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Might be a long post...
Jan. 24th, 2006 12:20 pm...but it won't include anything you might wish I hadn't told you. (I hope.)
I'm assuming that most if not all of you remember me making an announcement about a funeral the other week. If not, you probably recall a good portion of the staff vanishing to Muir Island for a day or two. I know that I didn't give much in the way of details apart that it was a friend of mine. But I had a talk with Jennie late last week that got me thinking. There are things I can't, or at least shouldn't tell you. But I can tell you about him and what he was doing before he died, and I think I should. I think a number of you might like to hear it.
A lot of you met GW at some point over the last couple of years. He was always turning up, generally when I landed myself in the infirmary. Those of you who were at the wedding will remember him, too; he was my best man. He and I were friends for a long time. Took turns saving each other's lives, that sort of thing. He helped me through the hardest time in my life, that first year after my first wife and my son were killed.
Yes, he was a mercenary, just like I was. Before that he worked for the US government, if in a different capacity than I did... and this isn't really what I'm making this post to talk about.
This is even harder that I thought it would be. I tried to write it ahead of time and couldn't. Multiple drafts, none of them saying what I wanted them to say. So I'm just going to write and hit post and hope it comes out the way it should.
GW was a mercenary, and I emphasize the 'was' for a reason. Six months ago, he and my other friends who used to be mercenaries (or in some cases, used to be what I was before I was a mercenary) decided to do something that I still think is pretty remarkable. In a number of African countries, there were and in some cases still are camps where mutant kids were being trained to be soldiers. Taking out the first of these camps was an X-Men mission, but the information came from my friends. Then we found out there were more of them. Lots more. It became clear pretty quickly that there was a lot of work to be done. Since they were there in Africa, on the ground, GW and my friends decided that they were the ones who would do it.
Over the last half-year, they've freed as many kids as go to school here. With help from some of the Professor's friends in Africa, they've gotten these kids and their families resettled safely in other places. Sometimes they've helped them go back to help other mutants in their home countries, if that's what they decided they wanted to do.
We've helped them, but most of the work, they've done themselves. And it's been hard, dangerous, exhausting work. There have been times I've so wanted to be over there with them, helping... to the point where I took some pretty stupid risks trying to get information to help them. But that's not really the point, again.
One of the things I know I'm never going to forget is what I saw when we arrived in Libya to help them get some of these kids out. They'd been cut off from their transportation and needed a ride. And they'd been running all night, trying to stay ahead of the Libyan army. I got off the plane and headed out to help, and there was GW, dead on his feet, but still carrying one of the boys. He wasn't the only one. The kids couldn't run anymore, any of them. But there was no way GW or any of the others were leaving a single one of them behind.
The other thing Jennie thought I should tell you, and I agree, is that GW wasn't a mutant. Some of my other friends who were working with him weren't, either. But mutant and human, they all knew that these places needed to be put out of business. I remember GW telling me back in August that he was tired of seeing his mutant friends suffering just because they'd been born with a twist in their DNA, and that he wasn't willing anymore to sit back and let the same sort of thing happen to children who hadn't even had a chance to live yet.
He decided he had to do the right thing. And that's what got him killed, in the end - the choices he made, the risks he took, to do the right thing. I don't think I'm ever going to stop missing him, but I don't want what he did or the choices he made to be forgotten.
Try and remember him, the next time you look at the world and think it's made up of people who hate and fear you. Hatred doesn't depend on genetics. It's a choice, and people can choose something better.
I almost forgot. I have pictures. These are some of the children that GW's team rescued from a camp in Mali, in West Africa. They spent a few days recovering in Tunis before heading off to their new homes.
Apparently, none of them had even seen the ocean before.
Attachments:
mariam01.jpg
aly01.jpg
marnadou01.jpg
traore01.jpg
aminata01.jpg
souly01.jpg
almahady01.jpg
I'm assuming that most if not all of you remember me making an announcement about a funeral the other week. If not, you probably recall a good portion of the staff vanishing to Muir Island for a day or two. I know that I didn't give much in the way of details apart that it was a friend of mine. But I had a talk with Jennie late last week that got me thinking. There are things I can't, or at least shouldn't tell you. But I can tell you about him and what he was doing before he died, and I think I should. I think a number of you might like to hear it.
A lot of you met GW at some point over the last couple of years. He was always turning up, generally when I landed myself in the infirmary. Those of you who were at the wedding will remember him, too; he was my best man. He and I were friends for a long time. Took turns saving each other's lives, that sort of thing. He helped me through the hardest time in my life, that first year after my first wife and my son were killed.
Yes, he was a mercenary, just like I was. Before that he worked for the US government, if in a different capacity than I did... and this isn't really what I'm making this post to talk about.
This is even harder that I thought it would be. I tried to write it ahead of time and couldn't. Multiple drafts, none of them saying what I wanted them to say. So I'm just going to write and hit post and hope it comes out the way it should.
GW was a mercenary, and I emphasize the 'was' for a reason. Six months ago, he and my other friends who used to be mercenaries (or in some cases, used to be what I was before I was a mercenary) decided to do something that I still think is pretty remarkable. In a number of African countries, there were and in some cases still are camps where mutant kids were being trained to be soldiers. Taking out the first of these camps was an X-Men mission, but the information came from my friends. Then we found out there were more of them. Lots more. It became clear pretty quickly that there was a lot of work to be done. Since they were there in Africa, on the ground, GW and my friends decided that they were the ones who would do it.
Over the last half-year, they've freed as many kids as go to school here. With help from some of the Professor's friends in Africa, they've gotten these kids and their families resettled safely in other places. Sometimes they've helped them go back to help other mutants in their home countries, if that's what they decided they wanted to do.
We've helped them, but most of the work, they've done themselves. And it's been hard, dangerous, exhausting work. There have been times I've so wanted to be over there with them, helping... to the point where I took some pretty stupid risks trying to get information to help them. But that's not really the point, again.
One of the things I know I'm never going to forget is what I saw when we arrived in Libya to help them get some of these kids out. They'd been cut off from their transportation and needed a ride. And they'd been running all night, trying to stay ahead of the Libyan army. I got off the plane and headed out to help, and there was GW, dead on his feet, but still carrying one of the boys. He wasn't the only one. The kids couldn't run anymore, any of them. But there was no way GW or any of the others were leaving a single one of them behind.
The other thing Jennie thought I should tell you, and I agree, is that GW wasn't a mutant. Some of my other friends who were working with him weren't, either. But mutant and human, they all knew that these places needed to be put out of business. I remember GW telling me back in August that he was tired of seeing his mutant friends suffering just because they'd been born with a twist in their DNA, and that he wasn't willing anymore to sit back and let the same sort of thing happen to children who hadn't even had a chance to live yet.
He decided he had to do the right thing. And that's what got him killed, in the end - the choices he made, the risks he took, to do the right thing. I don't think I'm ever going to stop missing him, but I don't want what he did or the choices he made to be forgotten.
Try and remember him, the next time you look at the world and think it's made up of people who hate and fear you. Hatred doesn't depend on genetics. It's a choice, and people can choose something better.
I almost forgot. I have pictures. These are some of the children that GW's team rescued from a camp in Mali, in West Africa. They spent a few days recovering in Tunis before heading off to their new homes.
Apparently, none of them had even seen the ocean before.
Attachments:
mariam01.jpg
aly01.jpg
marnadou01.jpg
traore01.jpg
aminata01.jpg
souly01.jpg
almahady01.jpg
