The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education

by Craig M. Mullaney

  Fuck self-pity, the Ranger instructor had said. This isn’t about you.

  32

  Fight Club

  When the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger: stiffen the sinews, conjure up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard-favored rage.

  SHAKESPEARE, Henry V

  THE SHADOWS LENGTHENED AS AUTUMN CREPT UP on our forgotten corner of Afghanistan. The frenzied pace of our first week at Shkin had slowed. Whether the vigilance of our patrols was abating or our foes were retreating remained uncertain. The mercury dropped with more measurable conviction, hovering above freezing soon after the sun set in the hills to our west. The days were crisp and clear, our visibility restricted only by the occasional squall of dust dancing across the barren valley toward Pakistan.

  Unlike the dog days of August in our closing weeks at Gardez, this quiet was pregnant with apprehension. I no longer needed to admonish my men against complacency; their alertness was by now an acquired survival trait. No one wanted to jeopardize his safe return home with a misplaced step. As we moved through beautiful cedar glens along the border, heads continued to swivel, expecting a violent interruption. There was no returning to our illusions, no gleeful anticipation of combat action.

  The simmering tensions at the border flared regularly. On one mission we explored an unfamiliar streambed along the border north of Shkin. An accidental trespass across the border prompted a half-dozen Pakistanis who were manning the border post to mount RPGs on their shoulders and point them menacingly at our vehicles. Fortunately, our reversed course satisfied our allies, and I counted myself lucky to have avoided a more consequential incident.

  I waged my own battles with the chain of command. The senior officer at Shkin, Major Paul Wille, egged me on continuously. At nearly every meal Major Wille asked whether I wanted wine with my food, playing on my Oxford background. The other officers laughed. Most of the time in the Army, having studied at Oxford earned me either unsolicited compliments or complete indifference, but Oxford wasn’t always a badge of honor in the military. Ever since the commander at Benning dubbed me “Professor Mullaney,” I had had to fight the perception that I couldn’t be both a scholar and a warrior. At the beginning of my officer training, it had probably been for the better, forcing me to work extra hard at every military and physical test to insulate myself against unwarranted criticism. Given Wille’s advanced military history studies, I was surprised by his attitudes and didn’t know how to read him. Was he just busting my chops, or did he actually resent my education? In any case, I decided not to defend myself. After a few months in Afghanistan, I no longer needed to prove my bona fides.

  On one mission where he accompanied my platoon, Major Wille chided me at every unfolding mishap. When a Humvee cracked an axle and forced us to tow it back twenty miles to base, he compared us to a dog returning home with its tail between its legs. He second-guessed my decisions in front of my men, making it even more difficult for me to command their respect. The animosity was personal, or at least that is how I perceived it. My bookishness either threatened or disgusted him.

  Soon after the mission with the cracked axle, we received our first mail since arriving at Shkin. A package arrived from Amazon. I ripped it open to discover an expensive set of language tapes I had ordered. While I walked with the tapes across the compound, Major Wille stopped me. “What are those?”

  “Hindi tapes, sir.”

  “You know, Mullaney, you should focus on being a better platoon leader, not screw around with languages. If you lose another soldier, you’re only going to blame yourself for not doing more to prepare.”

  I walked away without rising to the bait. My skin grew hot. I could have killed him with my bare hands. How could he imply that O’Neill had died because I had failed to prepare? I wasn’t ready for this criticism. It stung because several times a day, every day since the attack, I had been asking myself what I had done wrong. Moreover, I was angry at the implicit accusation that preparing my mind was unconnected to becoming a better leader. At that moment Major Wille became a lightning rod for my dissatisfaction with those few officers I had come across in my brief career who disdained the value of formal education. Our profession so clearly depended on judgment and clearheaded analysis. I hated having to defend my time at Oxford, euphemizing my academic experience as being “stationed in England.” I wanted to be judged on my performance as a leader, not on the weight I could bench-press.

  Still, I hated to consider that Major Wille might be right. Maybe I wasn’t sufficiently focused on the fight at hand. Combat has the effect of crystallizing the value of one’s choices. Time spent studying a language was time not committed directly to honing my tactical knowledge. Maybe Wille was pointing out that there was something more beneficial that I could have been doing with my time. He was right, but I also had to hold on to myself by lying down with headphones and closing my eyes for just twenty minutes a day. In the midst of so much chaos and fear and unrelenting pressure, the certainty of language, with its rules and rhythms, helped me stay sane.

  I RETURNED TO MY rack to read through the accumulated letters from Meena. There were six or seven, all dated on the back of the envelope so I could read them in the correct order. It was tempting to jump to the last letter, but I also relished the excitement of finishing a letter and having the satisfaction of immediately reading the next installment. Our letters were always slightly out of phase with each other, like left and right speakers playing the same song two seconds apart. As a result, it took two weeks to figure out how Meena had taken the news about our recent spate of fighting along the border. After all, it contrasted so strongly with my days vaccinating camels in Gardez.

  Meena at the time was alone in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, doing a medical school rotation, staying in a hospital dorm room, and eating all her meals in the hospital cafeteria. Captain Worthan’s wife had sent an email to soldiers’ spouses and loved ones after Losano Ridge, telling everyone that serious fighting had taken place at the border and family members of the wounded and dead would be notified by telephone. Meena looked at her cell phone and saw that a voicemail message was in her mailbox. With a lump in her throat, she listened to a message from my sister asking for an Indian recipe. I wondered if every call was like that for her now, wondering which one would make her heart stop. I considered how difficult it must have been for her to know I was in danger without having any power to help. I doubted whether I could have stood in her shoes had our roles been reversed. I finally got a chance to call Meena when the satellite phone was fixed.

  “How are you doing?” I asked.

  “How am I doing?” repeated Meena. “With what?”

  “With the firefight and everything?”

  “I heard it was another company.”

  “No,” I corrected her, “it was us.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. It was my platoon. One of my men was killed.”

  “Oh.” Meena gulped. “Are you okay?”

  “They had us talk to some counselors. I’m doing all right, I think.”

  “Can you tell me more about the fight? What happened?”

  I told her in eight-minute bursts as the satellites went in and out of reception. Meena didn’t ask any hard questions, but she listened. I could only imagine how hard it was for her to listen to that without closing her ears to the reality I would likely face again.

  “I love you,” Meena said as we closed our conversation. “Stay safe.”

  “I love you, too.”

  I couldn’t stay safe, though. Our letters after O’Neill’s death began to reflect that. More and more I worried about Meena. It was as if I had another platoon to protect. The risks I faced extended to her as well. I couldn’t protect my platoon and Meena simultaneously. Staying safe meant staying home. For now I had to focus on my mission even though doing so kept me anything but safe.

  Most days at Shkin I wanted to ignore home. I had heard nothing
from my father since the letter I had written him in July. I asked my mother whether my father had asked about me. Was he worried about me? I wanted my mother to say yes. Like a game of hide-and-seek, I didn’t want to be found, but I wanted to know he was looking. He hadn’t asked, wrote my mother.

  I was empty. There were no tears left to cry.

  AT ONE OF OUR regular nightly planning sessions, Captain Worthan announced an unusual schedule for the following day. It was his birthday, and he wanted to celebrate at Shkin. Secretly, he had planned an entire day of festivities, including sports, a feast of fresh spit-roasted meat, and bonfire skits.

  My men were ecstatic, particularly at the proclamation that we could wear civilian clothes all day. Soon after, duffel bags were eviscerated in the hunt for baseball caps, jeans, and sweatshirts. We had been told to pack one set of civilian clothes before deploying. Until now I had kept mine buried beneath the third extra pair of boots. I had assumed I would go through the boots before I ever wore civilian clothes in Afghanistan.

  The day dawned bright with promise. Breakfast tasted better. I pulled on a favorite pair of jeans and a T-shirt and joined McGurk and Grenz outside our building. Donning sunglasses, we reclined in unison in nylon folding chairs, soaking up the sun. Twenty yards away, several soldiers played dominoes to the rhythm of Cuban music. Our austere camp life only heightened the pleasure of what few luxuries came our way. The music was fresher, the sun warmer, and the sky more blue. I sipped one of the nonalcoholic beers that Captain Worthan had unveiled. Twenty more and I might even have a buzz.

  After a preciously lazy morning tanning and reading, I joined the increasingly loud throng of soldiers gathering outside the compound wall. Men climbed up on the turrets of Humvees. Some were perched on the compound parapet. I wiggled in to see what was going on.

  In the center of a cheering ring, two soldiers pummeled each other with boxing gloves. The taller soldier had six inches of reach on his opponent, but the shorter grunt was giving him a run for his money. At each blow the crowd reverberated with cheers. With no helmets or mouth guards, this was only one step above bare-fisted street brawling. Third Platoon’s sergeant refereed with a light touch, just as eager as the crowd for the blood that splattered as the two pugilists smashed each other’s noses. Eventually, he called the fight a draw, although the company clearly supported the tenacity of the underdog.

  Captain Worthan and the company executive officer battled next. The men cheered wildly as the former rugby player and former hockey star traded powerful, methodical punches. Captain Worthan looked ridiculous in the outfit he had chosen for his birthday—an olive drab Afghan kurta pajama. The fight ended abruptly with a roundhouse from Worthan. The lieutenant’s body lifted off the gravel as his jaw rotated away, trailing a fountain of blood. His body twisted as he fell flat on his face. The company medic rushed to help him up, and the ring of spectators roared with approval as he cracked a bloody smile. He wiped the blood off his face with a brown towel, and the referee raised Worthan’s arm in triumph. A second roar erupted when he put the other arm over his lieutenant’s neck.

  “Who wants to challenge?” prompted the referee in an echo of the popular film Fight Club. He dismissed a few call-outs as egregiously lopsided.

  From my right, Major Wille bellowed out a challenge: “Does Mullaney want to fight?” He turned to me with a smirk from ear to ear. The crowd fed off his bravado, sensing a less than cordial intent in the challenge. When Wille wasn’t in the command center, he was in the gym or reading glossy muscle magazines. Testosterone radiated around him. He was a meat-eating, knuckle-dragging gladiator, and the company was frothing with anticipation at the clash.

  This was an opportunity I couldn’t miss. “Let’s go.”

  My men elbowed in to better viewing positions on the edge of the ring. I walked into the center, conscious only of the twenty-five pairs of eyes that mattered to me at that moment. I imagined myself representing my platoon’s honor, their unelected representative in the ring. I stripped my shirt off and held my arms out for the gloves. They were stained with dried blood.

  I anticipated being battered by Major Wille. He had forty pounds of muscle and four inches of reach on me. Nor did my record give me confidence. Every boxing match I had had, from Plebe year through Ranger School, had been ugly. My record of 0-6 spoke for itself.

  My platoon probably wasn’t expecting much of a performance. Most were familiar with the infamous bout when a sergeant in the platoon had nearly decapitated me on the day I took command.

  Worthan approached with something in his hand. As he came closer, he folded a piece of cardboard into a T shape and shoved it into my mouth as an improvised mouth guard. This was a bad omen. The referee, who towered over Major Wille and me, instructed us to touch gloves with arms outstretched and commenced the battle with a sharp “Fight!”

  We danced around each other for thirty seconds, reconnoitering for weaknesses. I jabbed first, stinging Wille on the nose and evoking a snorting chuckle. I stepped away as he missed with an unguided roundhouse. I stepped back in with two quick jabs, exactly as I had been taught as a Plebe. I was enjoying this.

  Wille was a brawler rather than a boxer. He kept his hands low and swung wildly from the hips, telegraphing his hooks. If he landed one, it would hurt, but I could take advantage of my painful Plebe boxing lessons to wear him down slowly. I landed three punches for every glancing blow I ducked. My mind blocked out the sound of the crowd, but I recognized the pumping fists of my men with each of my strikes. As the round wore on, I absorbed a series of crushing blows to my right temple. My head swam, and Wille blurred in front of me. He hit the left side of my head with the force of a sledgehammer, and I lost my balance. My knee hit the gravel, and the referee separated us. I stood back up. The cheer of the crowd made my heart race faster. I jabbed twice with my right and crossed with my left, hitting Wille square on the nose. I wanted to pounce on the blood dribbling down his upper lip, but the referee called the round.

  I lumbered over to my corner, where the company medic tilted my head back and swabbed my face with cotton balls. I was surprised to see blood when I glanced at his hands. Blood was splattered over my bare chest and on my jeans. I wasn’t sure whether it was Wille’s or mine. McGurk grabbed my cheeks and centered my attention on him.

  “Watch his roundhouses.”

  I nodded and dribbled spit at the same time.

  “Keep pounding his left eye. You might be able to open a small cut there on his eyebrow.”

  “Uh-huh,” I acknowledged. I quickly turned to look toward Wille. He was breathing heavily, with much more difficulty than I was. Adrenaline was pulsing through my body; I was doing well.

  The referee called us back to the center. Wille looked much less cocky now. I had the psychological advantage. As we broke, I tried to keep moving around the ring to tire him out faster. He plodded slowly after me, but without much enthusiasm. I let him catch up. He swung blindly with his left, leaving his left eye exposed. I jabbed once with my left, coiled my right arm, cocked my hips, and unleashed a vicious right cross. I saw Wille wince a split second before my arm went limp. A bolt of pain rippled through my upper body, and I immediately recognized that I had dislocated my right shoulder, the same injury that had nearly eliminated me from Ranger School. I pulled my left glove up in front of my face and tried unsuccessfully to will my right arm back to the horizontal. The referee blew his whistle to break the fight, and I pulled away, bending over like a jackknife.

  “Do you want to keep fighting?” asked the referee.

  I remembered all the times Aram had helped me relocate my shoulder during our wrestling days at West Point. I thought of the overtime when he had urged me to throw the headlock to win the match. I didn’t want to keep fighting; I had to. I fight, therefore I am.

  “Just hold my glove against your shoulder.” I pushed against the referee’s resistance and popped my shoulder back into its socket. “I’m not done yet.”

 
Wille was bent over, wheezing with exhaustion. He was startled to see me lift my gloves back up into a ready position and move toward him on the attack. We finished the round with a decreasing frequency of punches as we both tired. I jabbed ineffectually with my left glove and held my right up as a face guard. The second and final round ended with us bloody and battered. The company applauded loudly, but my right shoulder seared with pain. Captain Worthan helped remove my gloves and then manipulated Major Wille and me into a pose. Unprompted, Wille draped his arm over my shoulder and smiled as another lieutenant snapped a Polaroid photo.

  I hobbled to my bunk and lay down. It was as if my brain had been inflated with a pump until it bulged against the inside of my skull. The pounding of my heart had been replaced by the pounding of my head. My shoulder throbbed and my back ached. I closed my eyes and swallowed a painkiller. The medicine was just starting to take effect when I looked up to see Major Wille staring down at me. He was smaller now.