Pat Tillman was an All-American at Arizona State and a starting safety for the Arizona Cardinals who read philosophy on team flights and rode a bicycle to games. In 2002, months after the September 11 attacks, he turned down a contract worth three and a half million dollars and enlisted in the Army with his younger brother Kevin. He gave no interviews about it then or afterwards, and asked the Army not to use him for publicity.
The brothers went to the 75th Ranger Regiment together. He served in Iraq in 2003 — including the operation that recovered Jessica Lynch — and deployed to Afghanistan in 2004.
On 22 April 2004, in a narrow canyon near Sperah in Khost province, his platoon was split into two groups by an order he had argued against. In the confusion, with a friendly Afghan soldier beside him, he was shot three times in the head from a distance of about forty metres by Rangers from his own unit.
The Army told his family, the press and the country that he had been killed leading a charge against the enemy, awarded him a Silver Star with a citation describing enemy fire, and let his brother — who was in the same convoy — believe it at the funeral. Officers knew within days that it was friendly fire. His uniform, body armour and personal notebook were burned. The family was informed five weeks later, after the nationally televised memorial service.
What followed was years of investigations, a congressional hearing, and a mother who taught herself the paperwork of the US Army to get at the truth. The Pat Tillman Foundation now funds scholarships for veterans and military spouses. He remains the most famous American to have enlisted in that war, for reasons he would have hated.
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