HOME OF THE BRAVE Discussion Page: Soldier Speaks Up A Decade After Pat Tillman's Friendly-Fire Death

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Soldier Speaks Up A Decade After Pat Tillman's Friendly-Fire Death

Ten years after the friendly-fire incident in Afghanistan that killed U.S. Army Ranger and former NFL star Pat Tillman, one of the soldiers who mistakenly pulled the trigger says he's still haunted by demons from the night of April 22, 2004.

Steven Elliott tells NPR's All Things Considered that on the night of the incident, he could see only "shadowy figures" and had every reason to believe that when his squad leader, Sgt. Greg Baker, opened fire on what turned out to be Tillman's position, there were no "friendlies" in the area.

"We'd all been firing our weapons at various positions, up to that point, effectively enemy positions," Elliot tells host Melissa Block. "The sun had been set for roughly 20 minutes, so the lighting conditions were poor to say the least."

Read the entire story and/or listen to the interview by clicking here.

From the ESPN website:

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Historical Fact

"Of the more than 274,000 officers and men who served in the army during the Spanish-American War and the period of demobilization, 5,462 died in the various theaters of operation and in camps in the a U.S. Only 379 of the deaths were battle casualties, the remainder being attributed to disease and other causes."

Source: Encyclopedia of American History by Richard Morris

In 1898, thousands of soldiers got food poisoning from meat packed by Armour and Company and sold to the Army. There are no figures on how many of the five thousand noncombat deaths were caused by this.

The Oxford Companion to American Military History estimates that between 2 percent and 25 percent of the casualties in America's wars are attributable to friendly fire.