Friendly Fire: The Nicest Name for the Worst Day

When the fire comes from your own side, the word “friendly” is the cruelest part of all.

“Friendly fire.” Now there’s a military expression that sounds polite enough to belong on a Christmas card.

But there is nothing friendly about being shot, shelled, or bombed by the people wearing the same uniform—or fighting under the same flag—as you.

Sometimes it happens because somebody misreads a map. Sometimes communications fail. Sometimes a frightened man sees movement in the dark and pulls the trigger a second too soon.

And sometimes violence inside a military unit has nothing accidental about it. That is a different thing entirely, and we ought to have the guts to call it what it is.

I spent thirteen months in Vietnam as a Marine combat engineer. I know the enemy wasn’t always the only thing you had to worry about.

In fact, I once watched a Marine get shot in a hooch after he and I had switched places. I believe the men responsible thought they were shooting me.

More about that in a minute.

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Why Do They Call It “Friendly”?

In military language, forces are labeled friendly or enemy. It’s a practical distinction for maps, radio traffic, and targeting. But put the words together—friendly fire—and you get a phrase that almost seems designed to make something terrible sound routine.

Tell a mother her son died from enemy fire and she knows what you mean. Tell her he died from friendly fire and she has a second question that may haunt her for the rest of her life:

How the hell did our own people kill him?

That question deserves a real answer, not a vocabulary lesson.

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Friendly Fire, Fratricide, and Fragging Are Not the Same Thing

Three terms tend to get thrown into the same bucket. They shouldn’t.

Friendly fire generally means an unintended attack on friendly personnel. In military usage, fratricide often refers to friendly-force casualties caused by one’s own side. Neither term, by itself, establishes that somebody meant to hurt a fellow service member.

Fragging is different. During Vietnam the word became associated with deliberate attacks by service members against other service members, especially officers and NCOs. The name came from fragmentation grenades, although deliberate attacks were not limited to grenades.

An accidental shooting is a tragedy. A deliberate shooting is a crime. Confusing the two can obscure what actually happened—and who ought to answer for it.

And there’s a fourth possibility worth remembering: sometimes the first official account is simply wrong. That does not automatically prove murder or a conspiracy. It does mean somebody had better investigate.

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Pat Tillman: The Truth Came After the Official Story

Pat Tillman gave up a professional football career with the Arizona Cardinals and became an Army Ranger. He was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004, by fire from fellow American soldiers.

The early public account did not accurately explain that he had been killed by friendly fire. The way the Army handled the information, including what his family was told and when, became the subject of investigations and intense criticism.

That is enough to make a veteran angry without inventing another story on top of it.

Some people have speculated that Tillman was deliberately killed. But the established finding is friendly fire, not proven fragging. We owe the man and his family the discipline to separate documented failures from allegations that have not been established.

What bothers me most is the gap between what happened and what the public was first led to believe. A family deserves the truth even when that truth is embarrassing to the command.

For background, see this NBC News reporting on the Tillman case.

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When the Truth Is Bad for Somebody’s Career

I’ve often wondered whether military leaders would get more honest reporting if admitting a mistake didn’t automatically feel like the end of somebody’s career.

When friendly fire occurs, the questions are uncomfortable. Who gave the order? Were the coordinates correct? Did the unit know where its people were? Were warnings ignored? Was the initial report accurate?

Those questions aren’t an attack on the military. They’re what accountability looks like.

Accidents happen.

But a system that rewards a neat report more than an ugly truth can create a powerful temptation to call something an “incident,” close the file, and move along.

When the story is inconvenient, the system can become more interested in controlling the story than telling it.

That’s my opinion, formed partly by what I saw and experienced in Vietnam. I’m not saying every commander is dishonest or every investigation is a cover-up. I am saying that people in uniform—and the families waiting at home—deserve better than silence.

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Vietnam: When the Danger Was Inside the Hooch

Here is why this subject gets personal for me.

While serving at MWSG-17 near Danang, I uncovered theft involving other Marines and reported what I knew. That didn’t make me popular. Quite the opposite. Word got around that I had talked, and I became the guy nobody wanted around.

There were threats. I took them seriously. I asked to be transferred because I believed my life was in danger—not from the North Vietnamese, but from Marines on my own side.

One night, another Marine and I switched sleeping locations in the hooch. Then came the shooting.

I personally witnessed a Marine being shot and wounded in the location where I had been sleeping. I believed the shooter or shooters thought that Marine was me. That belief was based on the threats and circumstances I had experienced; it was not a conclusion established for me by an official investigation.

Think about that for a moment. You’re in a war zone, where you’re already listening for rockets and worrying about mines, ambushes, and the next patrol. Then you start worrying about who might come through the door of your own hooch.

That does something to a man.

I later heard from other Marines that two Marines had been murdered. I did not witness those two killings. Based on what I was told and what had happened around me, I feared those deaths were connected to the threats against me. I cannot claim firsthand knowledge of who killed them or why.

Those distinctions matter. There is what I saw with my own eyes, what fellow Marines told me, and what I believed was happening. After more than half a century, I refuse to pretend those are all the same thing.

I reported what I knew and feared. I wanted protection and answers. What I remember most clearly is the feeling that I was on my own.

For the fuller story of the theft and its consequences, read The Theft Ring.

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Sometimes the Enemy Isn’t Out Front

Civilians often picture war as a clean line: our guys on one side, their guys on the other.

It isn’t that simple. A unit is made up of human beings, with all their courage and loyalty—but also their fear, resentment, jealousy, bad judgment, and sometimes criminal behavior.

Most of the Marines I knew did their jobs, watched each other’s backs, and tried to get everybody home. I won’t let the actions of a few erase that.

But those few can do terrible damage.

Sometimes the enemy isn’t out front. Sometimes the danger is behind you, watching to see whether you’ll report what you saw.

Experiences like that don’t always stay overseas. They can follow a veteran home in the form of distrust, vigilance, and memories that refuse to retire. I’ve written about that in Living With PTSD: A Marine Explains It.

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The Nicest Name for the Worst Day

Accidents happen in war. Fog, darkness, exhaustion, bad intelligence, faulty communications—sometimes a fatal mistake really is a mistake.

But an accident still deserves an honest investigation. A deliberate attack deserves a criminal investigation. And a grieving family deserves the facts, not a public-relations exercise.

I have lived long enough to hear plenty of tidy phrases for ugly things. “Friendly fire” may be one of the tidiest.

There was nothing friendly about the shooting I witnessed in Vietnam. There was nothing friendly about what happened to Pat Tillman. And there is nothing friendly about asking a family to live with unanswered questions because the answers might embarrass somebody wearing rank.

Call it friendly fire if that’s the military term. Just don’t confuse a polite name with a harmless death when there is nothing “friendly” about it.

Semper Fi.

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