Modern-day GI Joe

NONFICTION | 'Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman' by Jon Krakauer

Pat Tillman didn’t have to die.

This idea is central to Jon Krakauer’s Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman (Doubleday, $27.95), which chronicles the life of the former football star-turned-soldier.

When Tillman was killed in an ambush outside of a tiny Afghanistan village near the Pakistan border in 2004 — two years after giving up millions to continue playing in the NFL — the story that was told to the public was that of a modern-day G.I. Joe.

Inspired by the events of 9/11, Tillman joined the Army with his younger brother, Kevin, and became a member of the Army’s elite Rangers outfit. This much is true. But the public, along with Tillman’s family, was made to believe he died at the hands of anti-American insurgents. Despite the fact he had fought bravely, we were told, Tillman tragically succumbed to gunshot wound to the head.

What the government didn’t say, however, was that the shots that killed Tillman were fired by American soldiers.

That wasn’t the only thing the government left out. Krakauer’s book introduces us to Tillman the man, the scholar/philosopher, the husband, and the Pat Tillman who did not fully support the Bush administration’s war on terror that he gave his life to fight.

Such paradoxes and inconsistencies were common in Tillman’s life. He felt just as comfortable “yakking” with friends in coffee houses as he did chasing after football’s elite running backs. The man who signed up to kill bad guys in the Middle East read Nietzsche, Emerson and Noam Chomsky and routinely challenged the opinions of fellow soldiers.

His thoughts on war, marriage, life and football are all detailed in several excerpts from journals he kept during his time playing for the Arizona Cardinals. His military experience — from boot camp through a tour in Iraq, his return home, his deployment to Afghanistan up until days before his death — are also part of what makes Where Men Win Glory so compelling.

As for the firefight that killed Tillman itself, Krakauer gives a gruesome, moment-by-moment recount of what transpired April 22, 2004, at what has since become known as Tillman Pass. He follows the news as it is disseminated to the American public and sold as a classic hero story — that Tillman had sacrificed his life to save those of his fellow soldiers.

As the truth comes out in bits and pieces, Tillman’s mother, Dannie, launches an all-out onslaught to force the government into detailing exactly what happened, calling all the while for those at fault to be held accountable.

Krakauer uncovers government documents that expose how the cover-up of the circumstances around Tillman’s death was allowed to happen. He follows the ensuing investigations into Tillman’s death that were spearheaded by Dannie. The cover-up, which the military continues to deny as a cover-up, culminated with a Congressional hearing that is also detailed in the book.

But it’s Krakauer’s in-depth conversations with Tillman’s wife and high school sweetheart, Marie, that tell the most compelling story of how and why he made the decision to join the Army in the first place. The letters Tillman writes to his wife from Iraq, in which he expresses the regret he feels for enlisting and the hopes he has for their future, are simply heartbreaking.

Krakauer seamlessly pieces together the interviews, the testimony and the journals to tell the story of an extraordinary man faced with extraordinary circumstances, much the same way he did in two of his previous books, Into Thin Air and Into the Wild.

There are plenty parallels between Chris McCandless, the subject of Into the Wild, who gave away his money and made the fateful decision to walk into the Alaska wilderness, and Tillman. Aside from having both piqued Krakauer’s interest, they are non-conformists who question authority at every turn. They eschew a life of privilege, risking everything for an insatiable need to live a purposeful life.

And both, in the end, didn’t have to die.