The Tillman Story does a good job of raising these questions, and it also captures the fierce love Tillman's family have for him and his memory, and their anger and bitterness at the way they were lied to in the wake of his death. Who actually killed him? Who decided to say he'd been killed by the enemy rather than his fellow Rangers? Why had the Army burned his uniform, his body armor, and even his journal days after he'd been killed? At that point, Tillman's family, especially his mother Mary "Dannie" Tillman, began pressing for more information. Then, the Army repeated this lie to the rest of Tillman's family and eventually to the public at large.įive weeks later, the Army changed its tune, announcing in a press conference that Tillman had "probably" died from friendly fire. The first person the Army told this lie to was Tillman's brother Kevin, who'd been been traveling with the platoon but was too far back to witness his brother's death. The firefight had taken place at dusk, in disorienting terrain, but according to Bryan O'Neal, the Ranger who was kneeling alongside Tillman, it was immediately clear that Tillman had been killed by their fellow soldiers-that those soldiers had in fact been firing at them repeatedly even as they shouted and waved their arms to indicate their status as "friendlies." Instead of conveying this inconvenient truth, however, the Army announced that Tillman had been killed by enemy fire during a chaotic exchange that had involved as many as a dozen enemy combatants.
On April 22, 2004, less than two weeks after Tillman and his younger brother Kevin had deployed to Afghanistan-he'd done his initial tour of duty in Iraq-Tillman was shot three times in the head by one of his fellow Rangers. Ultimately, the story referenced in the title of The Tillman Story is not so much Tillman's own biography as it is the tale his commanding officers concocted in the wake of his death. He once told a fellow soldier that he worried he'd be paraded through the streets if killed in action. He signed a form instructing that he did not want a military funeral should he die in combat. On a superficial level, though, he seemed tailor-made for propaganda and he knew it.
In reality, Tillman was a complicated individual-an atheist who probably read more religious texts than all but the most devout, a patriot who felt morally obligated to defend his country but also admired Noam Chomsky. His fierce glower packed so much firepower you could almost imagine him staring Osama bin Laden to death. His jaw was as fortified as a concrete bunker. With his military buzzcut, he looked like a cross between GI Joe and Sgt. In his long-haired days, Tillman looked like a cross between GI Joe and Kurt Cobain. That he understood his decision to do so made him no nobler than anyone else who'd done the same-and therefore refused to speak publicly about his enlistment-only added to his appeal. Just married to his high-school sweetheart, forsaking a $3.6 million contract extension offer from the Arizona Cardinals, Tillman was giving up an extremely enviable life to serve his country. But at a time when there was a lot of high-minded talk about the price of freedom, Tillman quickly captured the nation's attention as the most vivid example of all those who were actually willing to walk the walk. Army eight months after the 9/11 attacks. Tillman was far from a household name when he put aside his NFL career to enlist in the U.S. He seems good-natured about the process, but also eager to be done with it and maybe even a little disdainful, as if he can't quite believe all the effort that is going into crafting empty pageantry designed to iconize himself and his fellow athletes.Ī few years later, of course, a similar dynamic would play out on a larger scale. After saying his name, Tillman keeps looking at the camera while awaiting further instruction from unseen crew members. The opening scene of the documentary The Tillman Story shows Pat Tillman taping a promotional video while still a college football player at Arizona State University.
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