Facebook; NBCTimothy Poe may have impressed the America's Got Talent judges, but he just got buzzed by a National Guardsman.
A specialist who served with Poe, an aspiring singer who's been accused of lying about being injured in combat when he auditioned for AGT this season, exclusively tells E! News that he has no recollection of Poe being so badly hurt when they served in the Minnesota National Guard's 114th Transportation Company together in 2009.
"I'm sorry, but in combat you know everybody you're working with," says transportation specialist Justin Doerfler, who's no longer with the 114th. "And when something traumatic happens, you're going to be joined at the hip with the others for life—it is unforgettable."
Doerfler tells us that he served in the 114th's second platoon, while Poe was in the third.
"Everybody talks. We brief and debrief," Doerfler added, insisting that a fellow soldier wouldn't suffer a brain injury—as Poe claims he did when he came into contact with a rocket-propelled grenade—that went unnoticed by the rest of the squad.
A spokesman for the Minnesota National Guard has said that Poe's records do not indicate that he was injured by a grenade, while a rep for Defenders of Freedom, a nonprofit that supports active and former troops that has since disassociated itself from Poe, told E! News that the AGT hopeful "served honorably" but was injured during training, not active duty.
"I never had a problem with him," Doerfler says of Poe, noting that he trained with him in Indiana. "We each trained for our individual missions [Poe was a supplies specialist] before going into Kyrgyzstan," he says. "We got into Kyrgyzstan and then from there we went to Kandahar, Afghanistan."
But once there, Doerfler says, an existing ear injury that Poe had worsened (perhaps during the long flight) and that was about it for him in country.
"I had heard that his ear was leaking fluid," Doerfler recalls. "The decision made was Poe was going to be checked out, so he never went where we were supposed to be [driving supply convoys through Afghanistan]. He stayed in Kandahar and then left the country."
In response to allegations that he was lying, Poe said on a YouServed podcast that his squad was busy "doing stuff" when he was hurt in the grenade blast and that he had trouble remembering what exactly happened.
That's when Doerfler said that members of a unit don't just get injured without everyone else knowing about it.
"How bad he fabricated everything," Doerfler says of Poe, adding that many of the former guardsman's fellow soldiers are unhappy with what he's been saying. "Everyone on 114 can say it didn't happen, especially his squad and platoon."
"I am not even in that unit anymore," he continues. "But when you deploy with someone you develop a closeness with that team and we all stayed close." When Poe performed on AGT, Doerfler says, "everyone was contacting everybody...it took off like wildfire."
"This [what happened with Poe] was a slap in the face to him, to our unit, to the National Guard and to anyone in the military," Doerfler tells us. "Poe was never on any missions. He never left Kandahar, Afghanistan."
Doerfler also says that no one he has talked to noticed the stutter that Poe claimed to have developed after the blast.
"None of us noticed a stutter," he says. "At least many of the people I had been talking to. Nobody noticed it."
On the YouServed podcast, Poe maintained that his military medical record is incomplete and he doesn't remember all of the details of what happened.
"I don't think that the guys in my unit were told by the sergeant...what really happened and why I had really gone and left," he said.