The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education

by Craig M. Mullaney

  The midshipmen wanted to believe that they could “get it right,” that they would be able to eliminate risk by understanding and manipulating all the variables to their advantage. As a cadet, I had believed the same thing. I could coldly analyze any tactical problem and seize the objective. It was part of the Ranger Creed I had shouted a thousand times—cold, wet, and/or miserable. Fight on to the Ranger objective and complete the mission, though I be the lone survivor. I had to believe that. The alternative—that I would not be in complete control, that the enemy had a say, that there was no such thing as “minimum safe distance,” that I might succumb to fear or indecision—would have been paralyzing. Successfully leading in combat required faith in the perfectibility of my men and myself. Everything about training at a military academy emphasizes that imperative to control and banish chaos, from the manipulation of sails to master the wind, to the daily battle against dust on their mirrors. I wasn’t ready to tell the midshipmen that they could “get it right” and still lose.

  A skinny Plebe raised his hand.

  “Were you ready?”

  I looked down at the shrapnel.

  “I was as ready as I could be,” I replied.

  There were some lessons they would learn only by experience. No classroom or field exercise would ever fully simulate how difficult it can be to keep your wits about you while your men are wounded or dying. The only fact you might know is that someone is just as desperate to kill you as you are to stay alive by killing him. How do you teach a future officer what to say to his men after he has failed to protect them? How do you explain resolve? How do you teach courage?

  ONE AFTERNOON THE SKINNY Plebe who had asked whether I was prepared stopped by my office. “Permission to come aboard.”

  “Ahoy,” I said with a grin, “come aboard.”

  “I wanted to show you something, sir, before I left for the summer.”

  He lifted his forearm to chest level and turned his wrist. He was wearing a silver bracelet with a name etched on it. I had seen only a few midshipmen wearing these bracelets, personalized reminders of Americans killed or missing in action.

  “I had it engraved with your soldier’s name, sir. See”—he turned it upright—“PFC EVAN W. O’NEILL KIA 29 SEP 03.”

  I kept looking at the bracelet, identical to the one on my wrist.

  “I don’t know anyone who’s over there, and I wanted something to remind me of what I’m here for. After your story, I looked up your soldier. I figured you’d want to know.”

  “This means a lot to me. Thank you.”

  “Permission to shove off.”

  “Permission granted.”

  I shut the door behind him, sat down, and stared at the photo of my platoon mounted above my desk. We had taken it at first light on a cold morning wearing watch caps and long underwear. By this time our cotton fatigues had the stiffness of canvas. My men perched on top of the Humvees: Chuck on the left, thick-jowled and stern; Grenz wrapped in a brown scarf, his grenade launcher slid open as if he were about to load a round. There were McGurk and Story, Markam and Red and Howe. All of us in sepia except one. O’Neill’s face was missing from the lineup. He had been killed before we had a chance to take a photo including him. For all its tragedy, that platoon on my wall made it all worthwhile. I fought for them. My men.

  My students had many challenges before them, and I hoped I taught them something they would remember. Unlike professors at civilian universities, instructors at a military academy must work under the haunting imperative that what we fail to teach our students could kill them or those they lead. My contribution in the classroom was one small part of that mission. I hoped I taught them to be better thinkers. I hoped I taught them enough intellectual humility to question their own answers. I hoped I taught them resolve and courage and even a little compassion. But I also share the curse of every teacher: I will never know whether I succeeded.

  40

  Echoes

  The challenge of education is not to prepare a person for success, but to prepare him for failure.

  ADMIRAL JAMES STOCKDALE

  THE DEEPER THE CAVERN, THE FARTHER THE ECHO travels. I was in frigid water up to my chest in a Guatemalan cave. My brother, Gary, and I had spelunked for several hours already, pausing at intervals to admire the stalagmites, scramble up waterfalls, or search for a passageway through the inky black. Two miles into the cave system, our echoes seemed no closer to finding its deepest recesses. They kept bouncing back and forth, back and forth.

  It was freezing cold, even in our wetsuits and boots. Our guide was barefoot as he forged ahead holding a single wax candle to light his way. I turned my helmet, and its beam spotlit Gary, about to plunge from an ad hoc diving board into a pool of unknown depth. I wanted to yell at him not to jump, but I restrained the impulse. He was fearless in the way only twenty-year-olds can be. Everything I did, he had to take one step further. He wanted to prove something. Maybe to me or maybe to himself.

  Our expedition to Guatemala on Gary’s spring break his junior year was my attempt to build our relationship. I wanted to impart a little of what I had learned traveling the globe: how to safeguard your passport, where to grease the bureaucracy with baksheesh, what to bring on a camping expedition. That was the limit of the advice I gave Gary. It had been two years since I had returned from Afghanistan, but I still hadn’t talked about it with him. The lessons I wanted to share stayed between my ears. I could tell my students, but not my own brother. Partly, I wanted to believe Gary wouldn’t face the same trials. I hoped beyond reason that Iraq would quiet down. But, in fact, things there were getting worse. My friends were deploying yet again. Gallo was commanding an airborne company. Bill Parsons was about to take command of a Stryker company. Liz Young, who had taken the same path I had to Oxford, was gearing up for her second deployment to Iraq. How could I watch them go to war, how could I watch my own brother go to war, while I sat on the sidelines?

  There was a more important reservation, however, that made me most hesitant to talk with Gary. I had failed to bring every man in my platoon home safely. What would Gary think of my leadership at Losano Ridge? Was that failure redeemable?

  Doubt made me consider my father, present in my life largely by his conspicuous absence. When my car’s fuel gauge dipped below a quarter tank, I heard my father chiding me. When I listened to country music, I remembered seeing Kenny Rogers with him—my first concert. When the plumbing in my house clogged, I wanted to ask him what to do. I shaved and saw his beard. He was and wasn’t there. He was a shadow, always lurking behind me. I wondered whether I shared his cowardice in the face of duty. Was it a genetic marker like the dark eyes I had inherited? Would his fate be mine? And what about Gary? Didn’t he evaluate me through the prism of our father? If he saw my flaws, wouldn’t I be just as phony as the father we condemned? For that reason it was Gary’s respect that I, the older brother, so desperately needed. But that desperation was conflicted. My fear that he wouldn’t understand tempered the obligation I felt to teach him what I tried to teach my students. Fear outweighed duty, and I kept my confessions to myself.

  ALTHOUGH I NEEDED GARY’S respect, I also needed a ghost’s forgiveness. It was time to visit O’Neill. I bought a train ticket to Boston, and a friend drove me to the cemetery in North Andover, just outside the city. American flags fluttered off the highway overpasses, most tattered and faded with age. We exited from the freeway onto quiet roads shaded by oaks and bordered by stone walls and old houses. We passed the village green with its white-steepled church and the fire station where Mr. O’Neill served. Just down the road were the gates to the cemetery.

  It was the week before Christmas, and the barren trees made the twilight seem darker than it really was. I stepped out of the car and shivered in my overcoat. The first snow had fallen, and my dress shoes were entirely unsuitable. I walked across the hilly cemetery searching for O’Neill. In the letter he had written to the battalion, Mr. O’Neill said they buried his son at
the highest point in the cemetery, like the hill where he had made his final patrol. I crunched through the snow and stopped in front of a simple gravestone.

  EVAN WILLIAM O’NEILL

  PFC US ARMY

  AFGHANISTAN

  APR I6 I984

  SEP 29 2003

  BSM W/V KIA

  PURPLE HEART

  CO A I BN 87 INF

  I0 MOUNTAIN DIV

  PARATROOPER

  Surrounding the grave were two American flags, a stone angel, a Christmas wreath, and a little wooden Uncle Sam. I stood by the gravestone, but my mind returned to Losano Ridge: McGurk’s voice over the radio telling me O’Neill was dead. The medevac, riddled with bullet holes, carrying his lifeless body off that damned hill. Those eyes.

  Bowing my head, I asked Evan to forgive me. But then for the first time I realized that something had changed. Somewhere between Annapolis and Andover, I had finally forgiven myself. As soldiers we were well trained, in peak physical condition, and focused on our mission. But we weren’t immortal, and we weren’t in control. I did my best; I fought well. So did Evan. Yet there was nothing any of us could have done to save him. The enemy had his vote.

  I thought of the obituary by John Alexander Hottell III: We all have but one death to spend. I lifted my head and made the sign of the cross. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Evan spent his death well. He died a warrior. Amen.

  A YEAR AFTER I visited Evan’s grave, I had to visit another. In November I lost a second soldier from my old platoon. Sergeant Lucas “Red” White had been killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad just two weeks shy of returning home. When Story called me with the news, I drank a glass of twelve-year-old scotch in Red’s honor, remembering his antics as I swirled the glass. The ice melted slowly into the liquor. His sixth sense had failed him at last.

  The morning of the funeral, I ironed my uniform and shaved. On my wrist I wore O’Neill’s bracelet. It was scratched, and his full name was getting harder and harder to read. Later, I thought, I would have to order one for Red. Outside, the sky was overcast and the air cold. Winter was approaching. I drove along Route 50 from Annapolis to Arlington Cemetery. I had buried others in Arlington, but never one of my own.

  Outside the cemetery administration building, we lined up our cars to go to the grave site. Markam, now a college ROTC student, caught my eye. “One last convoy, huh, sir?”

  “One last convoy, Markam.”

  Red’s wife sat in the first row, burrowed in a warm coat against the chill. Red’s parents and grandparents were there as well. I stood to the side with Markam and two of my other soldiers. As the Old Guard honor guard approached, the metal taps on their heels rattled on the cold pavement.

  The funeral was short. In crisp, quick movements, the honor guard folded the American flag that had been draped over Red’s casket. “On behalf of a grateful nation,” began the officer as he handed the folded triangle of blue and white stars to Red’s wife. She was stronger than we were. My men and I, we cried.

  After the ceremony, the four of us lingered by the grave to pay our last respects. I raised my hand in a salute, joining my stiff fingers in a knife-edge against the wind. As I walked back to the convoy, I swiveled my head at my men walking behind me in a file. Our rucksacks were missing, but the weight remained.

  Glancing at the granite slabs we passed, I noticed for the first time that each bore the byline of Iraq or Afghanistan. Every grave in the section was fresh. I shut the car door and pulled away from the curb. As our convoy departed, another followed behind. Another was probably behind that one. I opened the windows for some fresh air. In the distance, synchronized rifle volleys and faint bugle notes echoed across the cemetery—back and forth, back and forth.

  41

  The Distance Run

  To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

  TENNYSON, Ulysses

  A WEEK BEFORE MY BROTHER’S GRADUATION FROM West Point, I spent an afternoon at home combing through a half-dozen duffel bags stuffed with military gear that had accumulated like barnacles on a ship. I dumped the bags on the storage room floor—green and black items clumped together as the detritus of an Army career. There were yards and yards of nylon cord, a rusty entrenchment tool, a lot of knives I didn’t remember buying, a first aid pouch, suspenders, a stormproof whistle. I sorted the mess into the things I would keep, the things I would throw away, and the things I would give to Gary.

  My progress was slow. I smiled at the vinyl map case that had kept my maps dry in Florida’s swamps. I put it in the bag for my brother, knowing he could use the help in his land navigation exercises. There was a small flashlight with a red lens that I had used to read in the field and a favorite insulated shirt I had worn on cold nights at Drum. They might make Gary more comfortable, I thought as I placed them in the duffel. I picked out brass insignia and name tags thinking that he could never have too many. As I continued packing, the only gear remaining was from Afghanistan.

  Seven empty magazines rattled on the concrete. They still had the green tape and loops I had rigged to help me change magazines faster. There was the panel of bright nylon I had used to signal helicopters. I folded it and put it in the bag. Next, I lifted the boots I had worn in Shkin. The boot-laces were fraying. One had snapped. There was a stain of blood on the heel. I sat down on the floor and held the boots in my lap. Gary could use the magazines, but the boots were beyond repair. I continued sorting. A stack of T-shirts had my last name and blood type stenciled in big block letters. Holding a folded shirt in both hands, my eyes fixed on the black B+.

  We shared the same blood type.

  Gary didn’t need a blood type, I wanted to tell myself. He was just going on another field exercise. Blank ammunition. Plastic targets. Notional casualties, notional blood. I sat there for what must have been an hour, the realization finally sinking in that Gary would likely face the same trials I did. He, too, would have his courage and conviction tested. He might lose soldiers under his command, have to watch them die in his arms. He might even be wounded or killed himself. Up to now what had I taught him that would help him with those challenges? Very little, I had to admit. Part of preserving an eleven-year-old kid brother in my mind meant avoiding those discussions. As I sat on that cold concrete floor, I realized I owed it to Gary to share whatever I had learned, even if in doing so I exposed my record to his judgment.

  THE PAVEMENT SHIMMERED WITH heat as my car shifted gears climbing over Storm King Mountain toward West Point. A thousand feet below, enveloped by the wide ribbon of the Hudson River, West Point looked as enduring as the mountain sliding beneath my wheels. Its granite ramparts surrounded the perfect emerald expanse of the Plain. The bright summer sun glinted off the cadets’ bayonets as they circumscribed the parade field. As I coasted downhill on Highway 9W, West Point’s inner sanctum disappeared from view. I turned off the highway and drove along the golf course and past the private security guards at Washington Gate. I knew the route by heart. It was the same tree-lined avenue I had first marched along as my class finished Beast. In the four years that followed, I wore an imperceptible groove in its sidewalks, marching, walking, or running.

  West Point looked the same as it had seven years before, but its ageless-ness made it easy to forget how much time had slipped down the Hudson. When I began, Gary had just turned eleven. I have a photo of the two of us standing next to each other. He’s wearing my dress gray uniform and smiling as he makes an earnest attempt to stand at attention. I later learned that after I graduated he kept that dress gray on a hanger by his bed. Thinking of his height and breadth now, I laughed. He would probably split the seams of his “big” brother’s uniform. It was hard to believe that Gary was about to become an officer. Both he and the world had changed. We had been at war for nearly six years. His class had entered West Point three months after the Iraq invasion. His challenge would be even tougher than mine. I couldn’t help but consider the remarkable symmetry of our paths
: He was set to join a cavalry squadron in Iraq just as I was set to leave the service. We were soldiers passing in the night, conducting our own two-person relief-in-place.

  Gary’s graduation followed a script that hadn’t changed since I had endured it. A procession of parades, awards ceremonies, dinners, and inspections culminated in a grand ceremony at the football stadium. After the euphoric hat toss, Gary rushed to change out of his cadet gray and into his officer green. We waited for Gary at a monument overlooking the river. Two hundred yards across the parade field was the room I had once shared with Bill Parsons. We spent countless hours looking out the window, wondering about the challenges we would face as lieutenants. Neither of us could have predicted the course our careers took. Just a week before, he sent me a chilling email from Iraq. His twin brother had nearly died when a roadside bomb destroyed his Stryker vehicle. He crawled out of the hatch seconds before it went up in flames. The three of us had run together preparing for marathons. Now, Bill’s brother had to fight to walk again. While I wanted to concentrate my prayers on his recovery, all I could think about was Gary. Would I ever have the strength to relay bad news if it involved my brother? I couldn’t bear the possibility, yet I had to.