Let’s take a break from our regularly scheduled programming of Fake News or Real News? and remember a brother-in-arms who’s passed on to the other side.

Luis Carlos Montalván, former Army captain, decorated Iraq war veteran, prominent advocate in the vet community, and best-selling author of the memoir Until Tuesday: A Wounded Warrior and the Golden Retriever Who Saved Him, was found dead in an El Paso hotel room in December. He was 43.

As I write this remembrance, Luis’s official autopsy results have not yet been released, though in an interview with the New York Times his father suggested his son’s death was heart-related and not a suicide, as he’d first suspected.

Luis had a rough go of it. His memoir tracks his journey from his upbringing outside of D.C. to the University of Maryland and into the Army as a young officer. He deployed to Iraq in 2003 and again in 2005, seeing combat with the fabled 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment (better known as the Brave Rifles), and was awarded a Purple Heart for an incident in December 2003 involving a local who attacked him with a knife. (More on that in a bit.) After leaving the military, Luis struggled with post-traumatic stress, drinking too much and often reluctant to leave his apartment, to the point of being mentally paralyzed. His life changed for the better when he was paired with a young service dog, a golden retriever named Tuesday, who helped him go outside, go back to school for a graduate degree in journalism, and become a vital voice on destigmatizing mental health issues for returning combat veterans.

(Side note: All dogs are good, many are great, but golden retrievers are the absolute, the supreme, the best. If you disagree, I WILL FIGHT YOU. Ron Burgundy–style. Anyhow.)

The veterans’ space is, unfortunately, deeply territorial and political and involves a lot of alpha and wannabe-alpha egos.

Luis and I were somewhere between friends and acquaintances, and all of our conversations and encounters were positive and constructive. I was one of the lucky ones in terms of the war, so seeing someone who’d gone through much darker times emerge from the abyss still intact and proud was an inspiring thing. I found his writing powerful, and the forthrightness of it turned what could’ve been a maudlin story about a happy, silly dog rescuing a brooding war vet from himself into real literature. It was work from the marrow, and that’s always going to transcend.

To be frank, though, Luis butted heads with a lot of folks in his travels. He was candid and direct, which can quickly turn into stubborn and dick-ish. (Anyone who’s a vet or who knows a vet understands this. We’re an obstinate tribe, according to my wife.) The veterans’ space is, unfortunately, deeply territorial and political and involves a lot of alpha and wannabe-alpha egos. Luis was a former army officer with two combat tours, not to mention a hulking physical presence. Even with a cane and a perma-smiling service dog, he wasn’t about to back down from confrontation.

There was also a noisy lawsuit stemming from a 2009 incident in which Luis claimed he was denied service at a Brooklyn McDonald’s because of Tuesday being in the restaurant, and then physically assaulted by two employees when he tried to film them. The suit was settled out of court.

Questions also surrounded some of Luis’s experiences overseas. With the publication of Until Tuesday in 2011 came an Associated Press article exploring the veracity of some of the material. A few of Luis’s fellow Brave Rifles who’d served with him pushed back against the details presented in his book, especially the particulars of the knife attack that led to his Purple Heart. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him now,” one told the AP, “but the extent of his injuries when he was attacked were not as severe as he’s making it out now.”

That’s a lot to unpack and consider, and as much as Luis built a post-military career in the court of media, he also ended up being tried in it. This definitely gnawed at him, and he believed his forceful denials of his fellow soldiers’ claims didn’t get a requisite amount of notice. Like the French say, c’est la guerre — that’s the war. There’s nothing fair or just about war, and there’s often nothing fair or just about the retellings of what happened at war. We all try to keep to the truths, even when they’re messy and ugly and confusing. But the limitations of our own vantage points and skulls are stark.

Luis’s journey was like a lot of vets trying to make their way back in the world — irregular and uneven, sometimes even sliding backward, which made the bursts of upward trajectory all the more special. He fought and fought and fought to regain a life of meaning and purpose. And he attained it. To me, that matters more than anything else ever possibly could. He was an advocate, a humanitarian, a champion for the forgotten and the scorned.

He was a fellow vet. He was an inspiration. He still is, too.

And fear not, Tuesday’s safe and in good hands with a family in the Northeast.

See you at Fiddler’s Green, Luis.

PHOTO: Aroyce Degrie; ARVADA.ORG