via
http://www.leechild.com/jack-reacher.php
BIO
FAMILY
KNOWN ASSOCIATES
Reacher left home at 18, graduated from West Point. Performed 13 years of Army service, demoted from Major to Captain in 1990, mustered out with the rank of Major in 1997.
“I was born in Berlin. Never even saw the States until I was nine years old. Five minutes later we were in the Philippines. Round and round the world we went. Longest I was ever anywhere was four years at West Point. Then I joined up and it started all over again. Round and round the world.”
“Where’s your family now?” she asked.
“Dead,” he said. “The old man died, what? Ten years ago, I guess. My mother died two years later. I buried the Silver Star with her. She won it for me, really. Do what you’re supposed to do, she used to tell me. About a million times a day, in a thick French accent.”
“Brothers and sisters?” she said.
“I had a brother,” he said. “He died last year. I’m the last Reacher on earth, far as I know.”
“When did you muster out?” she said.
“April last year,” he said. “Fourteen months ago.”
“Why?” she asked.
Reacher shrugged.
“Just lost interest, I guess,” he said. “The defense cuts were happening. Made the Army seem unnecessary, somehow. Like if they didn’t need the biggest and the best, they didn’t need me. Didn’t want to be part of something small and second-rate. So I left. Arrogant, or what?”
In TRIPWIRE, Jodie (Jodie Garber, KNOWN ASSOCIATES tab above) noted “His lazy lopsided grin. His tousled hair. His arms, so long they gave him a greyhound’s grace even though he was built like the side of a house. His eyes, cold icy blue like the Arctic. His hands, giant battered mitts that bunched into fists the size of footballs.” Reacher has a scar on his arm where his brother struck him with a retaliatory chisel (see FAMILY tab above, Brother: Joe).
Born on an Army base in Germany. His father chose his name; it read “Jack-none-Reacher” on the birth certificate faxed to the Berlin Embassy. They called his brother Joe, but nobody ever called Jack by his first name. How it came about, no one knows but Jack was always called Reacher.
As kids, Jack and his brother moved so much that spending a full school year in any one place felt weird. “Our friends just kept disappearing. Some unit would be shipped out somewhere and a bunch of kids would be gone. Sometimes we saw them again in a different place. Plenty of them we never saw again. No
body ever said hello or goodbye. You were just either there or not there.”
Service Awards (circa 1990):
Top row: Silver Star, the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Legion of Merit
Second row: Soldier’s Medal, the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart
Bottom row: “Junk awards”
“Medals?” she asked.
He shrugged.
“Dozens of the damn things,” he said. “You know how it is. Theater medals, of course, plus a Silver Star, two Bronzes, Purple Heart from Beirut, campaign things from Panama and Grenada and Desert Shield and Desert Storm.”
“A Silver Star?” she asked. “What for?”
“Beirut,” he said. “Pulled some guys out of the bunker.”
“And you got wounded doing that?” she said. “That’s how you got the scar and the Purple Heart?”
“I was already wounded,” he said. “Got wounded before I went in. I think that was what impressed them.”
What he doesn’t have: A driver’s license, Federal benefits (doesn’t want them), tax returns (doesn’t do them; he hasn’t filed taxes since he left the Army).
