Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman

On November 13, 1993, Tillman attends a party in San Jose with Marie, many of his classmates, and a fellow teammate named Jeff Hechtle. After the party, they drunkenly go to a pizza place called Round Table. Hechtle tries to pick a fight with Mike Bradford, a graduate of a rival school. Finally, he goads Bradford enough that they fight in the parking lot. Unaware that his best friend started the fight, Tillman rushes out to assist him. Hechtle has a rare condition that leaves his skin unusually vulnerable. Fed by football-fed aggression, testosterone, and alcohol, Tillman goes for Darin Rosas, an innocent bystander, beating him senselessly. When the police arrive, Tillman snaps out of his violent state and profusely apologizes, telling Rosas he made a grave error and will do anything he can to make it right. Rosas loses multiple teeth and makes multiple visits to the ER that night.

The Tillman family learns that Rosas’s family is pressing charges and Pat will have to stand trial for a felony assault charge. He continues applying to colleges and tries to get a football scholarship, finally receiving an offer from Arizona State University (ASU). When the judge hears that Tillman will lose his scholarship if convicted of a felony, she reduces the charge to misdemeanor assault with a sentence of month in juvenile jail and 250 hours of community service. Many criticize the judge for prioritizing Tillman’s future over Rosas’s victimization. Later, however, one of Rosas’s friends admits that the judge made the right choice in giving Tillman a second chance. Not all people take advantage of their second chances the way Tillman does.

Due to the Soviet Union’s scorched earth tactics, once successful farmlands and old irrigation routes are destroyed in the Kandahar Province. To survive, farmers turn to growing poppies. The resultant heroin trade has warlords terrorizing the country roads. Fed up by the militia groups, a man named Mullah Omar forms a small militia group of his own to disarm these groups and bring peace to Afghanistan, thanks to a vision he had of the prophet Muhammad. Thus, the Taliban is formed.

Omar amasses many young refugee Afghan men to the Taliban and they effectively take control of half the country by 1995. Omar begins enacting “his singularly draconian interpretation of Sharia, or Islamic law” (61). Men are to grow long beards and women are to be covered head to toe in a burqa and not work or leave the home without a male relative. Girls can’t attend school, and a ban is instituted on many Western things such as movies, music, games, beverages, and computers. The rest of the world regards the Taliban with caged optimism.

When Omar and his followers finally take Kabul, the capital, they brutalize former Soviet puppet, Najibullah, castrating him and dragging him alive behind a truck through the streets before killing him and stringing his body up beside his brother’s to be desecrated by the public. The Clinton administration has mixed reactions to this. Meanwhile, bin Laden ruffles feathers in Saudi Arabia, amassing an army and alienating his family. He is forced to flee to Sudan, where he offers to help fight Saddam Hussein. When his offer is declined in favor of U.S. intervention, he swears revenge against the U.S. and returns to Afghanistan’s open arms.

Once arrived, bin Laden swears allegiance to the Taliban in exchange for sanctuary. Omar introduces bin Laden to his people as a great spiritual leader, but the relationship is complicated. The Taliban receives funding from Saudi Arabia, who don’t support bin Laden and are working with the U.S. to track him and dismantle al-Qaeda. Despite the region’s fluctuating politics, “the United States had a poor grasp of these shifting, highly nuanced dynamics and failed to appreciate the magnitude of the threat posed by the budding relationship between bin Laden and Omar” (67). The men’s bond begins the final, critical stage of bin Laden’s development, enabling him to begin building the “most efficient terrorist organization the world had ever seen,” according to journalist Jason Burke (67).

Tillman graduates high school in 1994 and immediately serves his 30-day jail sentence. To get his 250 hours community service done before the start of training at ASU, the judge permits Dannie to drive him to and from jail to serve at a local homeless shelter. He later admits this time was difficult, teaching him more than all the good decisions he made in his life up to that point. Time in jail instills a love of reading in Tillman that persists the rest of his life. When he leaves for college, Tillman wrestles with loneliness, fiercely missing his family and Marie. He writes tearful letters and is obsequiously grateful when his parents visit. Marie later reflects that Tillman’s sensitivity was just as real as his toughness. Both sides of his personality existed in harmony.

Tillman focuses on school more in college than he had in high school. He gets a tutor and meets Réka Cseresnyés in their study group, a Hungarian tennis player. Tillman is fascinated by her history in the Soviet bloc and they become great friends. Tillman’s GPA steadily increases as college progresses, and he eventually becomes a starter on the team. His brother, Kevin, accepts a baseball scholarship to ASU in lieu of the Houston Astros to be closer to Pat. In 1996, ASU goes undefeated during the regular season, largely due to Tillman’s smart and aggressive efforts. His team reaches the Rose Bowl where Tillman plays well, but they narrowly lose at the last minute. Tillman accepts the loss without drama and moves on.