These are Oliver Love's words, his account of events being John of Blacksheep Milsim's right hand man and what led to him leaving the company he loved when his boss started on his current path with the PTSD-Milsim Challenge. Not as a disgruntled ex employee but as a concerned friend.

Here's the side of this controversy the community hasn't heard yet:

To whom it may concern,

There are a great many reasons why I have chosen to speak out against Blacksheep Milsim's PTSD campaign they are currently running. First and foremost, I was raised to always tell the truth. I am a proud Eagle Scout, and while I have never served my country, I work in a public school as a teacher, which at times should warrant combat pay. If my students learn nothing else from me, they are instilled with the concept of honesty and truth. I teach them to never cheat, lie or steal. Sometimes I fail them, but they are 18 year olds and have a long time to really learn a hard lesson. The same cannot be said about Blacksheep Milsim.

To better understand how all this came to be, let’s go back to the Pine Plains event series at Ft. Drum, NY(2009). I started working for John B and his cousin Tom after attending Pine Plains 2 when they realized that for Frago’s to work, they need opposition. My team was then hired to work the rest of the events, and when MSATO and Blacksheep split my team and I decided to work for Blacksheep. I ran the Opfor for John for a number of events and was heavily involved with planning and executing the events. It was at this point I decided that I really wanted to get more involved and be a stake holder in the company. Three of us sat down in 2013, restructured the company, wrote up a business plan, and put together 5 year projections for the company. Pedr Seymour and I were labeled as Vice Presidents of the company in 2013, with a number of our Opfor teammates labeled as employees and future stakeholders. We were told that we would hold 49% of the company, while John retained ownership with 51%. It turns out that he never actually changed the articles of incorporation, and so we weren’t actually officers of the company nor owned anything.

Winter 2013/14 we were frustrated with the lack of player turnout at events. We were unsure about our marketing strategies, and were looking at everything under a microscope from the pricing structure to the Wall concept. John had the idea that to really break out and get the events going on a National level that we wanted we needed a pretty large injection of cash. So using the business plan we had created, we started to approach banks and lenders looking for a small business loan. We were asking for a loan in excess of $100k. There were a number of loans available to Veterans that John applied for, both on the Federal level and on the State level. We were turned down over and over again based on the fact that there were no other companies that had done what we were trying to do, and when the banks looked at the money we had made in the past they just didn’t see us as a solid investment. Also, none of us were willing to put up our houses/cars as collateral for the loan.

We were so low on funds that we had to take the event trailer and truck off of his insurance because we didn’t have the money to pay the bill. Our web hosting bill was months overdue and we had no way to pay it. So we were stuck. We wanted to expand, but we didn’t have any money.

It was late one night when my phone rang and John was really excited. Over the next hour or so he outlined a plan that would have Blacksheep start a campaign that would collect funds for PTSD awareness. The general idea was that the Blacksheep events were already helping soldiers that had PTSD, and for the weekend they were with us, they felt better. A guy named John Fluckiger was working on a graduate thesis talking about his experiences with PTSD and Milsim and how it was helping him. This one paper was all John felt he needed as validation for what he wanted to do.

John felt that as a result of a handful of veterans in the past saying that his events had helped them, he could collect money for it and say that it was going to help more vets. The way it would help more vets, was by funding the company and he could continue to run events and expand, thus creating more opportunities for vets to come and treat their PTSD. Neither Pedr nor I agreed with the plan and voiced to him that it felt like fraud, and that as civilians we had no experience with PTSD and felt we were not credible on the topic.

The Indiegogo campaign was created shortly thereafter, but didn’t go live for a few weeks. He ran the concept by over a 100 people with mixed results. Originally the goal was set at $250k with the majority of the money going to buy equipment for the company (over $200k). If you look at the Indiegogo page, anyone that is listed was someone that he ran the idea by. Many of them were not supporters, but are still listed.

I told John a number of times that if he pushed forward with the plan that I would be forced to quit, as I refused to be involved with a program I didn’t agree with. I had a number of issues with the plan. First and foremost I was concerned that the VA didn’t recognize action sports (paintball, airsoft, etc) as a valid treatment for PTSD. Also, John contacted a number of therapists that worked with PTSD patients, and none of them would sign off on the program or participate. I was concerned, if we started to pull veterans with serious issues the events looking for relief what might happen. Worst case scenario someone has a flashback or an episode and they freak out. Who is going to treat that and talk them down? John? What happens when they hurt another player? John felt that he had the ability to use his knowledge of post-traumatic stress and he would help the veteran work through whatever was happening.

He then went and told some of our player base that Pedr and I were scared of PTSD and didn’t understand it, trying to undermine the validity of our argument.

It was at this point we all decided to leave the company. It was clear he was going to move ahead fleecing the community under the guise of helping veterans with PTSD to fund the company regardless of what we said, and I was done. It was at this point that Pedr, myself and my Opfor quit the company. Everyone was given the option to stay, but unanimously we voted and quit.

If there is no real medical support at the events to treat and coach veterans, then there is no legitimate program.

As a sidebar – I want everyone reading this to realize that I looked at BS6 as a role model. If you have met the man he is an amazing guy to be around. He is charismatic, outgoing, loving, and opened his home to myself and countless staff that needed a place to crash before or after events. I know he is HEAVILY involved with his local church and does some pretty extreme mission work during the summers. I trusted him blindly for years, I had no reason to doubt him, which is what made this so hard. Even as I write this I have hesitation because I fear it will hurt a man I respected for so long. Someone way smarter than I said ‘the truth will set you free’, and so here it is.

I sincerely hope at the end of this Blacksheep Milsim is alive as a company, as they have run some of the best no bullshit Ops in the country, but its time as a community to say enough is enough.

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About The Author

Javier "Darkhorse" Franco, formerly from This Week In Airsoft, runs his own Airsoft Blog on Facebook called "One Grunt's Opinion."  John Love submitted this article to him for posting. This story does not reflect an official position of Popular Airsoft and is the author's opinion only.