty of that but that was because he was natural leader.  Occasionally we'd lock horns over one issue or two.  One was my tactics and load out.  He didn't like my AK-74 though he did like me carrying 300 rounds of ammo for it.  We argued about it one night to the point where he hung and called back asking for my address.  He then told me to expect a box of parts in the mail.  He'd sent me an AR-15 parts kit.  Upon opening it, I found a book on Russian military power as well. 

I'd say 1/3 of my desert gear came from JT himself.  He'd call me up and tell me that he found something I need and had placed it "in my tote".  He'd store all my gear in a plastic container labeled "Drake" and would place items inside if he thought it was stuff I could use while in the CZ. 

He and Harry would stick their neck out for anybody who came out to help.  JT drove like a maniac through the light traffic of Sunday night Phoenix, trying to get me to my plane on time.  He even saw a rode closed but attempted to slip past it in desperation.  I stopped him finally and said it wasn't worth going to jail over. 

His quickness to help a stranger wasn't expected either.  But after a while, if you saw someone stranded beside the road, you knew JT was going to pull over and see what he could do. 

We don't know what happened Wednesday afternoon.  We do know what happened for years out in the deserts around the CZ.  I will make absolutely no effort to excuse or downplay any crime committed by anyone, friend or foe, but people have to understand that we're all against a high wall of pure shock.  This would be like a co-worker you'd work with happily for years coming home and doing the same thing or at least being accused of it in the media. 

I'll write more on this as the day goes by and things develop. 

Operation Midnight Star

Operation Midnight Star was a success.  And as always the scenery was incredible. 

This is what is left from an apparently sucessful drug shipment.  The mules carry the stuff in on their backs, drop it off presumably to a automobile and then go on their happy way. 

This is me in an abandoned electronics factory.  It is beyond me why it was built so far out in the middle of nowhere.  The place is a fairly large complex of concrete domes, big enough to park a semi in.  The outside of most of them is covered in foam insulation, which I thought originally the entire domes were made from.  The complex is for sale to the tune of $750,000.

Training.

I've been hitting the weights kind of hard for the past few months.  It has served two purposes.  First, it is good for your health and even better if you don't forget the cardio. Second, one of the 3 people I work out with is the real life Mitch from my book.  So the hours a week I spend in the gym help inspire more ideas for future Cruel New World books. 

One thing I noticed in the desert recently was that you can have big arms and a massive chest and that's great.  What you really benefit from out there is legs are core strength.  Nobody worth going after hangs around the flat areas.  The hills (if they had trees on them and were located in NC, we'd call them mounains) are where the action is.  Your gear, what feels fine all day on level earth, gets really, really heavy up and down hills all day and night.  So I've started including a lot of leg excercises and core stuff into my routines. 

This is something I should have done a long time ago too.  Me and apparently most people I go to the field with can put in 15 mountain miles a day.  We prove that every year over and over again.  Now I feel like I could do 20 a day.  I noticed a big difference in performance on the past few outings.  In fact, having the extra power just makes life easier in general. 

Just got back!

Hi everybody!  I just got back from working with a rescue team and promoting my book, Cruel New World, along the US/Mexican border.  I donated 5 books to the US Border Guard and they handed them out to each team.  There was a lot of talk about the book and everyone seemed to really like it.  The book really seems to be taking off.

Here's me about to go out for a night out.