This is a book about Pat Tillman, the NFL player who left a lucrative multi-million dollar football contract to serve in the military and later was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan. It is also about the way his death was portrayed in the media and how the circumstances around his death were concealed from his family for a long time.
I had heard about Pat Tillman as most of us have. It is one of those events like the Jessica Lynch capture and rescue that were construed as defining moments in the Iraq/Afghanistan war by the media. The interesting part of this story is that Jon Krakauer writes about how Pat Tillman had gone out of his way to avoid media attention since leaving the NFL. He did not do interviews and did not want to be made into anything special.
The biographical information that Jon Krakauer provides describes Pat as someone who was always driven and worked hard to meet his goals. He was small when he was young and still went on to be a great football player in high school, college and later in the NFL, mostly due to hard work. He challenged himself in many ways through doing marathons and triathalons in his off season. It sounds as though he lived to experience life and did his best to learn and challenge himself. After 9/11 Pat started having doubts about his career as a football player and felt that he needed to do something more and he joined the military. His brother, Kevin, joined as well and served with him throughout his time. This made the cover up of what truly happened even more remarkable, to me, since his brother was on scene when it happened and just out of view from what had happened.
From the way the book describes the circumstances surrounding Pat’s death, it was obvious pretty quickly that it had been due to friendly fire. Their platoon had been split in two and one section ended up firing on Pat who had thought he was coming to their aid. The videos of the battle went missing, the clothes that he was wearing were destroyed and those who were aware of what had happened, which was the majority of the platoon were ordered to keep it a secret as a deliberately misleading account was provided in order to garner better press.
Pat’s wife, Marie, worked with the author in providing information for this book but most of the rest of Pat’s family declined to take part. His mother has also written a book Boots On the Ground Before Dawn which I am interested in reading. The one thing that this book really brought to my attention is that the people who are serving in the military and their families are so greatly affected by the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, but for many of the rest of us we live our daily lives without really thinking about it. The sacrifice is so great for those involved.
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