re: #58 PT Barnum

If the original incident wasn’t embarrassing, why bother to cover it up?

Because he was a well-known football player and there was a tremendous outpouring of respect after he died. Obviously, they wanted to portray his death as “heroically” as possible. There was nothing embarrassing about his death, it just didn’t fit the narrative the military was trying to set up.

Personally, I don’t think dying from friendly fire is any less heroic. I think the reaction from the public would have been the same if they were honest from the get-go.