A month before our wedding, I walked with Meena through Arlington Cemetery. I had walked through it countless times yet continued to be struck silent by the serried ranks of granite crosses—three hundred thousand of them. When we reached the bottom of the hill, we stopped to walk through the Faces of the Fallen exhibit. In a long, cold hall were over a thousand artists’ portraits of each service member killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. I walked slowly down the hall, conscious of Meena standing beside me. There were watercolor paintings, pencil portraits, silhouettes, and etchings. I knew we were going to be late for lunch, but I wanted to say a prayer for each one. I had to. Meena’s grip on my hand tightened when we reached O’Neill’s portrait. It was beautiful. I paused longer and said a prayer for his family. One day I hoped I could tell them his story, but I wasn’t ready yet.
“Are you okay?” asked Meena.
“No,” I said.
Meena kissed my cheek, and we walked outside, through the graveyard, together.
38
Vows
Your heart I take in mine. Whatever is in your heart shall be in mine, whatever is in mine shall be in yours. Our hearts shall be one, our minds shall be one. May God make us one.
PANIGRAHANA VOW
I MARRIED THE SAME WOMAN TWICE. ACCORDING TO a Hindu astrologer’s precise calculation, my wedding to Meena had to occur between 9:00 and 9:30 a.m. on a Friday morning in May. The second wedding the next day required no astrological seal of approval but instead required, since I was marrying a non-Catholic, an awkwardly worded “dispensation of cult.” Father Matt, the priest who had first met Meena in Rome, did the paperwork.
The rituals of a South Indian wedding evolved over five thousand years and are rich in symbolism. The wedding altar, or mandap, was a raised dais covered in rich carpet with a backdrop curtain of gold fabric and mirrored sequins. Two small stools were arranged facing our guests, and in front of them stood mounds of bananas, oranges, and coconuts that the Hindu priest would use during the ceremony. At the center of the mandap was a fire representing God’s presence. Our priest, swaddled in white robes and with his hair pulled back in a knot, sat across from us on the mandap. His forehead bore three distinct white stripes, marking him as a Brahmin devotee of Shiva. My immediate family and I wore traditional Indian clothing that Meena’s parents had generously given us as gifts the day before.
There was much ringing of bells and Sanskrit chanting as the priest blessed the altar, and Meena’s parents tied a turmeric-powdered thread around her wrist to ward off evil. We moved outside for the next portion of the ceremony. As I stood opposite Meena, exchanging garlands of flowers, the woman in front of me took my breath away. When Meena’s grandparents had performed this rite at their own marriage, it was the first time after their betrothal that they had seen each other. As I looked at Meena, I had the same sense that I was seeing her for the first time. She was unrecognizable from the girl in an oversized backpack I had met five years before. Wrapped in a royal purple sari of gold-embroidered silk, Meena was resplendent. Gold amulets suspended from a part in her hair. A dozen bangles on her arms clinked and glinted in the light. At the priest’s instructions, I clasped Meena’s right hand in mine, her fingers pointed upward in the shape of a lotus blossom meant to signify the blossoming relationship between us. Her hands had rich patterns of henna, traced into flowers and vines. Her anklets tinkled as we walked toward an ornamental swing meant to symbolize life’s ups and downs. We sat on the plush seat facing our family and friends while female relatives fed us milk, honey, and fruit.
After moving back to the mandap inside, the priest tied a thread around my own wrist, and I stood next to Meena and her father. Meena held out her hands, and the priest placed an orange in them. He then placed Meena’s hands on top of her father’s open palms. As Meena’s mother poured water over the orange, the priest rang his bell loudly and moved Meena’s hands into mine, a symbolic giving away of the bride.
“Repeat after me,” said the priest, who then continued in Sanskrit.
I parroted back exactly what he said but had no idea what I was saying. Meena’s aunt, narrating the wedding for our guests, translated:
“Craig says, ‘God has given you to me to be the mistress of my household....’ ”
I couldn’t keep a straight face and burst out laughing. “That’ll be the day,” I said, forgetting that the priest had placed a microphone on me. Meena erupted in laughter along with the rest of our friends.
The priest blessed a heavy gold necklace, the equivalent of a Western wedding ring, and passed it among the elders to sanctify. I placed the necklace around Meena’s neck, and my sisters tied three knots in it. Indian oboes soared and drums beat loudly. Our guests showered us with flower petals and turmeric-coated rice, clapping along with the rhythm of the drums. “Welcome to the family,” Meena’s mother said, beaming, as her father vigorously shook my hand, grinning again as he had when we first met.
Meena and I then took turns leading each other around the holy fire, pledging loyalty in the pursuit of righteousness, desire, prosperity, and unity. The priest placed Meena’s foot on a heavy grindstone, and I knelt beside her. Above her toes, a floral bouquet in henna rose underneath the hem of her sari and disappeared under jeweled anklets. As I slipped two silver rings on her second toe, we pledged in Sanskrit to be as steadfast as the stone. While remaining on my knees, holding her foot in one hand and her hand in the other, I moved her foot seven steps, symbolizing our first steps together on our journey as a married couple. With each step we recited our vows, among them a promise to nurture each other’s beliefs and dreams, to find fulfillment in our work, to alleviate the suffering of others, and to live a life full of joy and laughter. Each time I placed Meena’s heel on the floor, her anklets jingled with a metallic laughter only the two of us could hear.
After a prayer to the star Arundhati, symbol of eternal love and devotion, our marriage received its final blessing from the priest. Meena’s grandmother, five feet of wit and energy, shouted out to a chorus of laughs: “You may now kiss the bride!”
THE FOLLOWING DAY WE completed the twin weddings with a traditional military Catholic ceremony. I walked in with my mother on my arm and stood near Father Matt as our flower girls spread a carpet of rose petals along the aisle. I wore my Old Guard dress uniform, complete with medals, ornamental belt, and saber.
Among the guests before me were several in military uniforms—Trent Moore, Liz Young, Lieutenant Colonel Nagl, my brother, Gary, in his cadet summer whites, Tim Strabbing in the high-collared dress blues of the Marine Corps, and Staff Sergeant McGurk. Most of the military invitees couldn’t make it. My old roommate Bill Parsons and wrestling partner Aram Donigian were overseas. So, too, was Captain Worthan and half of my old platoon. At the last minute, Story called to tell me he couldn’t come. A Fort Drum soldier had been killed in Iraq, and Story had to coordinate the notification of his parents. The rest of the platoon had scattered to other units or left no trace behind when they finished their service. I had lost touch with mentors such as Yingling and LoFaro at West Point, Gunny Oakes from Ranger School, and Colonel LaCamera from Fort Drum. I wished I could thank them for what they had taught me.
The doors swung open, and I followed the eyes of my guests toward Meena. I have never seen her so beautiful. Meena’s slender curves were swathed in red silk embroidered in gold. Her smile was incandescent even in the bright light of the conservatory. As she stepped to the beat of the song I had chosen, the first one she had taught me to sing in Hindi, I recalled the thousand things I loved about her: the crook in her smile and the curve of her hip, the smell of mustard seeds frying in her skillet, how she never noticed when I was holding a chair out for her to sit, the fact that she could take a bullet out of a neck but couldn’t figure out how to take a cork out of a wine bottle. I wiped a tear from my eye with my white glove, knowing no one would see me as they, as transfixed as I was, watched Meena gliding down the flower-strewn carpet, one parent on each
arm.
One by one our friends and family read passages from the Bible and from the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore: “Only from the marriage of two forces does music arise in the world.” As if to prove Tagore’s point, our friend Katie Larson, the classmate who stood with me before Lincoln College’s gate, sang a beautiful folk song accompanied by the soaring chords of another close friend’s viola. I squeezed Meena’s hand, grateful for the friendships that had sustained us and helped us grow.
When it was Father Matt’s turn to give the homily, he made a crack at the obsessive planning I had done for the wedding.
“Does anyone know what time it is?” he asked. “Because according to the schedule I got from Craig, I’m supposed to speak from 11:28 until 11:38. I’ll know if I’m in trouble if he draws his saber.”
Our wedding party laughed, having spent the previous night rehearsing every detail in the thirty-page plan I had written. “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Matt and Hayden had exclaimed when I told them they were going to have to be dressed for photos by 7 a.m. I stared back. “Okay, okay. We’ll be there.” Father Matt finished his homily with a reference to Victor Hugo: “To love another person is to see the face of God.” Our love for each other, he said, was a gift of grace. Looking at the glow on Meena’s face, I felt blessed. At Father Matt’s command, we stood and faced each other. Bryan, my best man, and Meena’s sister handed him the rings to bless. Repeating after Father Matt, I slipped the ring on Meena’s finger “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
“I now present to you Captain Craig Mullaney and Doctor Meena Seshamani. You may kiss the bride.” I kissed Meena to the cheers of a hundred guests. After four years the lines I had drawn on that yellow legal pad at Oxford finally intersected. As we walked arm in arm to the sounds of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, I could barely contain the joy bursting in my heart.
At the reception we entered through an arch of sabers. Just as we were about to pass through the final pair, Tim Strabbing and Andrew Gallo lowered their sabers to block our path.
“The price of passage is a kiss,” demanded Gallo.
I leaned over and kissed Meena. The sabers raised, and we took another step. As we cleared the arch, Trent took his saber and hit Meena’s butt. “Welcome to the Army, ma’am!”
39
Teaching War
You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.
LEON TROTSKY
I WAS AN ARMY OF ONE. NINE MONTHS AFTER ARRIVING at the Old Guard, I had yet another set of orders, this time to the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Tim Strabbing, my Marine friend from Oxford, had recommended that I fill an opening there to teach history. I submitted an application but never expected that the Army would let me teach at Navy. Annapolis was “The Dark Side.” The irony of an Army officer teaching at a naval academy was lost on no one, including my department chair, who, in a twisted practical joke, assigned me to teach naval history. I had never even been on a Navy ship; to me, bow was a verb and stern an adjective, not nouns representing the front and back of a ship.
The Naval Academy was as strange a culture as any I had explored before. Although we were firmly onshore, everything had a nautical designation. Thus, I worked on the third “deck” of the building, washed my hands in the “head” to the left of the “ladder,” and nailed my Army memorabilia into the “bulkhead” of my office. When students came by, they knocked on my “hatch” and said, “Sir, permission to come aboard, sir.” Before leaving they asked to “shove off.” The first time I heard the expression, I thought an eighteen-year-old was insulting me.
When I started at Annapolis, I expected a fever pitch of interest in the war. When I had visited Gary at West Point, almost all of his professors were recently returned combat veterans. His summer training exercises had intentionally mimicked Iraqi forward operating bases. In their new Army camouflage uniforms, cadets looked primed to fight. In 2005, the Naval Academy felt extraordinarily remote. One day, walking out of the office in my uniform, a civilian professor asked whether it was Warrior Day. “Yeah, sure,” I replied, unclear what he was referring to. Wasn’t every day Warrior Day? The next day a colleague told me that Warrior Day was the one day every other week when midshipmen and officers wore their service’s combat uniforms: flight suits for the pilots, overalls for the submariners, and camouflage for the Marines—as if the uniform made the warrior rather than the other way around.
When I began teaching, I avoided the tactics of naval warfare and led my students through a history of American foreign policy. We discussed the Navy’s role in foreign relations, from its intervention in the first war on terrorism against the Barbary pirates to the naval blockade that arguably kept the Cold War cold during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I blended the teaching styles I had observed at Oxford and West Point. I rarely delivered a lecture, for instance, leaving it to them, not me, to learn. I would help them up the mountain, but I wasn’t going to carry them on my back. Breaking my class into small groups at the beginning of the semester, I posed questions that each group researched and shared with the rest of the class. I demanded that they challenge one another and work together.
History isn’t about memorizing dates; it’s about investigation, interpretation, and imagination. I wanted them to challenge conventional wisdom and to think for themselves, to take intellectual risks, not just physical ones. Question the answers, I repeated every class. Reevaluate your conclusions when the evidence changes. I asked them to evaluate President Harry Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bombs, but made them debate from the position they disagreed with. We studied World War I in depth, not because I wanted to shock them with the horrors of the trenches, but because I wanted them to see how rational statesmen had blundered into a war no one wanted.
We probed the necessity and the limits of reason. We watched Robert McNamara’s chilling confessions in The Fog of War. Years after his controversial tenure as secretary of defense during the 1960s, McNamara pointed out with regret how much faith he and his colleagues had put in their ability to calibrate and control the situation in Vietnam. According to McNamara, most variables in war, especially at the strategic level, are out of our control or unknowable. As Donald Rumsfeld stated so poetically, “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.” Strategy isn’t a mathematical equation, I told the midshipmen; there is not always a “correct” answer. History, more than any other subject, showed how often the “best and the brightest” got it wrong. Beware the unknown unknowns.
My teaching was motivated in part by knowledge that one of my students might eventually command an aircraft carrier, a nuclear-armed submarine, or a Marine regiment. I wanted that future officer to weigh decisions with a supple mind and to be comfortable with nuance and uncertainty. I was conscious, however, that I was holding back from my students. At the end of one class, a student pointed out that I always evaded questions about my service in Afghanistan. “How come you never talk about it, sir?”
“We have a lot to cover,” I said. It was a bad excuse, and I knew it. It was easier to discuss grand strategy. I didn’t want to tell my story. I saw in each face a younger version of me. I knew they would question, at least in their own minds, the decisions I had made. I wasn’t ready to stand trial.
At the end of October, on the two-year anniversary of the fight at Khand Narai Pass, where Chris had died, I decided to speak. If I wanted them to be better than I was, I had a responsibility to share my mistakes and what I had learned. I arrived in class with a crate of maps, photos, a jagged piece of rocket shrapnel, and the tail end of the mortar that should have killed me. I motioned to the class to pull their desks in tighter. I sat on my desk, propped my boots on the seat of a chair, and started to tell my story. They listened as I related the battle on Losano Ridge in c
linical terms: movement to contact, suppressive fire, and medical evacuation. In telling the story, I reconstructed events from a dozen perspectives, rendering to the battle a clarity that distorted the reality as I had experienced it: chaos, noise, fear, exhilaration. I asked if I could start again. Of course, they answered. This time I tried to put them under my helmet, seeing and hearing and touching the battle. They sat still, rapt with attention. I finished with O’Neill’s memorial service. A couple of midshipmen averted watery eyes, and I was surprised that I was not in tears myself. I found that telling the story was more of a relief than a trial.
“What do you think, sir, that you would have done differently?”
A hundred thoughts went through my head before I punted the personal question and talked about the larger strategy.
“The best thing we could have done for Afghanistan was to get out of our Humvees and drink more green chai. We should have focused less on finding the enemy, and more on finding our friends.” Getting the strategy right hadn’t been my responsibility. My mission had been to fight well and bring my men home, and although we had fought well, I had failed to bring every soldier back. The unsettling truth was that I still had no idea what I had done wrong on Losano Ridge. Was there anything I could have done differently to save O’Neill’s life? I still didn’t know, and I expected I never would.
The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education Page 38