Gilbert Cranberg: My own experience with friendly fire
Posted at 6:47 pm, August 7th, 2007
A three-star general was rebuked and may lose a star and a half-dozen other brass took it on the chin last week for their part in misleading the public and the family of Pat Tillman in the aftermath of his accidental death three years ago in Afghanistan. The military had gone so far as to fabricate a medal citation for Tillman to divert attention from the true cause of his death.
Tillman was a genuinely heroic figure, leaving a lucrative professional football career to enlist. But the circumstances of his death, at the hands of his own men, evidently weren’t suitably heroic for his superiors, so they cosmetized the facts. Tillman’s celebrity and persistent, skeptical family combined to help bring the actual story to light.
My guess is that there is a lot more tinkering with the truth about combat deaths than the military cares to admit, and not always for bad reasons. The fact is that the battlefield is a hazardous workplace where accidents are common and where it’s sometimes understandable why the military would want to make the death of a loved one less painful by not being fully candid. In my infantry outfit during World War II it was widely understood that casualties attributed to “snipers” were almost always due to weapons fired by our own troops.
The first night after our outfit landed on Leyte in the Philippines one of our men was shot through the chest when he arose from his foxhole and was mistaken in the blackness for a Japanese infiltrator. No one was reprimanded, and I’m reasonably sure the victim’s family was not told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. How necessary was it, after all, for them to know that a jittery GI shot their loved one as he left his foxhole to urinate? White lies are tolerable under some circumstances.
That bloody opening night was followed by many more accidental shootings. When large numbers of on-edge soldiers carry loaded weapons, stuff, as Donald Rumsfeld might say, happens. The toll became so high that I went on patrol with my rifle’s safety on to keep from adding to the carnage. Prudent but probably foolhardy given the neighborhood.
A carelessly fired rifle can do only so much damage; misdirected mortars and artillery are far more deadly. Once, the six heavy mortars in our outfit were lined up side-by-side and firing round after round in support of infantry hundreds of yards forward when word came back that shells were landing on our own troops. A glance at the mortar tubes showed why: five were aligned while the sixth pointed up at a sharply higher angle, sending its rounds short. The corporal responsible was visibly upset, but there was no finger-pointing and no one said a word. You can be sure that families of the victims were not notified of the blunder.
Even after the shooting on Leyte ostensibly stopped a GI sitting next to me during a card game took a stray bullet to his head from out of the blue.
The citation for Pat Tillman’s Silver Star described what supposedly happened at the time of his death: “Corporal Tillman put himself in the line of devastating enemy fire as he maneuvered his Fire Team to a covered position from which they could effectively employ their weapons on known enemy positions. While mortally wounded, his audacious leadership and courageous example under fire inspired his men to fight with great risk to their own personal safety, resulting in the enemy’s withdrawal and his platoon’s safe passage from the ambush kill zone.”
There was no ambush, of course, no enemy fire, and any maneuvering was to keep Tillman and his men from the “kill zone” created by their fellow GIs. There is nothing shameful about death by friendly fire, but those who treated it that way tarnished Tiilman’s death by making of it a work of fiction.
This recollection first appeared Aug. 5th in the Chicago Tribune.
August 7th, 2007 at 8:29 pm |
Sir,
With all do respect, you do not have all the information you need in order to come to conclusions about what happened to Pat. There was an ambush and there was enemy fire.
Howver, the enemy was not firing on Pat or any one else when he was killed.
The soldiers who killed Pat were in lust to fight, not a fog of war. I suggest you read “The Fog of Fame” by Stan Goff.
Mary Tillman
August 7th, 2007 at 10:45 pm |
Mary Tillman,
I met with Stan Goff in March 2006 in Grand Rapids, MI. After his talk, I handed him a folder including my editorial “Remember the Iconoclast, Not the Icon”. I hope that I helped to nudge Stan into learning more about Pat, since his article “The Strange Post-Ranger Saga of Pat Tillman” appeared shortly thereafter in fromthewilderness.com
I’m glad to hear that your book with Narda Zacchino will be coming out this Fall.
I think it might be useful to ask Senator James Webb to review your book. He was a highly decorated Marine in Vietnam. His son has just returned from an Iraq tour. I’ve read his novels for the past 30 years. His 1991 novel “Something to Die For” was about a Marine whose death in a middle eastern battle was covered up by the Secretary of Defense. A Silver Star is on the front cover of the paperback edition. James Webb might also be an ally in the Senate in your battle for the truth about Pat’s death.
I would also suggest that you contact Iddo Netanyahu and read his books “Self-Portrait of a Hero” and “The Last Battle”. His brother Jonathan (Yoni)died leading the Raid on Entebbe in 1976. Thirty years later, the Israeli government is still covering up the truth of about his death. Reading about both Pat and Yoni I was struck by the similarities between them. Both were independent-minded, driven by a need for integrity and honesty, and both went at life all out in their respective fields.
Feel free to contact me at dparish@grcity.us or 616 866-0314. I could send you more detailed information about both Webb and Netanyahu that I feel might be useful to you and Kevin.
I identify with both Pat and Stan. I’m also a book worm and independent thinker. The lies of the first Gulf War were the final straw for me. I got out, and have been a firefighter for the past 16 years.
David Parish
Co F (Ranger) 425th INF MI ARNG 1983 – 1991
August 8th, 2007 at 12:26 am |
I’ve read Fog of Fame and I can’t tell what the point is.
Perhaps Mr Goff can go back and investigate Mr Cranberg’s stories. Then Ms Tillman can condemn the jittery GI and the misfiring corporal for their “lust to fight”, and Mr Goff can blame someone–it isn’t clear who–among the powerful.
What an unfortunate series of mistakes and attacks, continuing to the present.
August 10th, 2007 at 11:39 am |
I’m very glad you raised this subject on niemanwatchdog.org because I know from my own experience (Marine Combat Correspondence, 3 landings WWII; Vietnam-two trips as foreign correspondent; launched Washington Post Foreign Service 1956) that US public hasn’t a clue about “friendy fire” which I was told was about 30 percent of casualties in WW11, which could be way off in either direction-The first time I experienced it was in Solomon Islands where Marines on one ridge were firing at Army units on opposite ridge, with no communication between them. Additionally, public is unaware that enemy wounded are often killed in cold blood because there are no plans to do otherwise.
With lack of public knowledge of magnitude of friendly fire, public is easily misled into supporting war with no realization about consequences. I commend your efforts.