ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Friendly Fire (1979 film)

Have you ever played a game where you have to work with a team to achieve a goal, like playing hide-and-seek with your friends? Imagine that you and your friends are on a team and you are all wearing different colored hats. Your goal is to find a special object before the other team does. While you are looking for the object, you can't see your friends' faces because they are hiding behind bushes or trees.

Now let's say that you see something moving in the distance and you think it might be someone from the other team. You get scared and start throwing rocks in that direction to keep them from getting the object. But it turns out that it was actually one of your teammates who was wearing a different hat that you didn't recognize because you couldn't see their face. You accidentally hit your teammate with the rock and they get hurt.

That is what friendly fire is - when members of the same team accidentally hurt or kill each other because they mistake them for enemies. In 1979, a movie called "Friendly Fire" was made about a real-life incident in the Vietnam War where a soldier was killed by his own troops due to a mistake. The movie tells the story of how the soldier's family struggled to find out what really happened and to get justice for their son's death.

So, in summary, friendly fire is a tragic event that happens when teammates accidentally harm each other because they can't recognize who is who. The movie "Friendly Fire" tells the story of how one family dealt with the loss of their loved one due to this type of accident.