Friendly Fire is an American television movie first broadcast on the ABC network on April 22, 1979.
Watched that night by an estimated 64 million people,[1] Friendly Fire went on to win four Emmy awards, including Outstanding Drama Special.
[3] The movie tells the real-life story of Peg Mullen (played by Carol Burnett),[4] a woman from rural Iowa who with her husband works against government obstacles to uncover the actual details and facts about the death of their son Michael, an Army infantry soldier killed by "friendly fire" in February 1970 during the Vietnam War.
[5] He was listed as a non-battle casualty after being accidentally killed with another soldier from an exploding Army artillery shell burst fragment, while Mullen and most of his platoon were asleep at night on their hilltop position; the government did not report publicly the number of non-battle deaths or their names on its weekly casualty lists during the war.
[6] The book was adapted from a series of New Yorker magazine articles Bryan had written about the Mullens and their ordeal.