"Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman" by Mary Tillman with Narda Zacchino; Modern Times; 368 pages; $26.

There is no author photo on the jacket of Mary Tillman's book. Just a blown-up snapshot on the back cover of her son Pat, the most famous soldier in the war on terror.

"It's not about me," she said.

Motherhood is like that - putting your children first, protecting them, defending their honor. Even when they're dead.

Pat Tillman died four years ago in a canyon in Afghanistan, a hero beyond measure. He'd walked away from a $3.6 million contract to play pro football so he could enlist with his brother in the Army Rangers. Then, he was killed in combat, charging up a hill to draw enemy fire away from his comrades.

Or so the story went.

It took the military five weeks to admit what it had known all along - that Tillman, 27, was shot in the head by his own men, a victim of a botched mission to tow a disabled Humvee.

Seven investigations and two Congressional hearings later, questions still linger about what really happened. Mary Tillman doesn't plan to rest until she has the answers.

"You can't imagine how absolutely horrifying it is to realize your government is lying to you, and they know you know they're lying," said the retired schoolteacher from San Jose, Calif.

"Boots on the Ground by Dusk," poignant and painful, is really two books - one a memoir of her larger-than-life son, and the other an expose of his death.

But mostly, it's a mother watching out for her child. The subtitle: "My Tribute to Pat Tillman."

"It's all I can do for him now," she said, her eyes brimming. "It's a tribute to him as a person. And it's a tribute to the truth. Pat would have busted down doors if this had happened to one of us. He would want us to find out the truth."

The book title comes from the order that sent Pat and others from the 75th Ranger Regiment into the mountains in the first place. Commanders wanted the Humvee moved, now. Or did they?

When the family was first briefed about his death, they were told by an Army colonel that there was miscommunication in the field. Commanders actually wanted boots on the ground by dawn, not dusk. Stuff happens.

But that story changed over time, as did a good many others. "That doesn't make sense," Mary Tillman told the officers, over and over. Her confusion gave way to suspicion and then outrage.

"We all understand that accidents happen in war," she said, "but why all the deception, the betrayal, the cover-up?"

She said the hardest part about writing the book was "talking about the personal things," sharing how she learned that Pat had died, summoning the courage to view him in his casket, wrapping one of his brown Army T-shirts around her neck as she sits at the computer to type questions she wants answered about his death.

"But I realized those things are important so people can understand what the cost is to lose a child this way," she said. Looking inward caused her to think about things she hadn't thought about in a long time, retrieved memories that made her smile.

"I never knew what was going to trigger it," she said. "Sometimes it was a smell that made me remember, or a sound." She found the process healing.

She was concerned that Pat had been reduced to a superhero caricature after his death. "He wasn't perfect," she said. "He made mistakes, and he paid the price along the way, tried to learn from them." In the book, she details his arrest and conviction, near the end of high school, in an assault case.

"I wanted to show the human side of Pat," she said. "He'd been morphed. This was my way of defending him. The last way I could protect him was protecting who he was."

She was opposed to his enlistment in the Army and tried to talk him out of it. She didn't trust the Bush administration to wage war wisely, she said.

But he'd made up his mind. Playing football seemed trivial to him after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He compared his life to relatives who had been at Pearl Harbor, fought in World War II: "I haven't done anything."

Her opposition to the war, and her critical comments about the Army's handling of Pat's death, have led some to conclude that Mary Tillman is anti-military. Not so, she said.

"I support the military," she said. "The military is an important institution in any culture. But there are dishonorable people in any institution, people who lack integrity, and the military is no exception."

Her book tour has included several stops on military bases. She said military families, especially mothers, have been supportive. She's become friends with several whose sons also died in "friendly fire" episodes.

What the young men all had in common, she said, was a zest for life. And they all understood that once they joined the military, they would be following orders. They would lose their voice.

"That's why it's important for the rest of us to pay attention," she said. "We are their voice. We're supposed to be vigilant. The only way we'll find answers is by people pushing for them."

- John Wilkens

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