The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education

by Craig M. Mullaney

  “Sir.”

  More forcefully this time.

  “Sir!”

  I turned to look straight at Story.

  “Your fight.”

  I snapped out of my trance, turned away from Chris, and gained my bearings. Story showed me where the enemy shots were coming from, a hundred yards away and uphill. The shots I heard earlier were directed at Chris as he bravely attempted to take out the sniper by himself. Unbelievable. Story had run behind, trying to give him some backup, but was too late. Chris had already been shot. Story exposed himself to withering fire in order to pull Chris to safety. He warned me not to maneuver any closer. My machine-gun team was keeping the sniper’s head down, but he was well protected in another trenchlike wadi. I reached Captain Worthan on Howe’s radio and relayed our status. I reported Chris as wounded, though I knew he was already dead.

  My actions were instinctual, intuitive. A pair of Apache helicopters hovered at a safe distance away from us, primed for the kill now that someone with a radio could direct them onto a target. Hours of training were instantly validated. The harassing recitations of Plebe knowledge. The high-speed free-fall skydives. The night patrols in Ranger School. It was like switching to autopilot.

  I identified our position with a bright strip of orange nylon I had kept in my cargo pocket for that very purpose, and directed the Apaches onto the position Story had shown me. They swept in directly overhead, firing 2.75-inch rockets and splintering rocks and tree branches. I had my machine gunner fire tracers into the enemy position and asked the helicopter pilots to finish off our adversary. I was energized by the power I commanded through the radio. It was like an incantation, like casting a spell, like summoning a demon. At a word I could unleash a hail of rocket shards on the fighter who had shot Chris. Vengeance commingled with professional satisfaction.

  The fourth gun run was less accurate. Several rockets landed less than thirty feet away from the lip of the trench, scouring Grenz’s and McGurk’s arms with shrapnel. Damn. So much for “minimum safe distance.” I called the helicopters off into a holding pattern. I needed to move our casualties through the wadi and back to the landing zone. Two litter teams comprised of my men and Afghan militia finally arrived. McGurk coordinated his fire teams to cover our withdrawal.

  I grabbed part of the litter and helped move Chris, but the Afghans ahead of us were moving too slowly. We had hundreds of yards to go, and the terrain was uneven. All shared a look of terror and purpose. I urged the Afghans on in Hindi, “Chale, chale,” drawing one suddenly important phrase, “Let’s go,” from the many hours of language tapes and Bollywood films. Sweat glistened on every brow in the afternoon heat, and my grip was slippery. My forearms ached from the weight. We removed equipment from the litters to speed our movement, yet it still took an hour to reach the helicopter landing zone. Story alerted me once everyone was accounted for.

  “All up, sir.”

  I moved with two of the gun trucks to a position overlooking where I had just been. My two Mark-19s opened up after a burst of fire erupted from where our enemy, amazingly, had survived. A malfunction. A second malfunction. Both guns fell silent. Chuck leaped out with a Leatherman tool and repaired the guns as rounds impacted around the trucks. A bullet grazed his arm while he fixed the grenade launcher, but Chuck didn’t skip a beat. Captain Worthan and I coordinated the coup de grace, using the Mark-19s to mark the target while an A-10 jet eviscerated whatever resistance remained. The Apache helicopters assessed the battle damage from overhead, counting three dead.

  My heart rate eased as Story organized the convoy for the return. Daylight faded as we began our movement north toward Shkin. As we entered the maw of the valley, the temperature dropped. The high peaks to our west blocked the setting sun, and their silhouettes cast jagged shadows high on the opposite ridge. A chill ran up my spine.

  I sat in the front seat of the lead vehicle, conscious that I had replaced Chris as guide. Ninety minutes into our journey, as the sun dropped fast, a pickup truck broke down in the wadi. While we waited patiently for the amateur mechanics to fix it, our escort helicopters warned us of a possible enemy ambush ahead. Captain Worthan decided to sacrifice the Toyota. The Afghans hastily salvaged the stereo and communications equipment, and we left the truck behind and continued moving, slower now without daylight. I turned one last time to look at the distinctive notch of Khand Narai Pass. An Apache launched a Hellfire missile at the truck we left behind. It vaporized in the dusk, adding another rusting carapace to Afghanistan’s graveyard of military vehicles.

  The ambush never materialized. Perhaps they were deterred by the pair of Apache helicopters that stuck with us despite their dangerously low fuel levels. They barely limped back on fumes to the fuel depot at Orgun.

  Chris’s face kept flashing in my head, a split screen between life and death. Chris full of life, laughing, and then suddenly pasty white skin and violent red blood. Chris hadn’t “fallen.” Chris wasn’t “KIA.” I didn’t “lose” Chris like a watch or a wallet. He drowned in his own blood. There were no euphemisms.

  If a guy like Chris could bleed to death, what chance did I stand? Suddenly, and for the first time, I felt vulnerable. The adrenaline that had sustained me began to wear off. My legs ached as though I had run a marathon, and my uniform chafed against my skinned knees. I tried to focus on my map, but it blurred and my head pounded with pain. My helmet seemed to weigh a hundred pounds. As it grew colder, I wrapped my scarf tightly around my neck. In the dark, under my night vision goggles, I stared in silence at a world turned sickly green.

  34

  Last Patrols

  A rational army would run away.

  MONTESQUIEU

  CAPTAIN WORTHAN HANDED ME A LETTER HE HAD received from O’Neill’s father. As I unfolded the letter, a photo fell onto my lap. Stripped of the camouflage, he reminded me again of my brother—same age, same smile, same blue eyes. I teared up as I read. Mike O’Neill was so proud of his son’s sacrifices. He had himself been a paratrooper in Vietnam. He knew that Evan would be happy to have earned the same pair of Purple Heart and Bronze Star medals. He wrote that Evan had always wanted to be a soldier, that he had hoped to go to West Point and Ranger School one day. Evan had said that the proudest moment of his life was when his father had pinned his Airborne wings on his chest. It made me think of my father pinning on my Ranger tab three years before.

  When Evan’s body arrived at Logan Airport in Boston, Mr. O’Neill, his fellow firefighters from North Andover, and a group of veterans were there to join him on the final convoy home. At the wake, a line stretched for nearly half a mile outside the funeral home. Nearly every policeman, firefighter, and veteran from the county came in uniform to salute O’Neill and honor his sacrifice for the community. Mr. O’Neill then described where they had buried his son, at the closest cemetery to his fire station. What a long journey home from Losano Ridge, I thought. One day I hoped to find his grave and render my final salute. Mr. O’Neill signed off his letter with our battalion’s motto, a fitting elegy for his son’s sacrifice: “To the Top!”

  I wept where my men wouldn’t see me. Converging waves of pride and sorrow swept over me. I wondered how my own father would react if I were killed. How would he find out? Would he be as proud as Evan’s father? O’Neill had left a fiancée behind. It was too hard to imagine her grief. When I tried, all I could think of was Meena. I wanted to write Mr. O’Neill but couldn’t muster the courage.

  OUR NERVES FRAYED AS October closed. We were at our peak as a combat platoon. Squads had cohered into tight fighting units. Marksmanship was better than ever. We knew the terrain and were confident in our ability. Yet every morning and night as I walked past O’Neill’s equipment hanging by the door of our room, I was reminded that each mission pushed our luck. Often in Afghanistan the scariest mission was just moving from point A to point B. Our routes were predictable, and it was only a matter of time before another ambush or roadside bomb snared us.

  Our d
ays at Shkin dwindled. On one patrol we detained five young men. They had been driving three vans stripped of passenger benches and loaded with suspicious packages of soap detergent and drums of kerosene, two ingredients for an explosive fuel bomb. After three days of questioning at the base, we had no choice but to release them with compensation for the windows we had smashed to open the doors. They all stuck to the story that they were distributing fuel and soap to gas stations in the province. Later that spring a succession of car bombs in Kabul made me wonder whether we had released the perpetrators.

  One day a farmer approached the base to inform the commander that he had found a rocket pointing toward the firebase. Captain Worthan asked him to point to the location on the map. He had never seen a map before and was unable to make heads or tails of it. My platoon drove with the farmer toward Losano Ridge and asked him to lead us to the rocket. The farmer meandered through the hills, with us trailing behind. I worried that we were being drawn into a trap.

  His hands shook as we drew closer to a menacing Pakistani border post. I kept glancing at my GPS to make sure we weren’t trespassing on sovereign Pakistani territory. I didn’t want a repeat of the encounter with our ally’s observation post and its trigger-happy tribesmen. A hundred yards from the border post, the farmer showed us a four-foot rocket propped up on a rock under a bush. It was connected to what looked like a Nintendo video game cartridge and a kitchen timer. It was good to find the rocket before the rocket found us, but its proximity to the border post highlighted the tenuousness of our relationship across the border. What else was happening right under their noses? We destroyed the rocket in place with C4 explosives and returned home. Could we ever win as long as Pakistan offered implicit sanctuary to the Taliban and al-Qaeda? Would another platoon still be patrolling Losano Ridge five years after we left?

  The first platoon of our replacements at Shkin arrived in early November. While coaching them through orientation patrols, we realized how familiar we had become with the small two-hundred-square-mile box we crisscrossed on foot and on trucks. Our learning curve had been steep and perilous. I hoped that theirs would be less so. Our adversaries were watching us. Every time units played musical chairs in Afghanistan, we became vulnerable again. Every time the music stopped, another unit would start over learning the physical and cultural terrain. The lack of continuity certainly frustrated relationships with local khans. Trust was hard-won in this part of the world, and we were treating Afghan leaders like contestants in a round of speed dating. All the same, our combat power was degrading. Two months of nearly continual fighting had beaten us down. Soon we would start making more mistakes.

  When the battalion commander flew out to observe our handover, he pulled me aside. In light of our company’s upcoming move from the front lines at Shkin to the headquarters at Orgun, he told me I would become his adjutant. The position had been unfilled for months, and a mountain of pay issues, unfinished medal proposals, and promotion orders frustrated morale across the battalion and needed urgent attention. Now that I was a captain, he had no choice but to move me to the staff and replace me with a lieutenant. I was crestfallen. I wanted to stay a platoon leader as long as possible.

  Four years at West Point and a year of training had all been focused on being a platoon leader. It was all for this: the ten months with Spearhead Platoon, the training, the tears, the laughter, the camaraderie. My last day with my men was November 11, 2003: Veteran’s Day. After more than a hundred days in combat, I had finally earned their salutes.

  I had no illusions that my departure would affect the platoon’s performance. A platoon moves through time without regard for the officers who come and go. Back when I had first trained my men at Fort Drum, Captain Worthan told me that my objective as a leader was to ultimately make myself dispensable. I had; and now it was someone else’s turn.

  As I waited for the Chinook to take me to Orgun, Story assembled the platoon to bid me farewell. I had learned since my first introduction in January not to bore them with a long speech. This time I recited only a few well-worn verses I had memorized years ago as a Plebe studying Shakespeare. For the first time the words seemed appropriate to recite outside a classroom.

  “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” What brothers, I thought, as I looked in their eyes. Although most heroism in combat goes unseen or unrewarded, I was proud of the medals my men had earned. For his poise and courage on Losano Ridge, Grenz had won the Silver Star, the Army’s third highest award for heroism, as did Captain Worthan for his command of the fight. McGurk and Story had won two Bronze Stars each and a pair of Purple Hearts between them. Among the younger soldiers were shared more than a dozen Army Commendation Medals with “V” devices for valor. I stood in the company of heroes. I mangled the rest of Henry V’s speech and spoke from my heart, “Thanks for the privilege of letting me fight with you.”

  Story helped me carry my bags to the Chinook. Before the crew chief raised the ramp, Story tugged on my arm from outside. “You done good, sir. You done good.” He saluted and ran away from the bird. I smiled. It was the highest compliment I have ever been paid.

  The helicopter engine hummed to life. I hadn’t realized how exhausted I was—not only physically but also emotionally. The tension of continual alertness had worn me down; the eagerness I had brought with me to Afghanistan was gone.

  The rotors whirled slowly, moving faster and faster until the individual blades blurred. We lifted off the ground with a jerk. The border receded above the open ramp door. From five hundred feet, Losano Ridge was small. I could barely see the bald patch where we had airlifted O’Neill. I blinked and couldn’t find it again. Only the jagged edge of the mountains remained. Even the firebase had disappeared. Below the helicopter, the sun cast a shadow racing over parched ground.

  35

  Phantom Limb

  Perception of painful and non-painful phantom sensations

  that occur following the complete or partial loss of a limb.

  The majority of individuals with an amputated extremity will

  experience the impression that the limb is still present, and in

  many cases, painful.

  INTERNATIONAL CLASSIFICATION OF DISEASES

  ORGUN WAS A CROSS BETWEEN A SIBERIAN PRISON and a training center for lunar landings. The base’s triangular perimeter jutted out toward imposing mountain ridges on every side. Apart from the camouflaged roofs of the base, there were precious few signs of life in the mile-high basin. From the air, the barren fields formed a checkerboard stretching into the foothills. There had once been a thriving city in Orgun, but the Russians had leveled it in retaliation against marauding mujahideen. Orgun’s population was only now returning from refugee camps across the border.

  We landed on a football field thickly carpeted in rock to keep the dust down. I dropped my bags and looked for my new boss, Major Wille.

  “Hey, Mullaney.” Wille always growled, even when he was being friendly. “I have a laundry list of things for you to get started on. Got a notebook?”

  He proceeded to outline my responsibilities. An adjutant is a hybrid animal: part accountant, part human resources manager, and part ghost-writer. An adjutant is not a warrior. This became clear as I filled up two pages in my notebook with administrative tasks. My first responsibility every morning would be to brief the commander on what amounted to an attendance roster. This involved updating one single PowerPoint slide. I was also supposed to make sure everyone got their mail and their pay on time. This sounded only marginally more interesting. Most important, Major Wille instructed, I would be in charge of making sure that soldiers in the battalion received the awards they deserved.

  “Where do I put my gear?” I asked.

  “Gallo will help you.”

  Andrew Gallo was the logistics officer for the battalion, and we knew each other from West Point. Gallo was built like a tank and had a gruff New York City accent to go with it. Next to his cot was a bookcase stacked with protein suppleme
nts. “Getting big is the only consolation for being a staff officer. You’ll see.” I took an empty cot along the wall across from Gallo and threw my duffel bag underneath. I tacked up a photo of Meena and my family, and then Gallo showed me the gym.

  The floor was a cement slab stacked with dozens of benches, squat racks, and leg presses. Above the dumbbells, stenciled red letters spelled out: THE ENEMY TRAINED TO KILL YOU TODAY. WHAT DID YOU DO? Beside it was Rommel’s quote: THE MORE YOU SWEAT IN PEACE, THE LESS YOU BLEED IN COMBAT. Apart from these slogans, there was little connection between my new role and the war outside the wire.

  Our schedule was numbing in its consistency. Every morning each member of the staff briefed the battalion commander. The slides read like scripts from a weather broadcast: “Today, winds will be from the northwest at 10-15 knots with a 30 percent chance of rockets.” Within a week I had memorized the other officers’ slides. I would scribble in my notebook while Gallo repeated the same update on vehicle repairs that he had given 150 days in a row.

  The battalion commander sat next to Major Wille, his executive officer, at the opposite end of the table, tapping his pen like a metronome while we briefed. He never swore, but his face would turn a scarlet red and his long arms seemed to reach across the table to extract your pulsing heart. “What do you mean we’ve got four broken Humvees and no parts?” he would say, his voice rising with each syllable. Half in jest, one of the staff officers donned body armor one morning.