Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman By Mary Tillman
Product DescriptionOn April 22, 2004, Lieutenant David Uthlaut received orders from Khost, Afghanistan, that his platoon was to leave the town of Magarah and "have boots on the ground before dark" in Manah, a small village on the border of Pakistan. It was an order the young lieutenant protested vehemently, but the commanders at the Tactical Command Center disregarded his objections. Uthlaut split his platoon into two serials, with serial one traveling northwest to Manah and serial two towing a broken Humvee north toward the Khost highway. By nightfall, Uthlaut and his radio operator were seriously wounded, and an Afghan militia soldier and a U.S. soldier were dead. The American soldier was my son, Pat Tillman.
The Tillman family was originally informed that Pat, who had given up a professional football career to serve his country, had been shot in the head while getting out of a vehicle. At his memorial service twelve days later, they were told that he was killed while running up a hill in pursuit of the enemy. He was awarded a Silver Star for his courageous actions. A month and two days after his death, the family learned that Pat had been shot three times in the head by his own troops in a "friendly fire" incident. Seven months after Pat’s death, the Tillmans requested an investigation.
Boots on the Ground by Dusk is a chronicle of their efforts to ascertain the true circumstances of Pat’s death and the reasons why the Army gave the family and the public a false story. Woven into the account are valuable and respectful memories of Pat Tillman as a son, brother, husband, friend, and teammate, in the hope that the reader will better comprehend what is really lost when our sons and daughters are killed or maimed in war.
In the course of three and a half years, there have been six investigations, several inquiries, and two Congressional hearings. The Tillmans are still awaiting an outcome.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Product DetailsAmazon Sales Rank: #1384 in Books
Published on: 2008-04-29
Released on: 2008-04-29
Number of items: 1
Binding: Hardcover
368 pages
---------------------------------------
Editorial Reviews
Review "Alongside fond memories and recollections of Pat's charismatic bluntness and self-sacrificing nature, Mary details her family's exhaustive search for the truth with the help of allies ranging from Senator John McCain to retired General Wesley Clark to numerous investigative reporters...the chilling results yielded by the Tillman family's unflagging efforts indicate that Pat's death was, at best, a result of gross negligence and incompetence on the part of the U.S. Army and, at worst, a sinister coverup by high-ranking officials willing to lie to a soldier's family and hoodwink the public in exchange for higher approval ratings." - Kirkus Reviews
About the Author MARY TILLMAN is a special education teacher in San Jose, California, where she lives. NARDA ZACCHINO is former associate editor of the Los Angeles Times and former deputy editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. She lives in Berkeley, California.
-------------------------------------------
Customer ReviewsA Courageous Mother's Tribute To A Fallen Son
Many of the facts of Corporal Pat Tillman's life and tragic death have been played and replayed: his joining the military from a deep love of his country after the attacks of September 11, 2001, his giving up a career as a professional football player and leaving his young bride to do so, his platoon's ill-fated mission in Afghanistan that led to his death on April 22, 2004, his memorial service where the likes of Maria Shriver and Senator John McCain gave eulogies, his receiving both the Purple Heart and Silver Star for bravery, then the news soon thereafter that he had died of (such an ugly oxymoron) friendly fire.
Now Tillman's mother Mary covers both the life and death of her son, the effect it has had on her, his wife Marie, his brothers Richard and Kevin-- who was in the same platoon as Pat-- his father Patrick, other family members and a multitude of friends. Additionally with the determination and courage of a woman possessed-- why shouldn't she be-- she traces the family's quest to find out the truth of what really happened on that awful day in April, 2004. Her journey will take her to countless meetings with military types, where she has difficulty getting a similar story from different people, and ultimately to two Congressional hearings.
What Ms. Tillman learns is sad and depressing beyond measure as she and others excavate the layers of a cover-up. Apparently Corporal Tillman was given CPR hours after he died so that his uniform could be destroyed since the bullet holes in it would indicate clearly that he died from U. S. fire. (If a soldier is still alive, his uniform, because it is a biohazard, can be taken off him and destroyed.) A Navy Seal was told to give false information about Tillman's death when he spoke at his memorial service. Records were changed; documents were lost. The list goes on and on. Then there are cruel, petty gestures on the part of some of the military. One of the officers placed in charge of one of the many investigations, for example, believed that no one in the Tillman family was satisfied or would ever be satisfied because they were atheists, unlike Christians, who could come to terms with "'faith and the fact that there is an afterlife, heaven, or whatnot.'" The Army reneged on its promise to fly Tillman's wife Marie to Dover, Delaware to meet Kevin Tillman with her husband's body. (An anonymous man had her flown there in his plane.) Then the Army tried to persuade Marie to have a military funeral for Pat.
Ms. Tillman includes many of the eulogies verbatim from her son's funeral--his baby brother Richard's was irreverent and deadly-- as well as written reports that she has received from the Army in her attempt at finding out the truth about Pat's death. She also prints here an article Kevin Tillman wrote for Truthdig entitled "After Pat's Birthday" that rises to the level of poetry: "Somehow those afraid to fight in an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started."
BOOTS ON THE GROUND BY DUSK-- the book gets its title from the order that Lieutenant David Uthlaut received on April 22, 2004 that his platoon (Kevin and Pat Tillman's) was to leave the town of Magarah and "have boots on the ground before dark" in Manah, a small village on the border of Pakistan-- is very well-written; and not all of it is so dark although parts of it are almost too painful to read. I'm thinking now of Ms. Tillman's account of the return of her son's body to the local mortuary in his hometown. I decided that if this brave woman could write the book, then surely I, who along with the rest of stay-at-home Americans, have been urged by my president to support the troops by going to the mall, can finish it. She said a couple of nights ago in a sparsely-attended reading she gave at the Carter Library in Atlanta that she wrote this book to encourage other families in the same predicament as she, families that have lost sons, daughters, fathers, and brothers in Iraq and Afghanistan, to help them deal with their grief. And she made this statement in the library of a former president of the U. S. and naval officer, who, when asked by a reporter on his 80th birthday, what he would want to be remembered most for as president, responded that no American soldiers died in combat during his four years in office.
pursuit Mary Tillman shows a mother's dogged pursuit to get at the truth of what happened to her son and the aftermath. Nothing maudlin here. The amazing facts of delay, stonewalling and lying by the military, from the ground up into the highest ranks, to the Tillmans' faces are disgusting and disheartening but apparently not unusual in fratricide.
A reader might infer that the killing of this exceptional man was personal and even murderous. Someday justice will be wrought upon those responsible for the flawed decisions, implausible military orders, and actions that led to his death.
As you read this account, do not be distracted by the author's personal biases. Instead, focus your hearts and prayers on those who died (Pat Tillman was not the only one killed.), those left back home, and those who have shut and others who may yet slam doors on this family as they continue their quest for truth and justice.
The Killing Frenzy
Mary Tillman renders here the most accurate, dispassionate description of what can happen when highly trained soldiers are thrust into a situation where their training is not enough.
As Mary describes the situation, her son Pat was a member of a fighting group who were separated from the rest of their unit, caught in a firefight, and then fired on by members of their own unit. The evidence is that they gestured and signalled for their own fellow soldiers to stop firing, but, in those four seconds, the other men just could not do so.
All the training could not stop what can only be characterized as a "killing frenzy." Rational thought cannot reassert itself in the face of this compulsion.
It all happened in four seconds, and Mary lost her Pat. Other mothers lost their sons, too. Pat forgives the soldiers who killed her son, and invites her readers to do the same. She has a harder time forgiving their commanders who made efforts to disguise the truth in the name of not damaging morale.
Read this book. It teaches us all something about a mother loving her son, and about what we unleash when we train young people to kill.
Only secondarily, we also come to appreciate the value of transparency in leadership. Pat's example steadfastly refuses to be held up as a "poster child" for pacifism or political polarization. Our front line infantry does the very, very best they can with what God has given them - and us.
