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There was much more to his “supporting combat operations” death than what the military put out.

It was the standard Pentagon release.

A soldier is killed. A clerk types in their name. “____________ died while supporting combat operations.”

There is no Pentagon form titled “What Really Happened.”

If there was, in the case of the metro Chicago Marine, this is how it would read:

“Lance Cpl. Joshua H. Birchfield, 24, of Westville, Ind., died Feb. 19 after being shot in the head by a doped-up private security contractor hired by the U.S. government. We’re sorry we hired the guy, obviously didn’t check him out very well and we are devastated that we didn’t do a better job protecting our own.”

This disturbing information came to me after last week’s column, in which I reported how Lance Cpl. Birchfield deserved more attention in dying for his country than Tiger Woods, who at the same hour had commandeered the nation’s airwaves to apologize for cheating on his wife.

“Although I respect the fact that you wrote about Josh to let the world know that he died a hero, and he did, your facts are not even close to the truth,” wrote one of Lance Cpl. Birchfield’s friends and fellow Marines in an e-mail from Afghanistan.

Because the military hadn’t yet reported the death, I surmised that Birchfield was in the Marjan province, where Marines had been in regular firefights with the Taliban.

Actually, he was on a routine patrol in the Helmand province.