He caught fire and hit some balls harder than I've seen in 25 years. He was playing like a big leaguer for 16 straight days and got his confidence going.

I'm so proud of my son and who he was.

I communicated with him regularly on e-mail. He was always upbeat about the war and believed in what he was doing over there. The Army was his new family. I talked to him about 10 hours before he died. He said he was doing fine.

He has never admitted to anyone he started the fire.

It is bad. But it probably should have been worse due to the amount of fire.

There is no other place that we have where we can use live fire as we do in Vieques. That would put a serious hole in our ability to conduct training to protect our troops, ... CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports.