Friendly Fire

the long version

"Tarnak Farm, near Kandahar, Afghanistan, pre-dawn, April 18, 2002. Two American F-16 pilots returning to their base after an uneventful support mission suddenly notice flashes from the ground, thousands of feet below. They have no idea that what they are seeing in the darkness is a company of Canadian paratroopers conducting a live-fire training exercise. Convinced that he and his flight lead are being ambushed, Major Harry Schmidt unleashes a 500-pound laser-guided bomb. Minutes later, he knows he might have made a terrible mistake. "I hope that was the right thing to do," he says over the cockpit radio. "Me too," replies the other pilot, Major Bill Umbach." "Nearly four years later, the question still lingers: Was it the right thing to do? Military investigators said no, concluding that the "reckless" airmen seemed more interested in earning a medal than ensuring their target was the enemy. The pilots - to this day - insist that they had no choice but to attack, that Maj. Umbach appeared to be seconds away from being shot out of the sky. Whichever side you believe, one undisputed fact remains. Four Edmonton-based paratroopers are dead, and their heartbroken families and comrades are still struggling to cope with the loss, and in some cases, the guilt." "Friendly Fire offers an unflinching look at the event that transformed lives on both sides of the border and momentarily strained the state of Canada-U.S. relations. Based on thousands of pages of classified documents, never-before-published video, and dozens of exclusive interviews - including conversations with Harry Schmidt and Bill Umbach, the Illinois-based fighter pilots who were implicated in dropping the bomb - this book dramatically recreates the sequence of events and their chaotic aftermath, from the unprecedented criminal charges to the high-profile military hearing and the controversy that followed."--Jacket.