Book review: No ‘Glory’ in retelling story of Pat Tillman’s death and cover-up - Entertainment, Books - Navy Times

Book review: No ‘Glory’ in retelling story of Pat Tillman’s death and cover-up

If Jon Krakauer, author of “Into Thin Air” and “Into the Wild,” had continued with his series of “Into” titles, this one could be called “Into Too Much.”

The story of Pat Tillman, NFL player-turned-Army Ranger, is familiar — but no less tragic and no less heartbreaking. His mother Mary’s own book, “Boots on the Ground by Dusk,” is a tearjerker.

Other reporters have described what happened: While on patrol in Afghanistan in an area now called Tillman’s Pass, Tillman was killed by friendly fire, and the Army tried to keep the circumstances secret.

“His Ranger regiment responded with a chorus of prevarication and disavowal,” Krakauer writes. “A cynical cover-up sanctioned at the highest levels of government, followed by a series of inept official investigations, cast a cloud of bewilderment and shame over the tragedy, compounding the heartbreak of Tillman’s death.”

So what’s new?

Krakauer offers some insights into the man:

The 5-foot-11 Tillman was a cat person. “He never went anywhere without a book.” He was “unconventional” and challenged authority. “Could you coach gays?” he asked Arizona State University football coach Lyne Setencich. (Setencich replied that he already had.) He finished his first triathlon (during the Arizona Cardinals’ postseason) in 6 hours, 10 minutes and 8 seconds — two hours behind the winner.

Krakauer also had access to Tillman’s journals, a welcome and rich source. The jock could express himself.

After his mother and uncle drove from California to Arizona to watch freshman Pat’s scrimmage, the homesick Tillman handed Mary this note:

“I would have just come out and said this, but I know my eyes would have swelled and I would not have been able to talk. ... Your being here really helped. It is comforting to know someone cares.”

The man had everything: chiseled cheekbones, intellectual curiosity, athletic drive and skill — and a big heart.

There’s heart in “Where Men Win Glory,” but Krakauer lets history get in the way.

References to post-9/11 events that parallel Tillman’s milestones add perspective, but there are too many other details about the Soviets in Afghanistan, al-Qaida, Jessica Lynch and the Gore-Bush election that get in the way of memorable details:

• The White House sent or received “200 e-mails concerning Tillman on the day following the tragedy. But after the Army belatedly revealed to the American public that he was a victim of fratricide,” Kraukauer says, citing a congressional report, “the White House could not produce a single e-mail or document relating to any discussion about Corporal Tillman’s death.”

• Maj. David Hodne asked Capt. Richard Scott to investigate the circumstances of Tillman’s death. “A curious choice,” Krakauer notes. “Scott ... was under the direct command of Hodne, the very man whose order to split [Lt. David] Uthlaut’s platoon culminated in Tillman’s death.”

• Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, whose investigation included “a number of deficiencies,” according to Mary Tillman, said the Tillman family was not satisfied with the answers because only “Christians can come to terms with faith and the fact there is an afterlife.” (Coincidentally, Kauzlarich is the central figure in the just-published “The Good Soldiers” by David Finkel, reviewed below.)

War correspondent Dexter Filkins said in The New York Times that Krakauer’s take on Pat Tillman “fails to pull it off.” Counterinsurgency expert and veteran Andrew Exum, who was in Afghanistan the night Tillman was killed, wrote in The Washington Post that the book “falls flat.”

Are the two reviewers, each a respected author, right?

Pretty much.

But the life and death of Tillman endures, and “Where Men Win Glory” adds to the legend. There are helpful maps, and the book is readable if not always compelling.

Despite the over-reported sections, a deployed Army friend reminds this reviewer that “the rest of the story” is a very good read.

J. Ford Huffman is a Military Times book reviewer.

Where Men Win Glory, the Odyssey of Pat Tillman by Jon Krakauer. Doubleday, $27.95, 383 pages.