Irrepressible individualist and iconoclast Pat Tillman walked away from his $3.6 million NFL contract in May 2002 to enlist in the United States Army. Deeply troubled by 9/11, he felt a strong moral obligation to join the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Two years later, he died on a desolate hillside in Afghanistan. Though obvious to most on the scene that a ranger in Tillman's own platoon had fired the fatal shots, the Army aggressively maneuvered...

On April 22, 2004, Lieutenant David Uthlaut received orders that his platoon was to leave the town of Magarah, Afghanistan, for a small village on the Pakistan border. The lieutenant protested, but the commanders disregarded his objections. 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 Pat Tillman. The Tillman family was first informed that...